an experimental examination of labor supply and work intensities estimated negative substitution effects on work hours question the empirical validity of the classical labor supply model estimates are reconciled by allowing a dual choice of hours and effort for piecerate workers in such a model these negative substitution effects result from substituting on and off the job leisure we test our model using controlled experimentation on human subjects these experiments while not naturally occurring environments represent real economic choices and can generate data unavailable elsewhere e g effort data the results support our model and they have implications both for labor management and for empirical research focusing only on the hours choice the classical static model of the labor leisure choice offers positive compensated wage effects on hours of work as its main testable implication previous attempts to test this hypothesis with field data have cast doubt on the empirical validity of the static labor supply model due to the frequency of negative estimated compensated wage elasticities a limitation of the model is that it views the choice of hours of work as the only

focus on situation and policies for biomass power generation in china abstract nowadays china is faced with many issues such as increasing farmers income protecting environment and adjusting energy structure which may be solved by developing the biomass power generation industry however the lack of technical capability inadequate raw materials and challenges for grid feed in are all obstacles that prevent large scale production and industrialization in the biomass power generation industry therefore government should provide necessary policies to support and advance the biomass power generation industry this paper systematically analyzes the current laws regulations and policies implemented recently in china and provides a comprehensive review of the fiscal subsidies reduction and exemption of taxes tariff concessions the policies of investment and financing and the support of r d suggestions for relevant policies are proposed to address the existing problems

competitive maps the structure underlying asymmetric cross elasticities a special case of three mode factor analysis is used to portray the systematic structure underlying asymmetric cross elasticities for a broad class of market share attraction models analysis of the variation over retail outlets and weeks reveals competitive patterns corresponding to sales for the major brands in the market as well as patterns reflecting shelf price competition analysis of the brand domain results in a joint space one set of brand positions portrays how brands exert influence over the competition the other set of points portrays how brands are influenced by others the interset distances angles provide direct measures of competitive pressures maps are formed as spatial representations of each of the competitive patterns discovered

a factor analytic probit model for representing the market structure in panel data internal market structure analysis infers both brand attributes and consumer preferences for those attributes from preference or choice data the authors exploit a new method for estimating probit models from panel data to infer market structures that can be displayed in few dimensions even though the model can represent every possible vector of purchase probabilities

a probabilistic choice model for market segmentation and elasticity structure marketing scholars commonly characterize market structure by studying the patterns of substitution implied by brand switching though the approach is useful it typically ignores the destabilizing

modeling purchase timing and brand switching behavior incorporating explanatory variables and unobserved heterogeneity the authors use a continuous time semi markov approach to analyze in a single framework the purchase timing and brand switching decisions of households for a frequently purchased product the analysis provides more insights into the dynamics of household purchase behavior than could be obtained from conventional discrete choice models such as logit or probit the authors find that the probability distribution of interpurchase times is not the same for various switching between brands revealing extra information about the purchase timing decisions further they find that though the marketing mix and household demographic variables explain a large part of the variation in the brand switching rates they account for only a small part of the variation in the repeat purchase rates another finding from the analysis is that the rates of switching between brands due to promotional activities such as special displays and price reductions are in reverse order to the share of purchases of the various brands

product and price competition with satiation effects consumers become satiated with a product when purchasing too much too quickly how much is too much and how quickly is too quickly depends on the characteristics of the product relative to the time interval between consumption periods knowing that consumers allocate their budget to products that generate less satiation effects retailers should then choose to sell products that induce minimal satiation but usually this is operationally more costly to study this trade off we provide an analytical model based on utility theory that relates customer consumption to price and satiation in the context of multiple competing retailers we determine the purchasing pattern over time and provide an explicit expression to determine the consumption level in steady state we derive market shares and show that they take the form of an attraction model in which the attractiveness depends on price and product satiation we use this to analyze the competition between firms that maximize long term average profit we characterize the equilibrium under three scenarios i price only competition ii product only competition and iii price and product competition the results reveal the interplay between a key marketing lever price and the firm s ability to offer products that generate less satiation in particular we show that when a firm becomes more efficient at reducing satiation its competitor may benefit if competition is on product only but not if it is on price and product we also find that when satiation effects are not managed a firm s profit may be significantly reduced while a strategic competitor can largely benefit this paper was accepted by yossi aviv operations management

relating inertia and experience in technology markets an analysis of households personal computer choices this article empirically analyses how households pc purchasing behaviours change with market experience we find that households generally exhibit inertia in their pc purchases the level of inertia is increasing as a function of experience on the pc market and for households switching brands the likelihood of buying a lesser known brand increases with experience regardless of the brand of the previous purchase these findings are consistent with the predictions of a simple learning model and extend our understanding of how market experience affects purchasing behaviour to an important technology product with implications that may apply to other similar products

a model of stochastic variety seeking in this paper we propose and test a stochastic model of consumer choice that incorporates attribute based variety seeking our stochastic variety seeking model svs has nested within it a fixed variety seeking model a zero order model of choice and a first order pure variety model we compare the svs model to alternative models under stochastic variety seeking we examine the nature of the variety sought and provide a test of the satiation hypothesis unlike fixed variety seeking models our model allows variety seeking to vary in intensity and consistency over individuals as well as over purchase occasions we show that the model is equivalent to a random utility model with the features that the attributes of brands relative to those of the brand previously bought influence choice and the extent of variety seeking is random over choice occasions for a given individual the model permits a closed form solution to the conditional switching probabilities parameterized by variety seeking parameters and dependent on brand attributes we apply our model to individual choice data obtained from a field study specifically designed for the purpose at hand

inertia and variety seeking in a model of brand purchase timing previous research on state dependence indicates that a brand s purchase probabilities vary over time and depend on the levels of inertia and variety seeking and on the identity of the previously purchased brand brand choice probabilities obtained from models such as the logit and the probit are however fixed over time conditional on the previous brand purchased and on the levels of marketing variables consequently state dependence has largely been studied as a time invariant phenomenon in brand choice models with the levels of inertia and variety seeking assumed to be constant over time to account for the time varying nature of state dependence would require a model in which brand switching probabilities depend upon interpurchase times one modeling framework that can account for this dependence is based on the hazard function approach the proposed approach works as follows all other factors being equal an inertial household purchasing a brand on a particular occasion is most likely to repurchase that brand on the next occasion if the household switches it will be to a brand located perceptually close in attribute space to the previously purchased brand in other words an inertial household has the highest switching hazard for the same origin and destination brands with a progressively lower hazard rate for brands perceptually located farther and farther away from the origin brand the amount by which the hazard is lowered depends upon the perceptual distance and the inertia level of the household on the other hand if the household is variety seeking the most likely brand purchased would be a brand located farthest away from the previously purchased brand in attribute space in other words the hazard rate of repurchase is the lowest with the rate increasing with the distance of the destination brand from the origin brand and the level of that household s variety seeking tendency the effects of inertia and variety seeking are therefore incorporated at the attribute level into a brand purchase timing model in doing so we attempt to provide greater insight into the nature of state dependence in models of purchase timing our model and estimation procedure will enable us to distinguish between households that are inertial and those that are variety prone in addition to accounting for state dependence the model also accounts for the effects of unobserved heterogeneity among households in their brand preferences and in their sensitivities to marketing activities a majority of studies in marketing using the hazard function approach to investigate purchase timing have not accounted for heterogeneity in marketing mix effects the study integrates recent methods that incorporate the effects of inertia and variety seeking in brand choice models with a semi markov model of purchase timing and brand switching the proposed model enables us to 1 infer market structure via a perceptual map for the sample households and 2 investigate implications for the introduction of a line extension we provide empirical applications of the proposed method using three different household level scanner panel data sets we find that differing levels of inertia and variety seeking characterize the three data sets the findings are consistent with prior beliefs regarding these categories in addition our results indicate that the nature of interbrand purchase timing behavior depends upon the extent of inertia or variety seeking in the data we are also able to characterize the structure of the three product markets studied this provides implications for interbrand rivalry in the market further we demonstrate how the model and results can be used to predict the location of a line extension in the perceptual space of households finally we obtain implications for the timing of brand promotions

choice map inferring a product market map from panel data this paper describes choice map a model that infers a product market map from panel data choice map is a stochastic brand choice model a random utility quantal choice model and a multidimensional scaling procedure choice map combines the parsimony of stochastic choice models the rationale of random utility models and the ability of multidimensional scaling procedures to simultaneously infer both brand positions and consumer preferences from preference choice data choice map assumes that consumers have stationary purchase probabilities for the observational period which makes the model best suited to frequently bought mature product categories neither experimental nor survey data are required traditional mapping methods that scale such data may not yield the same structure for low involvement products as will a procedure like choice map that scales behavioral data choice map s descriptive and predictive validity exceeds that of an alternative stochastic brand choice model the dirichlet multinomial for a test data set

a unified approach to identifying estimating and testing demand structures with aggregate scanner data a one to one map between a specific demand structure and a restricted cross elasticity matrix is developed and tested using a random utility model the resulting demand structure can be used to evaluate a firm s ability to differentiate its products and can help determine if demand is characterized by factors that are easy to change similar brands are assumed to share common attributes that are stochastically evaluated by the consumer resulting in a random utility model with correlated errors the map results in more precise cross elasticity estimates and can be used to both identify and test possible structures

estimation of latent class models with heterogeneous choice probabilities an application to market structuring recently grover and srinivasan developed a latent class based approach to analyze market structure by using brand switching data the authors provide an iterative maximum likelihood procedure for

discrete choice models with multiple unobserved choice characteristics since the pioneering work by daniel mcfadden utility maximization based multinomial response models have become important tools of empirical researchers various generalizations of these models have been developed to allow for unobserved heterogeneity in taste parameters and choice characteristics here we investigate how rich a specification of the unobserved components is needed to rationalize arbitrary choice patterns in settings with many individual decision makers multiple markets and large choice sets we find that if one restricts the utility function to be monotone in the unobserved choice characteristics then up to two unobserved choice characteristics may be needed to rationalize the choices

an empirical investigation of private label supply by national label producers private labels pls are ubiquitous in several categories including groceries apparel and appliances however existing empirical work has not examined the differential impact of various upstream supply arrangements for pl products or the strategic motives for pl supply to do so requires one to model the interaction between private and national label nl products both upstream and downstream while accounting for strategic behavior on the part of manufacturers and retailers and retaining essential differences between nl and pl products we build a model that satisfies these requirements and lets us answer our two research questions first can an nl firm profit from being an outsourced pl supplier second what are the upstream and downstream impacts of different pl supply arrangements we answer these questions by modeling private labels as homogenous products at wholesale but as differentiated products at retail in contrast national label products are differentiated at both wholesale and retail levels using structural model estimates for fluid milk in a major metropolitan area we conduct three counterfactual experiments we find that both nl producers and retailers profit from adding private labels we also find that a vertically integrated supply of pl leads to lower prices for end consumers

positioning and pricing in a variety seeking market we study competitive positioning and pricing strategies in markets where consumers seek variety variety seeking behavior is modeled as a decrease in the willingness to pay for the product purchased on the previous purchase occasion using a three stage hotelling type model we show that the presence of variety seeking consumers reduces product differentiation offered in equilibrium thereby explaining some otherwise counterintuitive findings in empirical research we find that firms charge higher prices in period 1 and lower prices in period 2 the lower price in period 2 represents the price incentive that firms need to offer to prevent the variety seeking consumers from switching furthermore we find that the observed switching in a market may not fully capture the true magnitude of the underlying variety seeking tendencies among consumers finally we show that the presence of variety seeking consumers leads to lower firm profits and a higher consumer surplus surplus increases for variety seeking consumers as well as regular consumers therefore the presence of variety seeking consumers benefits everyone in the market

the plight of the biomass power generation industry in china a supply chain risk perspective abstract for the past several years the biomass power generation industry in china has witnessed notably rapid development however many biomass power generation manufacturers in china are currently making small profits or suffering losses and the entire biomass supply chain does not function well which not only poses a challenge for the stable operation of enterprises but also may impact the smooth development of the biomass power industry from the perspective of supply chain risk this paper explores the reasons for the current plight and the future obstacles that the chinese biomass power generation industry may face identifying such risks as market risk production risk technology risk economic risk and management risk in the upstream midstream and downstream of the biomass supply chain and ordering the degrees of risk controllability by the government and enterprises it is determined that joint effort by both the chinese government and the biomass power generation enterprises is an ideal choice for risk control coming out of the plight however at present more problems should go to the government for solutions than to the enterprises to guide the healthy development of the industry the chinese government should play a more prominent role in promulgating supporting policies in each stage of the supply chain and strengthening the supervision and control of biomass projects last specific measures taken by the chinese government and the enterprises are proposed

investigating household purchase timing decisions a conditional hazard function approach the purchase timing decision is an important component of the dynamics of a household s purchase behavior this decision is influenced by marketing and other variables and the modeling of this dependence has recently received attention in the literature in this paper we build on previous studies and develop a comprehensive stochastic model that incorporates the major factors influencing interpurchase times specifically we use a generalized version of cox s proportional hazard model to test among competing probability distributions for the interpurchase times while incorporating effects due to marketing variables observed household characteristics and unobserved heterogeneity across households the empirical finding from analyzing the iri coffee data suggests that the interpurchase times cannot be adequately described by probability distributions such as exponential erlang 2 or weibull the effects of unobserved heterogeneity are significant and they impact the estimates of the effects of the covariates we also find that a nonparametric procedure for estimating the effects of unobserved heterogeneity provides the best overall fit to the data and yields covariate estimates that are more consistent with prior expectations our model is validated by replicating the substantive empirical findings on an additional product category

estimating a multinomial probit model of brand choice using the method of simulated moments the multinomial probit model of brand choice is theoretically appealing for marketing applications as it is free from the independence of irrelevant alternatives property of the multinomial logit model however difficulties in estimation have restricted its widespread use in marketing this paper presents an application of the method of simulated moments a new methodology that enables easy estimation of probit models with a large number of alternatives in the choice set we describe the theoretical development of the technique and using pseudo simulated data conduct numerical experiments to compare the method with existing techniques for estimating probit models using the scanner panel data on the purchases of catsup we provide an empirical application of the method of simulated moments to the estimation of the parameters of a multinomial probit model estimating the covariance structure associated with the underlying latent variable probit model enables us to identify broad patterns of similarities across alternatives it also enables us to derive a pairwise similarity matrix across choice alternatives which when input into a multi dimensional scaling routine provides us with a graphical representation of competitive structure in the catsup market for completeness we compare the substantive implications for the effects of marketing variables obtained from the multinomial probit model with those obtained from models in the extant marketing literature

why is the labour force participation of women declining in india summary this paper explores the recent fall in female labour force participation and its socio economic determinants in india the major contribution of this paper is to explore both micro and macro level factors which determine female labour force participation rate lfpr to examine the u shape female lfpr by examining the likely income and substitution effects of the real wage increase to identify the sub sectors within manufacturing and service sectors that could create jobs for new female job aspirants and those older women displaced from agriculture in recent years and thus to understand the conditions under which female lfpr could be raised using both macro level and household survey nss data we find that the recent fillip in the process of structural transformation has pushed a large number of females out of agriculture the growing mechanization in agriculture and rising capital intensity in manufacturing sectors together have limited the opportunity for females because of their low education and skill and due to other cultural constraints we also found that the rise in real wages in rural areas and the consequent improvement in the standard of living has produced a strong negative income effect which outweighs the positive substitution effect and as a result female lfpr has declined substantially however with the massive increase in female enrollment in secondary and higher levels of education it could be expected that the substitution effect of the increase in real wage would become stronger if appropriate measures are taken by the government which are suggested

modeling purchases as repeated events we put forward a statistical model for interpurchase times that incorporates all current and past information available for all purchases as time runs along the calendar time scale it delivers forecasts for the number of purchases in the next period as well as for the timing of subsequent and consecutive purchases purchase occasions are viewed as a counting process that counts the recurrent purchases for each house hold as they evolve over time we illustrate our model for yogurt purchases and highlight its managerial implications

does the labour supply of wives respond to husbands wages canadian evidence from micro data and grouped data using micro data and grouped data we assess the extent to which canadian wives adjusted their labour supply in response to changes in husbands wages during the period 1980 2000 grouped data parameters based on weighted least squares and the unbiased error in variables estimator developed by devereux 2004 2007a b yield cross wage elasticities that are substantially higher in absolute value than those derived from ols regressions run on micro data both grouping estimators indicate that the labour supply of canadian wives responded strongly to changes in husbands wages during the 1980s for the 1990s our estimates of wives cross wage elasticity display greater dispersion a l aide de micro donnees et de donnees groupees on etablit jusqu a quel point les epouses canadiennes ont ajuste leur offre de travail en reponse aux changements dans les salaires de leurs epoux au cours de la periode 1980 2000 les parametres pour les donnees groupees derives par la methode des moindres carres ponderes et de l estimateur developpe par devereux 2004 2007a b engendrent des elasticites croisees qui sont substantiellement plus grandes en termes absolus que ceux derives par la methode des moindres carres ordinaires en utilisant des micro donnees les deux estimations montrent que l offre de travail des epouses canadiennes a repondu fortement aux changements dans les salaires des epoux au cours des annees 80 pour les annees 90 les evaluations des elasticites croisees des salaires montrent une plus grande dispersion

a dynamic analysis of market structure based on panel data internal market structure analysis infers brand positions in an attribute space from preference and choice data given a market in which consumers have heterogeneous tastes for attributes previous market structure models have adopted a static framework e g elrod 1988 chintagunta 1994 elrod and keane 1995 furthermore they assumed that consumer perceptions of brand attributes do not vary across consumers yet these approaches may render inaccurate representations of market structure if there is state dependence in consumer choice behavior this paper attempts to incorporate consumer choice dynamics into market structure models by specifying the source of choice dynamics explicitly in particular the process by which past purchases affect current choices is modeled in a framework which captures both consumer habit persistence and variety seeking behavior more specifically consumer preferences for brand attributes are modeled to depend on the attributes of brands bought on the previous purchase occasion furthermore the modeling approach adopted incorporates heterogeneity in both consumer preferences and perceptions of brand attributes the audience of this paper includes practitioners and academics interested in understanding consumer choice processes and inferring market structure from consumer choice data the proposed models are estimated on nielsen scanner panel data for margarine peanut butter yogurt and liquid detergent using simulated maximum likelihood techniques the empirical results suggest that accounting for choice dynamics improves both in sample and out of sample fit the results indicate that the average consumer is habit persistent in all the product categories studied this result is consistent with the findings of kannan and sanchez 1994 who conducted an aggregate analysis of consumer variety seeking behavior across product categories however the results obtained in this paper suggest that consumers are heterogeneous with respect to the processes by which past purchases affect current purchases these results provide strong evidence for habit persistence and variety seeking in brand attributes to be the behavioral source of consumer choice dynamics in food categories thus consumer tastes utility weights seem to be affected by the attributes of the brands consumed in the past given the empirical result that a large proportion of consumers are habit persistent this suggests that tastes are reinforced by the brand attributes consumed in the past the empirical results also show that not accounting for state dependence in market structure models for panel data may produce misleading results that is depending on consumer behavior patterns models that do not account for state dependence may distort the true nature of competition among brands more specifically the results confirm the expectation that if there is habit persistence that is if consumer tastes are reinforced by attributes of brands consumed in the past models that do not capture this choice dynamics will overestimate the distance between similar brands furthermore the policy experiments conducted suggest that 1 static models overestimate the short run impact of a price cut on the sales of the brand on promotion 2 price cuts hurt the sales of the more similar brands more and 3 free samples affect relatively less similar brands the most finally this paper studies variety seeking and habit persistence across brands over purchase occasions however variety seeking behavior may also involve the purchase of a portfolio of brands or items at a purchase occasion consumers may buy multiple items knowing that prior to the next trip they may want to consume different items simanson 1990 walsh 1995 this type of behavior can be modeled within the context of dynamic expected utility maximization with forward looking consumers the development and estimation of market structure models that include forward looking consumers who maximize expected utility over a planning horizon incorporating their future tastes and needs and shopping for an inventory of brands remain an important future research issue

tenure dependence in consumer firm relationships an empirical analysis of consumer departures from automobile insurance firms a typical pattern in markets featuring long term consumer firm relationships is for departure probabilities to decline with tenure a crucial question is whether this actually implies increasing consumer preference for firms if so firms should actively try to convince consumers to remain through the early periods of the relationship and should enter new markets quickly however the pattern can also be explained by selection on unobserved heterogeneity the challenge is to use the data available in these markets generally details on the consumers of one firm to distinguish between these explanations i rely on individual price histories in auto insurance findings include an economically relevant level of both relationship effects and heterogeneity but a much more important role for heterogeneity

present situation problems and solutions of china s biomass power generation industry abstract with the reduction of global oil reserves developing renewable energy has become an important issue for each country biomass power is an important kind of clean energy as it has abundant resource and is environmental friendly in the past few years china biomass power industry has developed rapidly accompanied with some problems this paper analyzes the current situation of china biomass power generation from several aspects such as power structure resource distribution investment strength and policy environment etc we focus on the problems existed in practical operation and analyze the outstanding problems at last this paper offers several suggestions for future development on the relevant fields such as cost strategic planning and policy

competitive market structure analysis principal partitioning of revealed substitutabilities in this paper competitive market structure analysis cmsa is introduced the approach is based on a behavioral model of revealed consumer substitution and utilizes principal component analysis of revealed substitutabilities to identify groups of competing brands or products in a market the proposed partitioning criterion the index of revealed substitutability irs yields estimates of the degrees of competition between all pairs of items in a market through use of household interpurchase times the proposed partitioning methodology principal partitioning pp identifies groups of competing items through the use of principal component analysis of irs values through combination of the partitioning criterion measure and methodology competitive market structures are analytically identified

a comparison of the labor force behavior of married women in the united states and canada with special attention to the impact of income taxes estimation results are presented for the probability of working the hourly wage rate and the annual hours of work for wives in seven different age groups in both the u s and canada federal and state or provincial taxes are incorporated into the analysis an iterative estimation method is employed to circumvent the statistical problems resulting from the dependence of the hours of work on the tax rate and the dependence of the tax rate on the hours of work authors

a framework for investigating habits the hand of the past and heterogeneity in dynamic brand choice in this paper we develop a general class of dynamic brand choice models called lightning bolt lb models which are consistent with the theory of random utility maximization of consumer choice behavior the underlying random utility process is markov and the inter temporal evolution of the utility maximizing brand choice process is also markov the models permit parsimonious parameterizations of the random utility process in brand choices with the resulting switching probabilities being functionally related to explanatory variables the model allows for structural state dependence feedback habit persistence inertia and unobserved heterogeneity the theoretical development shows that several well known stochastic brand choice models can be deduced from random utility maximization theory from a managerial perspective the usefulness of the proposed model stems from its ability to separate out the effects of habits state dependence and heterogeneity strong state dependence effects imply incentives for inducing trial of a brand e g product sampling in contrast with state dependence a strong habit persistence effect may be indicative of buyer behavior where inducement of trial of a different brand may not be sufficient to maintain a sustained defection of the consumer from the habitually purchased brand to the trial brand failure to distinguish between these two effects has important implications for example a model that only accounts for state dependence effects would in the presence of only habit persistence incorrectly attribute it to state dependence based on this the manager could decide to embark on an expensive sampling program that might prove ineffective due to the absence of state dependence it is also important to distinguish between the effects of unobserved heterogeneity and state dependence in the absence of true state dependence failing to account for unobservable variations across households such as differences in price sensitivities results in the temporally persistent unobservable elements showing up as state dependence in the model hence a manager may incorrectly opt for sampling as the appropriate marketing action whereas a couponing or price promotion strategy should have been preferred we estimate the model parameters using the ac nielsen household scanner panel data set on catsup purchases further we investigate empirical techniques for overcoming the initial conditions problem that affects many dynamic models of brand choice through simulation analysis using the estimated parameters we show that the calculated profitability of a promotion must take into account the multi period impact due to state dependence further we demonstrate how ignoring heterogeneity can result in spurious state dependence thereby making marketing tactics such as product sampling appear far more attractive than they actually are specifically the model that accounts only for habit persistence and state dependence effects predicts a share increase of 2 4 points through sampling for one of the brands in the empirical analysis once the effects of unobserved heterogeneity are accounted for however this number drops precipitously to 0 3 while even this low number might fulfill the objectives of the brand manager it ensures that expectations are not eight times that number it is important to note that this paper is a first attempt at analyzing the three fundamental dimensions of dynamic brand choice behavior our formulation represents a reduced form approach as opposed to a structural approach other limitations of the model include our focus on time invariant choice sets extensions of the model to situations where choice sets vary over time are possible but are difficult another limitation is the dependence on multivariate extreme value distributions an alternative would be to use multivariate normal distributions i e a probit like structure which has certain useful properties a comparison of the two approaches would be useful empirical extensions of the model to allow for higher order processes and nested logit type model structures could also be fruitful explicitly incorporating variety seeking behavior in the model would further enrich the theoretical framework proposed in this paper

possibilities and challenges of china s forestry biomass resource utilization abstract forestry biomass resource has many advantages which makes it a significant new energy to substitute fossil energy as an important role of biomass resources for the utilization of china s forestry biomass resources this paper analyzed the possibilities of its development from the aspect of policy resource endowment market and technology and discussed its development challenges from the aspect of policy economy society technology and resource endowment forestry biomass resources are very abundant in china it has made a significant breakthrough in forest biomass resource utilization with great prospects although there are still some difficulties and challenges in the policy resource endowment and other aspects these challenges are not insurmountable therefore forestry biomass resources should develop in a way with chinese characteristics considering the national condition

supply chain and logistics issues of bio energy production abstract within the concert of renewable energy technologies bio energy can play a decisive role during the next decades when smartly designed and applied under favorable conditions in this respect efficient and effective supply chain and logistics management represent one key parameter this paper presents a literature review of articles published in english speaking peer reviewed journals from 2000 to 2009 which cover the interface of bio energy production and issues of logistics and supply chain management first the articles are assessed according to descriptive criteria such as journal year of publication and research design applied then issues and challenges of designing and operating biomass chains that secure stable and competitively priced feedstock supply for bio energy plants have been classified 1 into the operations harvesting and collection storage transport and pre treatment techniques as well as 2 into overall supply system design although biomass supply chains for energy use are manifold in terms of size design and functioning most relevant issues regarding supply chain management and logistics of bio energy production are identified the findings are discussed against the backdrop of bio energy as sustainable renewable energy option

brand inertia in u s household cheese consumption to analyze u s consumers brand choices for cheese purchases we derive a set of discrete choice models from dynamic utility maximization acnielsen homescan survey data on u s households is used to estimate a dynamic probit model for each of the top brands for cheddar shredded and sliced cheese in four u s regions we find that households have strong brand inertia a result robust across alternative specifications predicted probabilities confirm greater inertia in the top brands and consumers are more likely to switch into them brand inertia is relatively larger in cheddar and sliced cheese especially in the central and southeast regions copyright 2008 oxford university press

the virtues of hesitation optimal timing in a non stationary world in many economic political and social situations circumstances change at random points in time reacting is costly and reactions appropriate to present circumstances may become inappropriate upon future changes requiring further costly reaction waiting is informative if arrival of the next change has non constant hazard rate we identify two classes of situations in the first delayed reaction is optimal only when the hazard rate of further changes is decreasing in the second it is optimal only when the hazard rate of further changes is increasing these results in semi markovian decision theory provide motivations for building delay into decision systems jel c61 d72 d82 d83 k10 m11

developing a sustainability framework for the assessment of bioenergy systems the potential for biomass to contribute to energy supply in a low carbon economy is well recognised however for the sector to contribute fully to sustainable development in the uk specific exploitation routes must meet the three sets of criteria usually recognised as representing the tests for sustainability economic viability in the market and fiscal framework within which the supply chain operates environmental performance including but not limited to low carbon dioxide emissions over the complete fuel cycle and social acceptability with the benefits of using biomass recognised as outweighing any negative social impacts this paper describes an approach to developing a methodology to establish a sustainability framework for the assessment of bioenergy systems to provide practical advice for policy makers planners and the bioenergy industry and thus to support policy development and bioenergy deployment at different scales the approach uses multi criteria decision analysis mcda and decision conferencing to explore how such a process is able to integrate and reconcile the interests and concerns of diverse stakeholder groups

modeling of biomass to energy supply chain operations applications challenges and research directions reducing dependency on fossil fuels and mitigating their environmental impacts are among the most promising aspects of utilizing renewable energy sources the availability of various biomass resources has made it an appealing source of renewable energy given the variability of supply and sources of biomass supply chains play an important role in the efficient provisioning of biomass resources for energy production this paper provides a comprehensive review and classification of the excising literature in modeling of biomass supply chain operations while linking them to the wider strategic challenges and issues with the design planning and management of biomass supply chains on that basis we will present an analysis of the existing gaps and the potential future directions for research in modeling of biomass supply chain operations

canadian contributions to family economics canadian scholars have made substantial contributions to the relatively new field of family economics these include new models of how men and women match in marriage markets and of how decisions are made in multi person households several were early contributors to the literature on married women s labour supply and labour supply in a family context and helped to develop empirical methods in this area a particular focus has been on the impacts of policy relevant parameters such childcare costs on family labour supply and child well being new work on child development the impact of early life conditions and the processes of intergenerational transmission also highlight the importance of family context in determining economic well being

a simultaneous approach to the whether what and how much to buy questions consumer s purchase decisions of whether to buy what to buy and how much to buy are examined simultaneously based on a consumer utility maximization problem an unobservable threshold price about which a consumer pivots from nonpurchase to purchase can be deduced with any model specification the interrelationships between purchase decisions can be explicitly derived the model is applied to coffee purchasing data in addition by suppressing the nonpurchase options the model is compared with an alternative approach appearing in the marketing literature

rivalry in price and variety among supermarket retailers recent theoretical models of retail competition suggest that product heterogeneity is critical to retail price and variety strategies this article provides empirical evidence on supermarket retailers price and variety strategies using a nested constant elasticity of substitution nces modeling framework the model is estimated using chain level scanner data for four major grocery chains in a large urban west coast market the results show that retailers compete for market share using both price and variety while they all tend to follow moderately cooperative pricing strategies the extent to which they follow cooperative strategies in variety is less homogeneous

female labour supply in australia another example of a backward bending labour supply curve abstract hours worked by employed married females in australia are analysed using techniques to correct for sample selection bias consistent with the conclusions of the study of female labour supply in the u s and canada by nakamura and nakamura 1981 working wives work fewer hours per week when paid higher hourly wage rates

a feedstock supply model integrating the official organization for china s biomass generation plants abstract shortage of feedstock has hindered the development of china s biomass power generation because it is highly difficult to collect straw in china we pioneered a new feedstock supply model in which the formal official organization of villagers committees is introduced different from the previous feedstock supply patterns the immaterial utility of relative stakeholders and the impact of villagers committees on farmers behavior are considered in this paper to compare this pattern s performance with that of the conventional ones this paper developed a multi agent model specifically for china s situation we applied the model to simulate the operation of a biomass supply chain the results show that the proposed feedstock supply pattern can significantly increase the profits of biomass plants biomass supply amounts and farmers participation and in contrast with the broker pattern it can lower feedstock prices through disintermediation sensitivity analyses show that preferential feed in tariffs are still necessary for biomass power and that the new pattern can ease the government s subsidy burdens additionally farmers opportunity costs for supplying biomass their perceptions of immaterial utility and the cooperative s financial resource schemes of the public welfare fund all have differing impacts on the achievement of the new pattern

analysis on the policies of biomass power generation in china abstract this paper systematically collects and sorts out china polices of biomass power generation policy mainly from 2006 to 2012 based on the actual demand of the biomass power generation project according to the effect of the policy implementation it analyzes the problems about the policies such as the development goal being too large tax policies not being easy to implement the relevance amongst some policies being poor and provides some suggestions finally it concludes that biomass power generation should be developed steadily in china and fiscal supporting should not be introduced any more

more on the labour supply of canadian women the traditional consensus on female labour supply is that the wage elasticity is large and positive in contrast to a small and generally negative elasticity for males this consensus has recently been challenged in a series of important papers by alice and masao nakamura who find a backward bending supply curve for females similar to that for males this result has been challenged on a variety of grounds the present paper tests the hypothesis advanced by the nakamuras on data that have several advantages over the census type in their papers the results offer strong support for the nakamuras conclusions

new estimates of labour supply elasticities for married women in canada 1996 2005 in this article we estimate income and substitution labour supply and participation elasticities for canadian married women using data from the survey of labour and income dynamics 1996 2005 we use the canadian tax and credit simulator ctacs and detailed information on the structure of income at the household level to compute the marginal tax rates faced by each individual we then use these marginal tax rates to compute net own wage spouse wage and nonlabour income we show how the magnitude of the estimated elasticities varies depending on whether net or gross wages and income are used in the estimation procedure and quantify biases caused by using average tax rates instead of marginal tax rates finally because marginal tax rates vary significantly over the sample we use quantile regressions to compare elasticities at different points of the hours distribution overall our results show that public policies now have on average less scope for influencing hours of work than 10 years ago howev

is it retirement or unemployment induced retirement and constrained labour supply among older workers this paper uses the 1986 labour market activity survey of statistics canada to examine the importance of labour demand for hours of work and labour force participation among older workers it tests a model of constrained labour supply against a nested unconstrained alternative and concludes that constraints on weeks of work are empirically significant for older workers a significant fraction of retirement decisions are also influenced by the belief that there are no jobs available

a choice model for packaged goods dealing with discrete quantities and quantity discounts utility maximizing solutions to economic models of choice for goods with either discrete quantities or non linear prices cannot always be obtained using standard first order conditions such as kuhn tucker and roy s identity when quantities are discrete there is no guarantee that derivatives of the utility function are equal to derivatives of the budget constraint moreover when prices are nonlinear as in the case of quantity discounts first order conditions can be associated with the minimum rather than the maximum value of utility in these cases the utility function must be directly evaluated to determine its maximum this evaluation can be computationally challenging when there exist many offerings and when stochastic elements are introduced into the utility function in this paper we provide an economic model of demand for substitute brands that is flexible parsimonious and easy to implement the methodology is demonstrated with a scanner panel data set of light beer purchases the model is used to explore the effects of price promotions on primary and secondary demand and the utility of product assortment