how do people cope with natural disasters evidence from the great hanshin awaji kobe earthquake in 1995 this paper investigates the coping strategies employed by victims of the great hanshin awaji kobe earthquake in 1995 using a unique household data set we show that households that held a large amount of collateralizable assets before the catastrophe and were free from a binding borrowing constraint were able to maintain their consumption levels by borrowing in contrast households subject to a binding borrowing constraint before the disaster were unable to borrow to cope with the losses inflicted by the earthquake on the other hand both types of households relied on private transfers depending on the extent of the damage

strengthening the influence of advertised reference prices through information priming the use of advertised reference price promotions such as regularly 119 99 sale price 39 99 is ubiquitous in the marketplace thirty years of research supports the conclusion that advertised reference prices e g 119 99 exert an influence on consumers responses to offer prices e g 39 99 via their assimilative influence on consumers internal reference prices the present research provides an enriched account of this assimilation process specifically three studies show that increasing the overlap in information made accessible by the advertised reference price and information made accessible by the offer price increases the influence of the information primed by the advertised reference price on the construction of the internal reference price consequently the offer price is considered more attractive the identification of this process provides insight into additional variables that moderate the influence of advertised reference prices on downstream deal evaluations implications for theory practice and public policy are discussed

conscious and nonconscious comparisons with price anchors effects on willingness to pay for related and unrelated products abstract exposing consumers to extreme prices can influence the price they are willing to pay for both related and unrelated products drawing on previous theories of anchoring and adjustment and selective accessibility of judgment relevant knowledge the authors provide an account of both asymmetries in the impact of price anchors across product categories and contingencies in the occurrence of these asymmetries four studies show the deliberate consideration of price anchors that can play a key role in whether the effect of the anchors will generalize across product categories specifically an explicit comparison of a product to a price anchor increases the accessibility of features that represent a product available at this price in turn these thoughts influence the price that consumers are willing to pay for these products in the absence of this deliberation however anchors influence both related and unrelated products provided no other cognitive activity occurs in the interim

ill health savings and portfolio choices in developing economies abstract this paper examines the effect of adult health on the savings and portfolio decisions of rural pakistani households it also tests whether such effects result because ill health affects income and the rates of return on specific assets by so doing it provides evidence on the sensitivity of savings to income changes and to interest rates i find that expectations of future ill health increase overall savings but reduce investments in productive assets thereby forging a link between health and poverty i also find that the number of males in a household condition the impact of the ill health of any given individual on savings outcomes

the effect of multiple extrinsic cues on quality perceptions a matter of consistency building on past research this article illustrates when a price quality relationship holds in the presence of multiple extrinsic cues when intrinsic information is scarce the relationship is more pronounced when a positive price cue is paired with a positive second cue e g strong warranty positive country of origin or strong brand when the two cues are inconsistent consumers find the negative cue more salient and overweight it in their evaluations this interaction is moderated by the presence of abundant levels of intrinsic attribute information our predictions are replicated across five studies and the underlying process is supported

integration of discrepant sales forecasts the influence of plausibility inferences based on an evoked range abstract the authors hypothesize that when managers integrate two projections to form a sales estimate they evoke and use a sales range to judge inappropriately the plausibility of each projection this judged plausibility as well as the margin of error based on the market research company s typical accuracy is used to assign weights to each projection five experiments find strong evidence for this process and demonstrate a resulting bias

the role of consumption credit in agricultural tenancy abstract in traditional agriculture it is common practice for landlords to give consumption loans to their own tenants if the tenant derives all his income from the landlord it is puzzling that the landlors needs another means of expropriating the surplus he could just raise the rent the paper suggests that consumption credit may be a side payment designed to enable the landlord to absorb the tenant s risk due to weather uncertainty without weakening his incentive to work tenancy is modelled as an agency contract designed in terms of information may be available to the landlord

the role of price in multi attribute product evaluations the potentially multifaceted role of price in product evaluations is investigated with an empirical analysis of surveyed beliefs attitudes and intentions regarding automobile brands it is found that price beliefs both influence and are influenced by beliefs about a brand s quality thereby contributing to the attribution definition process however price is not a significant determinant of overall attitude it is also found that price becomes a negative factor when behavioral intentions are involved lending support to an economic interpretation of price

the impact of wind power generation on the electricity price in germany abstract this paper investigates the relationship between intermittent wind power generation and electricity price behaviour in germany using a garch model i evaluate the effect of wind electricity generation on the level and the volatility of the electricity price in an integrated approach the results show that variable wind power reduces the price level but increases its volatility this paper s results also indicate that regulatory change has stabilised the wholesale price the electricity price volatility has decreased in germany after a modification of the marketing mechanism of renewable electricity this gives confidence that further adjustments to regulation and policy may foster a better integration of renewables into the power system

interest controls and credit allocation in developing countries planning authorities in less developed countries ldcs often regard financial market intervention as an efficient way to induce gr wth and structural change elaborate regimes of interest ceilings and subsidies have been used to promote industrialization exporting geographic decentralization and other national priorities some of these programs have doubtless achieved their intended objectives however with inflation frequently exceeding controlled interest rates they have also tended to generate an excess demand for loans legally prohibited from price discrimination creditors have been obliged to allocate their portfolios according to various rationing criteria and loan applicants whom creditors find relatively unappealing have been forced to rely heavily on self finance or the unregulated curb markets mckinnon 1973 and shaw 1973 have argued that such rationing regimes lead to serious factor misallocations inappropriate technology choices and unnecessarily low growth rates in the past decade their perspective has been formalized with macro models of financially repressed economies and numerous supportive empirical studies have been reported fry 1982 surveys the literature surprisingly however several fundamental micro issues have received little attention what is the nature of the bias in credit allocation that nonprice rationing induces and how does

the price elasticity of mass preferences i compare the price elasticity of economic and political preferences my central hypothesis is that willingness to pay whether expressed verbally or through cash transactions is more price elastic for economic consumption goods than for public goods i find that increases in price greatly diminish the proportion of people willing to pay for consumer goods such as housing or hardback books whereas the proportion willing to pay more in taxes to support a public good such as environmental protection or shelter for the homeless is much less responsive to changes in price i conclude by discussing the theoretical and political implications of willingness to pay for public and private goods

contextual influences on perceptions of merchant supplied reference prices two contextual variables that have theoretical roots in information processing attribution and social judgment theories were manipulated along with three levels of merchant supplied reference price in a 2 2 3 analysis of variance design results support the hypothesized effects of consistency and distinctiveness as contextual variables that influence internal price standards and purchase evaluations the three price levels resulted in a curvilinear pattern of results for the purchase evaluation and source credibility dependent variables as hypothesized however contrary to assimilation contrast theory the impact of the merchant supplied reference price on estimates of normal and fair prices was monotonic

the influence of price discount framing on the evaluation of a product bundle bundle offers consisting of two or more products often include a price discount the impact of the price discount on the perceived attractiveness of the bundle has been shown to depend on which product is discounted it has been argued that discounts are more effective when they are assigned to the product that will receive the most weight in the overall evaluation of the bundle we propose that the perceived value of the discount may also depend on a referent specific to each product six studies are used to provide evidence that 1 price discount framing effects can be explained by reference dependence and 2 that reference dependence and product importance independently contribute to price discount framing effects

poverty traps and index based risk transfer products summary a growing literature suggests that in low income countries households with few assets can be trapped in chronic poverty this article reviews relevant threads of the poverty traps literature to motivate a description of the opportunities presented by innovative index based risk transfer products these products can be used to address some insurance and credit market failures that contribute to the persistence of poverty among households in low income countries applications are considered at the micro meso and macro levels 2008 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

credit as insurance in agrarian economies abstract this paper examines consumption credit as an insurance mechanism in agrarian economies it explains the more rapid adoption of new technology in the green revolution by large farmers who had greater access to consumption credit the paper also demonstrates how the emergence and expansion of consumption credit markets by mitigating the need for hoarding in order to meet consumption contingencies enhances growth by encouraging investment

risk aversion and credit constraints in farmers decision making a reinterpretation in 1976 the agricultural development council sponsored a conference on risk uncertainty and agricultural development which has been summarised in a volume edited by james roumasset jean marc boussard and inderjit singh 1979 the volume provides an excellent review of the state of the art at that time however as discussed in the summary chapters of that volume there were few theoretical empirical or policy issues on which clear conclusions could be reached on the basis of knowledge then available in the intervening years progress has been made on a number of issues as a result of both empirical investigations and theoretical advances this paper concentrates on advances which have relevance to the controversy about the relative roles of risk aversion and credit constraints in limiting farmers investment levels especially for purchased inputs such as seeds or fertilizers in particular we review recent experimental studies on the extent of risk aversion among farmer populations in developing

credit markets in northern nigeria credit as insurance in a rural economy this article addresses the issues of imcomplete markets and imperfect information in the context of credit markets in rural northern nigeria in much recent theoretical literature the problems of moral hazard and adverse selection are assumed to be decisive for the organization of agrarian institutions in contrast it is found that in the four villages surveyed credit transactions take advantage of the free flow of information within rural communities information asymmetries between borrower and lender are unimportant and their institutional consequences the use of collateral and interlinked contracts are absent credit transactions play a direct role in pooling risk between households through the use of contracts in which the repayment owed by the borrower depends on the realization of random production shocks by both the borrower and the lender

informal insurance arrangements with limited commitment theory and evidence from village economies recent work on consumption allocations in village economies finds that idiosyncratic variation in consumption is systematically related to idiosyncratic variation in income thus rejecting the hypothesis of full risk pooling we attempt to explain these observations by adding limited commitment as an impediment to risk pooling we provide a general dynamic model and completely characterise efficient informal insurance arrangements constrained by limited commitment and test the model using data from three indian villages we find that the model can fully explain the dynamic response of consumption to income but that it fails to explain the distribution of consumption across households

the green revolution development of labor markets and poverty reduction in the rural philippines 1985 2004 using a long term household panel data set collected in three rural villages in the philippines in 1985 and 2004 this article explores how the green revolution and development of the labor markets have affected household income and poverty situation the initial rise in income associated with the green revolution and a stronger credit access has enabled the households to allocate funds for investing in children s schooling with the increased integration of the rural with the urban labor market these children are able to explore labor opportunities in the nonfarm sector that resulted in a decline in poverty by about one half the landless households who are less educated benefited too from the expansion of the nonfarm labor market because of the rise in rural wages associated with the rise in demand for the unskilled labor which is by far their most important asset

the changing determinants of schooling investments evidence from villages in the philippines 1985 89 and 2002 04 abstract this paper aims to explore the changing determinants of child progress through school over the last two decades using unique long term household panel data from four villages in the philippines in a regime of low income in the late 1980s income from farming is the most important source of funds to finance child schooling as households shift away from farm to non farm activities and their children pursue higher education non farm income and revenues from pawning of land have emerged as main sources of schooling funds in the early 2000s in this process farm income has lost its prime importance as a determinant of schooling investments among rural households

coupon value a signal for price in this article the author proposes that consumers use the value of a coupon to estimate price study 1 shows that the higher the percentage discount the higher the perceived price study 2 demon

consumer evaluations of multiple versus single price change this article examines how consumer evaluations of multiple price changes differ from the evaluation of a single price change of an equal amount consistent with r thaler s theory about segregation versus integration of gains and losses we find that multiple price decreases are evaluated more favorably than a single price decrease and multiple price increases are evaluated more unfavorably than a single price increase however these effects are moderated by consumer price uncertainty and relative magnitude of the prices being evaluated because price uncertain consumers consider higher ranges of prices acceptable they are less unfavorable to multiple price increases and more favorable to multiple price decreases than certain consumers moreover when the magnitude of one price is very small relative to other prices consumers preference for multiple price decreases relative to a single price decrease is reduced however this effect is not found when there are price increases

the formation of expected future price a reference price for forward looking consumers among numerous possible reference prices expected future price is important a consumer s expectation of the future price of a brand plays a crucial role in the decision to buy now or later failure to characterize reference price as a forward looking concept a common practice in the reference pricing literature violates premises of neoclassical economic theory and leads to questionable modeling applications explicit measures of future price expectations were obtained and used to test various models of expectations formation providing insight into the effect of expected future price on consumers responses to price promotions and brand choice decisions

precautionary saving under liquidity constraints evidence from rural pakistan this paper investigates precautionary saving under liquidity constraints in pakistan using household panel data in particular while we estimates kimball s 1990 prudence parameter we deviate from dynan s 1993 framework by explicitly considering liquidity constraints as in zeldes 1989 by doing so we attempt to differentiate the standard precautionary saving caused by uncertainty from the one due to liquidity constraints furthermore endogenous liquidity constraints are considered to resolve issues of selection biases in this study we document substantial evidence of the presence of precautionary saving in pakistan more specifically the estimated prudence is significantly higher for liquidity constrained households as compared with unconstrained ones the results support the emerging view that facilitating saving may often be more important than finding better ways of lending to the poor

renewable generation and electricity prices taking stock and new evidence for germany and austria abstract economic theory predicts that the increase of renewable electricity production should reduce the price of electricity in the short run which is also known as the merit order effect although the merit order effect is only one of several consequences of renewable production on the electricity system it is crucial to determine its size for the economic evaluation of renewable energies in this paper we present a comprehensive overview of relevant past research results on the price effect of renewables additionally we conduct a new empirical analysis of the price effect of renewable production for the austrian german region a market that clearly qualifies for a merit order effect analysis given its characteristics based on the review and our own analysis we show that the merit order effect varies depending on the region and the assessment method chosen we also find that the size of this effect is less dispersed throughout different markets than previously suggested by the literature

on the market impact of wind energy forecasts this paper presents an analysis of how day ahead electricity spot prices are affected by day ahead wind power forecasts demonstration of this relationship is given as a test case for the western danish price area of the nord pool s elspot market impact on the average price behaviour is investigated as well as that on the distributional properties of the price by using a non parametric regression model to assess the effects of wind power forecasts on the average behaviour the non linearities and time variations in the relationship are captured well and the effects are shown to be quite substantial furthermore by evaluating the distributional properties of the spot prices under different scenarios the impact of the wind power forecasts on the price distribution is proved to be considerable the conditional price distribution is moreover shown to be non gaussian this implies that forecasting models for electricity spot prices for which parameters are estimated by a least squares techniques will not have gaussian residuals hence the widespread assumption of gaussian residuals from electricity spot price models is shown to be inadequate for these model types the revealed effects are likely to be observable and qualitatively similar in other day ahead electricity markets significantly penetrated by wind power

the option value of returns theory and empirical evidence when a firm allows the return of previously purchased merchandise it provides customers with an option that has measurable value whereas the option to return merchandise leads to an increase in gross revenue it also creates additional costs selecting an optimal return policy requires balancing both demand and cost implications in this paper we develop a structural model of a consumer s decision to purchase and return an item that nests extant choice models as a special case the model enables a firm to both measure the value to consumers of the return option and balance the costs and benefits of different return policies we apply the model to a sample of data provided by a mail order catalog company we find considerable variation in the value of returns across customers and categories when the option value is large there are large increases in demand for example the option to return women s footwear is worth an average of more than 15 per purchase to customers and increases average purchase rates by more than 50 we illustrate how the model can be used by a retailer to optimize his return policies across categories and customers

access to capital and agrarian production organisation there are two problems both universal that entrepreneurs in any economy must contend with firstly an agent generally has access only to a limited amount of working capital secondly workers hired by an agent are subject to moral hazard and this necessitates their supervision this paper models for an agrarian economy the constraints imposed on entrepreneurs activities by these two problems and endogenously determines the various organisational forms of production as well as the allocation of resources that will obtain with a simple model we endeavour to explain a diverse set of empirical observations pertaining to the less developed countries in terms of the general processes that determine the distribution of income among the various agents and the hierarchical relationships that develop among them agricultural production typically involves a period of several months between the time the inputs are purchased and the time the output is marketed access to working capital and hence to the credit market thus plays an important role in a farmer s production decisions the distribution of access to credit in turn tends to be an important determinant of income distribution in poor agrarian economies credit is invariably rationed according to the ability to offer collateral the amount of working capital a farmer can mobilise therefore depends on the amount of land he owns which is often a good proxy for his overall wealth and thus his ability to offer collateral further since hired hands have a propensity to shirk they need to be supervised and therefore the

when internal reference prices and price expectations diverge the role of confidence abstract when do internal reference prices differ from articulated price expectations the authors propose that the internal reference price depends not only on the magnitude of the expected price but also on the confidence associated with this expectation four experiments delineate the effects of price expectation and confidence on the internal reference price in experiments 1 and 2 the authors manipulate repetition and examine the effects of repetition induced confidence on price judgments in experiments 3 and 4 they manipulate confidence directly to investigate its effects on judgments the results from all four experiments suggest that consumers with less confidence have higher internal reference prices than more confident consumers even when they do not differ in their articulated price expectations the authors discuss the implications of these results for pricing theory

credit market access and profitability in tunisian agriculture this work develops an econometric model that links credit access with agricultural profitability and investment using data collected from rural tunisia this work provides direct estimates of credit access and its effects econometric estimates are run for agricultural investment and profitability as a function of credit access the investigation of credit access and its effect suggests that the presence of credit market constraints does impinge significantly on farm profitability but not on investments

nonmarket institutions for credit and risk sharing in low income countries the design credit and risk institutions in low income countries provides one of the most exciting testing grounds for theories of contracting with imperfect information and limited enforcement this paper reviews some of the recent literature with a special focus on nonmarket institutions that cope with risk and provide credit this literature attempts to bring together insights from economic theory especially information economics contract theory and mechanism design theory however it is also applied being motivated by the circumstance of the poor countries that their authors have visited and studied

political connections and land related investment in rural vietnam abstract this paper uses household panel data from rural vietnam to explore the effects of having a relative in a position of political or bureaucratic power our results suggest that households increase their investment in land improvements due to such ties likely explanations are that connections to office holders strengthen de facto land property rights and access to both credit and transfers results also indicate that officials prefer to use informal rather than formal channels of redistribution to relatives

asset smoothing consumption smoothing and the reproduction of inequality under risk and subsistence constraints abstract a growing literature asks whether low wealth agents can accumulate assets over time or whether they are trapped in poverty this paper develops a stochastic dynamic programming model with endogenous asset price risk to explore savings and portfolio decisions in a resource poor environment characterized by risk and subsistence constraints optimal portfolio strategies are found to bifurcate despite divisible assets and fully rational agents wealthier agents acquire a higher yielding portfolio and pursue conventional consumption smoothing poorer agents acquire a less remunerative portfolio and pursue asset smoothing rather than consumption smoothing asset based risk coping thus results in positive correlation between initial wealth and portfolio rate of return

assessing the impact of wind generation on wholesale prices and generator dispatch in the australian national electricity market abstract growing climate change and energy security concerns are driving major wind energy deployment in electricity industries around the world despite its many advantages growing penetrations of this highly variable and somewhat unpredictable energy source pose new challenges for electricity industry operation one issue receiving growing attention is the so called merit order effect of wind generation in wholesale electricity markets wind has very low operating costs and therefore tends to displace higher cost conventional generation from market dispatch reducing both wholesale prices and conventional plant outputs this paper extends the current literature on this effect through an empirical study employing a range of econometric techniques to quantify the impacts of growing wind penetrations in the australian national electricity market nem the results suggest that wind is having a marked impact on spot market prices and while wind is primarily offsetting higher operating cost gas generation it is now also significantly reducing dispatch of emissions intensive brown coal generation great care needs to be taken in extrapolating these results to longer term implications however the study does propose a methodology for assessing this effect highlights the impacts that wind is already having on nem outcomes and suggests promising directions for future research

agro export production and peasant land access examining the dynamic between adoption and accumulation abstract new technologies and export opportunities have often contributed to dualistic agrarian structure and intense social conflict in latin american a switching regression model developed in this paper explicitly links export adoption and land accumulation patterns controlling for pre existing differentiation processes applied to survey data gathered from peasant households in guatemala the model provides evidence of equitable structural change induced by a recent export boom in vegetable crops however the optimism of these results is tempered by consideration of the unfavorable longer term market dynamics confronting small scale producers

a heterogeneous agent model of credit linked index insurance and farm technology adoption abstract protection from downside risk is a determinant of technology uptake among subsistence agricultural households access to credit insurance and savings may stimulate technology adoption where new methods are riskier but higher yielding or require sunk costs in this paper we employ a dynamic stochastic heterogeneous agent model where farm households have access to contingent credit and make savings technology and loan repayment choices our approach is novel as insurance is modeled as a meso level product where the bank is indemnified before any payouts are distributed to borrowers thus it accounts for both supply and demand side concerns showing a flow of effects when index insurance contracts are sold to risk aggregators for whom basis risk is lower results show letting the lender lay first claim on indemnities lowers default which can decrease interest rates and expand credit access insurance and savings may also spur technology uptake

household sectoral choice and effective demand for rural credit in india an analysis of the icrisat data from three indian villages raises concern about the extent of rationing mechanism inhibiting the spread of formal credit in rural india where a significant proportion of households do not have any outstanding loan or borrow from the informal sector only a limited dependent econometric analysis of the factors jointly determining household sectoral choice and effective demand for informal loan conditional on whether a formal loan is available suggests that compared to formal loan easy and adequate access and prompt recovery are significant determinants of the popularity and viability of informal rural credit among sample households also some households substitute labour income to ease the extent of credit thus rationing of the formal credit is not the only factor inhibiting the spread of formal credit in the study villages

retrospective modeling of the merit order effect on wholesale electricity prices from distributed photovoltaic generation in the australian national electricity market in electricity markets that use a merit order dispatch system generation capacity is ranked by the price that it is bid into the market demand is then met by dispatching electricity according to this rank from the lowest to the highest bid the last capacity dispatched sets the price received by all generation ensuring the lowest cost provision of electricity a consequence of this system is that significant deployments of low marginal cost electricity generators including renewables can reduce the spot price of electricity in australia this prospect has been recognized in concern expressed by some coalfired generators that delivering too much renewable generation would reduce wholesale electricity prices in this analysis we calculate the likely reduction of wholesale prices through this merit order effect on the australian national electricity market we calculate that for 5 gw of capacity comparable to the present per capita installation of photovoltaics in germany the reduction in wholesale prices would have been worth in excess of a 1 8 billion over 2009 and 2010 all other factors being equal we explore the implications of our findings for feed in tariff policies and find that they could deliver savings to consumers contrary to prevailing criticisms that they are a regressive form of taxation

an investigation of individual responses to tensile price claims this article describes the results of two studies investigating the effects of tensile price claims e g save up to 50 on consumers perceptions of offer value information value and price reduction the findings suggest that the use of tensile claims in conjunction with large advertised price reductions may result in decreased perceived offer value and substantial discounting of expected price reductions by the consumer

large scale wind power integration and wholesale electricity trading benefits estimation via an ex post approach abstract the integration of large scale wind power has brought about a series of challenges to the power industry but at the same time a number of benefits are being realized among those the ability of wind power to cause a decline in the electricity market prices has been recognized in quantifying this effect some models used in recent years are based on simulations of the market supply side and the price clearing process the accuracy of the estimates depend on the quality of the input data the veracity of the adopted scenarios and the rigorousness of the solution technique in this work a series of econometric techniques based on actual ex post wind power and electricity price data are implemented for the estimation of the impact of region wide wind power integration on the local electricity market clearing prices and the trading savings that stem from this effect the model is applied to the case of spain where the estimated savings are compared against actual credit and bonus expenses to ratepayers the implications and extent of these results for current and future renewable energy policy making are discussed

wealth risk and activity choice cattle in western tanzania abstract imperfect credit markets force households to use their savings for investment profitable activities often require lumpy investments limiting entry by poorer households resulting in increasing welfare differences in tanzania cattle are a profitable but lumpy investment and a liquid asset for consumption smoothing richer households own substantial cattle herds while poorer households specialize in low return low risk activities a dynamic programming model and simulations are presented to analyze entry into asset accumulation under income risk the evidence suggests that households with lower endowments are less likely to own cattle and returns to their endowments are lower

mutual insurance as an elusive concept in traditional rural communities during the last two decades economists have paid increasing attention to the role of informal risk sharing arrangements as a privileged way through which traditional rural communities can achieve a significant degree of protection against income fluctuations and other hazards beyond their control this article however argues that when they enter into such arrangements members of these communities are guided by a principle of balanced reciprocity they expect a return from any contribution or payment they make rather than by a true logic of mutual insurance more precisely they do not conceive of insurance as a game where there are winners and losers and where income is redistributed between lucky and unlucky individuals none the less traditional agrarian societies have proven able to develop a restricted range of sustainable forms of mutual insurance that avoid the aforementioned problem

the effect of semantic cues on consumer perceptions of reference price ads this article examines the differential effects of two types of semantic cues 1 cues connoting that an advertised price discount exhibits low consistency over time and 2 cues connoting that an advertised discount is highly distinctive vis a vis competitors results suggest that for manipulations of external reference prices with offering price held constant semantic cues that connote high distinctiveness are more effective in influencing consumers price related evaluations when the external reference price is otherwise implausibly high than are semantic cues that connote low consistency for manipulations of offering prices with external reference price held constant however semantic cues connoting high distinctiveness exert more relative influence on price related cognitions when offering prices are high

the merit order effect in the italian power market the impact of solar and wind generation on national wholesale electricity prices abstract italy promoted one of the most generous renewable support schemes worldwide which resulted in a high increase of solar power generation we analyze the italian day ahead wholesale electricity market finding empirical evidence of the merit order effect over the period 2005 2013 an increase of 1 gwh in the hourly average of daily production from solar and wind sources has on average reduced wholesale electricity prices by respectively 2 3 mwh and 4 2 mwh and has amplified their volatility the impact on prices has decreased over time in correspondence with the increase in solar and wind electricity production we estimate that over the period 2009 2013 solar production has generated higher monetary savings than wind production mainly because the former is more prominent than the latter however in the solar case monetary savings are not sufficient to compensate the cost of the related supporting schemes which are entirely internalized within end user tariffs causing a reduction of the consumer surplus while the opposite occurs in the case of wind

the merit order effect a detailed analysis of the price effect of renewable electricity generation on spot market prices in germany the german feed in support of electricity generation from renewable energy sources has led to high growth rates of the supported technologies critics state that the costs for consumers are too high an important aspect to be considered in the discussion is the price effect created by renewable electricity generation this paper seeks to analyse the impact of privileged renewable electricity generation on the electricity market in germany the central aspect to be analysed is the impact of renewable electricity generation on spot market prices the results generated by an agent based simulation platform indicate that the financial volume of the price reduction is considerable in the short run this gives rise to a distributional effect which creates savings for the demand side by reducing generator profits in the case of the year 2006 the volume of the merit order effect exceeds the volume of the net support payments for renewable electricity generation which have to be paid by consumers

real time pricing with ramping costs a new approach to managing a steep change in electricity demand in many countries electricity demand increases very steeply during the morning hours and decreases steeply during the evening hours a steep change in electricity demand incurs considerable costs for ramping up and down electric power equipment and raises the possibility of a large scale blackout this paper gives new insights into classical real time pricing rtp by considering the case in which demand changes very steeply we generalize the concept of the ramping costs and derive an extended form of rtp that achieves the optimal rate of change in quantity demanded by explicitly taking the ramping costs into account under the optimal pricing policy the prices are dramatically reduced during the period corresponding to the lower end of the slope of the load curve in contrast the prices are dramatically raised during the period corresponding to the upper end of the slope of the load curve as a result the steepness of the load curve will be remarkably controlled which will reduce both the ramping costs and the possibility of a large scale blackout

solar feed in tariffs and the merit order effect a study of the german electricity market abstract this study investigates the merit order effect moe of the recent years implementation of solar power in germany market clearing electricity prices and production levels are compared for the years 2009 2011 and a model for the relationship between the electricity price and price sensitive electricity production is developed and applied to predict electricity prices in germany from july 2010 to july 2011 with and without solar electricity generation seg the results show that the seg has caused a 7 reduction in average electricity prices for this period the average daily maximum price and daily price variation are also found to decrease by 13 and 23 respectively when taking the moe into account the net consumer s cost of the solar feed in tariff fit system is found to be 23 less than the charge listed in the electricity bill the german fit policy for solar power has been subject to considerable public debate and a common argument brought up in disfavor of the system is the high cost for the consumers in this study we demonstrate the importance of including the moe when evaluating the total costs and benefits of the fit policy mechanism

reference prices and deception in newspaper advertising consumers were exposed to newspaper advertisements for four products and one of five different price representations regular price alone sale price alone regular price with manufacturer s suggested list price mslp sale price with regular price or sale price with mslp perceptions of the ordinary prices of the products were not affected by the presence or type of reference price but the subjects did have lower estimates of ordinary prices in the sale context the accuracy of consumer perceptions of ordinary prices was not related to the recency of subject shopping experience for the products as measured in the study

the impact of renewables on electricity prices in germany an update for the years 2014 2018 abstract increasing electricity prices for private consumers manifested the idea of price boosting renewable energy sources in germany s public opinion literature however widely concurs that wind and photovoltaics have a reducing effect on spot market electricity prices the underlying merit order effect led to historically low exchange prices in the past years to quantify this effect this study analyses historic demand and supply curves from the german day ahead market to reconstruct electricity prices without the feed in of wind and photovoltaics from 2014 to 2018 results show that renewable energy sources considerably reduced electricity prices by between 2 89 ct kwh in 2014 to 8 89 ct kwh in 2017 this allowed german end consumers to save a total of 40 billion from 2014 to 2018 additionally wind and pv contributed significantly to security of supply demand could not have been met by domestic conventional and nuclear generation capacities in up to 424 hours in 2018 the study highlights the necessity to further speed up the expansion of wind and photovoltaics

contract structure risk sharing and investment choice few microfinance funded businesses grow beyond subsistence entrepreneurship this paper considers one possible explanation that the structure of existing microfinance contracts may discourage risky but high expected return investments to explore this possibility i develop a theory that unifies models of investment choice informal risk sharing and formal financial contracts i then test the predictions of this theory using a series of experiments with clients of a large microfinance institution in india the experiments confirm the theoretical predictions that joint liability creates two potential inefficiencies first borrowers free ride on their partners making risky investments without compensating partners for this risk second the addition of peer monitoring overcompensates leading to sharp reductions in risk taking and profitability equity like financing in which partners share both the benefits and risks of more profitable projects overcomes both of these inefficiencies and merits further testing in the field

ambiguity aversion decreases the impact of partial insurance evidence from african farmers indemnifying smallholder farmers against crop loss is thought to play an important role in encouraging the adoption of new technologies and facilitating productivity growth but to be infeasible due to information problems consequently there is interest in developing alternative partial insurance products examples include rainfall insurance and the limited liability inherent in credit contracts i argue that although these products may reduce information asymmetry ambiguity averse farmers struggle to assess whether the contracts reduce risk this problem is most pronounced when the production technology is ambiguous as is likely the case for new technologies i formalize this argument and test the theory using data from two rcts conducted in malawi and kenya comparative statics from the theory are consistent with both sets of data and i argue that income losses from ambiguity aversion may be substantial

direct elicitation of credit constraints conceptual and practical issues with an application to peruvian agriculture abstract this article provides a methodological bridge leading from the well developed theory of credit rationing to the less developed territory of empirically identifying credit constraints we begin by developing a simple model showing that credit constraints may take three forms quantity rationing transaction cost rationing and risk rationing each form adversely affects household resource allocation and thus should be accounted for in empirical analyses of credit market performance we outline a survey strategy to directly elicit households status as unconstrained or constrained in the credit market and if constrained to further identify which of the three nonprice rationing mechanisms is at play we discuss several practical issues that arise due to the use of a combination of factual and interpretative survey questions finally using a farm level data set from peru we illustrate how the methodology can be used to estimate the impacts of credit constraints

an ex post analysis of the effect of renewables and cogeneration on spanish electricity prices abstract growing concerns about climate change and energy dependence are driving specific policies to support renewable or more efficient energy sources such as cogeneration in many regions particularly in the production of electricity these policies have a non negligible cost and therefore a careful assessment of their impacts seems necessary in particular one of the most debated impacts is their effect on electricity prices for which there have been some ex ante studies but few ex post studies this article presents a full ex post empirical analysis by looking at use of technologies and hourly electricity prices for 2005 2009 in spain to study the effects that the introduction of renewable electricity and cogeneration has had on wholesale electricity prices it is particularly interesting to perform this study in spain where an active system of public support to renewables and cogeneration has led to a considerable expansion of these energy sources and electricity pricing is at the center of intense debate the paper reports that a marginal increase of 1 gwh of electricity production using renewables and cogeneration is associated with a reduction of almost 2 per mwh in electricity prices around 4 of the average price for the analyzed period

smoothing consumption by smoothing income hours of work responses to idiosyncratic agricultural shocks in rural india while research has demonstrated that farm households in developing economies are able to protect consumption from idiosyncratic crop shocks little evidence shows how this is achieved this paper examines the extent to which labor markets allow households to shift labor from farm to off farm employment and the extent to which such a shift explains the observed lack of correlation between consumption and idiosyncratic crop shocks the empirical analysis uses a novel measure of the idiosyncratic crop income shock which utilizes information on start of season cropping choices to more accurately estimate household expectations of weather

the effect of wind and solar power forecasts on day ahead and intraday electricity prices in germany abstract this study analyzes the effects of wind and solar power generation forecasts on electricity prices converse to the existing empirical literature in this area we apply a panel data analysis to control for endogeneity due to unobserved heterogeneity we use a dataset with 24 daily observations of day ahead and intraday prices from 2010 to 2016 and we apply a fixed effects regression under consideration of robust driscoll kraay standard errors a noteworthy element of the regression model is the simulation based design of a variable indicating the power generation technology that is price determining at a certain point in time in this context we differentiate between the fuel types coal gas and others to model the nonlinear price behavior for a varying demand for 2016 we find price dampening effects of both wind and solar power of approximately 0 6 mwh per additional gwh of feed in along with the rapidly increasing shares of wind and solar power of the total power generation during the last years their price dampening effect has declined since 2013 due to a drop in fuel prices another finding is that a reduction in forecasting errors on the power generation from wind and solar and smoothing of the cyclical demand would lead to a decreased price volatility

an empirical analysis of internal and external reference prices using scanner data single source yogurt data are used to examine whether both internal and external reference prices affect purchase decisions internal reference prices are memory resident prices based on actual fair or other price concepts external reference prices are observed stimuli such as regular prices that stores may display along with a sale price for comparability discrete choice models with variables representing the two types of reference prices are estimated and both types of variables are found to have significant effects on purchase probabilities this suggests that consumers may use multiple reference points in evaluating price in purchase decisions in addition a model using an indicator of a sale price discount explains purchase probabilities as well as one that models the actual discount which suggests that consumers may be reacting to the indication of savings rather than to the amount of the discount

econometric analysis of 15 minute intraday electricity prices abstract the trading activity in the german intraday electricity market has increased significantly over the last years this is partially due to an increasing share of renewable energy wind and photovoltaic which requires power generators to balance out the forecasting errors in their production we investigate the bidding behaviour in the intraday market by looking at both last prices and continuous bidding in the context of a reduced form econometric analysis a unique data set of 15 minute intraday prices and intraday updated forecasts of wind and photovoltaic has been employed price bids are explained by prior information on renewables forecasts and demand supply market specific exogenous variables we show that intraday prices adjust asymmetrically to both forecasting errors in renewables and to the volume of trades dependent on the threshold variable demand quote which reflects the expected demand covered by the planned traditional capacity in the day ahead market the location of the threshold can be used by market participants to adjust their bids accordingly given the latest updates in the wind and photovoltaic forecasting errors and the forecasts of the control area balances

income portfolios in rural ethiopia and tanzania choices and constraints the article analyses the different income portfolios of households using survey data from rural ethiopia and rural tanzania it suggests that the different portfolios held by households cannot be e

wind power integration and power system flexibility an empirical analysis of extreme events in germany under the new negative price regime abstract in this article the flexibility of the german power market with respect to the integration of an increasing share of electricity from renewable energy sources was analysed flexibility limiting system components which cause negative prices are explained and illustrated for the german market the decision of the european energy exchange in leipzig to allow negative price bids is then explained the empirical data illustrate the flexibility of conventional generating capacities in germany from october 2008 to december 2009 of the 86 h of negative spot prices 19 h were significantly negative with prices of at least 100 mwh these extreme hours were analysed in greater detail by the examination of different system components thereby load wind power infeed and conventional generation by fuel type were observed as well as the market for negative tertiary reserve as indicators for market tightness although the market situations were found to be severe under the current conditions it could have been much worse in order to enable the market to clear at all times policy recommendations are provided and long run implications of an increasing res e share on the conventional generation capacity are discussed the article concludes with an outlook on additional power system flexibility options

do support systems for res e reduce eu ets driven electricity prices abstract support systems for electricity from renewable energy sources res e can reduce electricity prices which have also been influenced by a co2 emission trading scheme ets additional res e substitutes electricity from fossil fuels and thus co2 emissions are reduced the demand for emission reductions is lowered as a result the co2 price is also reduced consequently the wholesale price for electricity decreases however most res e support systems are financed via the electricity market which increases the retail electricity price an assessment for germany shows that retail electricity prices in the first trading period of the eu ets 2005 2007 are lowered by 2 6 euro mwh due to additional res e considering the complete eu the effect is substantially higher this paper describes the effect and the influence of different policy designs it develops an approach for assessing the effect and applies it for the case of germany and roughly estimates the effect for the eu

an investigation of reference price segments abstract empirical research on reference price has typically assumed that consumers use either an internal reference price irp or an external reference price erp but not both in brand choice decisions in this article the authors assume that consumers use both irp and erp but may consider one of them more salient than the other the authors develop a model that segments consumers on the basis of the differences in the importance they assign to each type of reference price as well as in their brand preferences and responses to marketing mix variables the authors calibrate the model on data for four categories liquid detergents ketchup tissue and yogurt in all four categories the proposed model performs significantly better than the one that assumes that consumers use either irp or erp exclusively the authors discuss the managerial implications of this finding

the impact of renewables on electricity prices in germany an estimation based on historic spot prices in the years 2011 2013 abstract germany s public opinion and media usually attribute increasing electricity prices to the high share of renewables in the german power system but average electricity prices at the european energy exchange dropped during the last years due to an excess of renewable energy this study uses historic market data in order to quantify the effect of renewables on prices historic demand and supply curves from 2011 to 2013 have been used to reconstruct electricity prices under the assumption that no wind and pv would be available the analysis reveals an astonishingly high increase of market prices up to 5 29 ct kwh due to a lack of non renewable power capacities in 2013 the available conventional capacity would not have been able to cover the demand during 269 hours the estimated maximum deficit of 5 6 gw is in good agreement to data published by the german grid operators the discussion of the origin of this deficit leads to the conclusion that the current situation has not been caused by renewables the liberalization of the european energy market established investment risks that hindered required investment a long time before the renewables boomed

chapter 11 pricing models in marketing publisher summary this chapter brings together a set of diverse efforts in the recent literature on the modeling of price decisions and related questions in marketing there has been an impressive growth in the array of topics investigated in the literature various trends in the development of pricing models are evident from the foregoing review first one trend has been to develop theoretical models to describe observed pricing strategies in the marketplace and to derive conditions under which certain strategies are optimal this trend is clearly evident when one considers the area of dynamic pricing models another trend is an attempt to develop pricing models in which certain aspects of consumer behavior e g asymmetric response to price increases versus price decreases are incorporated this development is quite recent and does offer a large potential a third dominant direction is the use of game theoretic models for developing equilibrium pricing strategies

the influence of prior beliefs frequency cues and magnitude cues on consumers perceptions of comparative price data a widespread practice in grocery store advertising is to compare the advertised store s prices to a competitor s prices on multiple items an important but largely unexplored issue is how this information is processed and used in conjunction with prior beliefs to influence price perceptions in our initial studies we manipulated prior beliefs and two data based cues frequency of price advantage and magnitude of price advantage to determine their relative influence on consumer price perceptions results indicate that prior beliefs affected price perceptions but that the frequency cue exerted a dominating influence several follow up studies demonstrate the robustness of this phenomenon across a variety of presentational and instructional conditions

risk and household grain management in developing countries a dynamic model is presented of a household s joint production storage and trade decisions when facing transaction costs and risk in prices and yields grain management decisions balance the goals of maximising profits and reducing consumption price risk model solutions calibrated to chinese data show that grain s consumption role makes it an attractive form of precautionary saving even when households have access to credit the joint nature of production and savings decisions limits the income loss associated with risk coping and the desire to store grain can explain why subsistence households are frequently net purchasers but rarely net sellers of grain

when do price promotions affect pretrial brand evaluations the authors investigate the conditions in which price promotions affect pretrial brand evaluations a price promotion is theorized to be informative about brand quality when it stands out because i

reference price and price perceptions a comparison of alternative models reference price effects on consumer price perceptions are often explained by helson s adaptation level theory in which the cognitive representation of reference price is the prototype of the relevant category however recent conceptualizations and empirical evidence suggest the possibility of an exemplar model which may be specified using volkmann s range theory or parducci s range frequency theory in two experiments these three contextual models of reference price effects are pitted against one another based on the manova and model fitting range frequency theory accounted for reference price effects that the other theories could not suggesting that consumers compare the target price against specific members of the category rather than the category prototype a third experiment demonstrated that range and frequency effects are moderated by the stimulus presentation condition suggesting that consumers place greater weight on extreme prices anchoring the range for internal reference prices than for external reference prices

household strategies and rural livelihood diversification this article reviews the recent literature on diversification as a livelihood strategy of rural households in developing countries with particular reference to sub saharan africa livelihood diversification is defined as the process by which rural families construct a diverse portfolio of activities and social support capabilities in order to survive and to improve their standards of living the determinants and effects of diversification in the areas of poverty income distribution farm output and gender are examined some policy inferences are summarised the conclusion is reached that removal of constraints to and expansion of opportunities for diversification are desirable policy objectives because they give individuals and households more capabilities to improve livelihood security and to raise living standards

hysteresis price acceptance and reference prices the existence of price thresholds in grocery retailing is well documented most authors explain the existence of price thresholds using assimilation contrast theory adaptation level theory or prospect theory however each of these theories is untenable if consumers are believed to behave rationally we offer a theoretical explanation grounded in real options theory rot and economic hysteresis we test the rot hypothesis against three plausible alternatives using a maximum likelihood friction model that we augment for unobserved heterogeneity our findings support the rot hypothesis and suggest that the existence of price thresholds in aggregate data are driven by a common recognition of real option values which do not disappear with the inclusion of consumer heterogeneity

the effect of plausible and exaggerated reference prices on consumer perceptions and price search this article examines whether advertisers regular price claims affect consumer perceptions and price search behavior experiments involving simulated shopping via personal computers indicate that compared to an ad with no reference price an ad with a plausible reference price raised subjects estimates of the advertiser s regular price and the perceived offer value an exaggerated reference price had generally the same positive effects on perception as a plausible reference price even for the more skeptical subjects further when subjects were presented with an advertised sale price above the lowest expected price the exaggerated reference price increased the percentage of subjects who purchased the product from the advertiser without checking other stores prices

dynamic analysis of the german day ahead electricity spot market abstract this paper analyzes the dynamic behavior of day ahead spot prices in the german electricity spot market due to positive structural shocks in wind and solar power it uses a dynamic structural vector autoregressive model to estimate the related structural impulse response functions the estimates suggest that wind power shocks have a more prolonged negative effect on spot prices than solar power shocks significant autocorrelations of wind power for larger lags indicate these results the total negative merit order effect of a solar power shock is larger when using a reasonable model specification one reason might be that solar power shocks coincide with demand peaks however results regarding the relation of the effects of wind and solar should be dealt with carefully because these results do not hold for all specifications past static estimates show differences in the total average negative merit order effects these estimates might be overstated if wind and solar power dynamics are transferred to the merit order effects

social capital formation and credit access evidence from sri lanka summary while previous studies evaluate the impact of social capital on development outcomes there are very few empirical studies on determinants of social capital formation we use unique long panel data from sri lanka to examine the mechanism of social capital formation in an imperfect credit market we show that households facing credit constraints reduce investments in social capital furthermore temporal declines in investment persistently reduce general trust trust in villagers and trust in business partners while previous studies argue that social capital improves access to informal credit we show the reverse causality combining these findings suggests a potential poverty trap

effect of product line pricing characteristics on product evaluations examining the issue of product line pricing from a behavioral perspective this article reports an investigation of the relationship between the price structure of a product line and consumers evaluations of a product model within the line a 2 2 4 factorial design utilizing multiple dependent variables was conducted and replicated to test hypotheses derived from behavioral research results indicate that while the price characteristics of a product line influence consumer evaluations of a product model within the line the price characteristics do not operate independently rather they interact further the research suggests that several dependent variables that are usually considered separately in price research are actually dimensions of similar constructs

financial market efficiency in an agrarian economy microeconometric analysis of the pakistani punjab the shadow price of capital in production is a useful indicator of the efficacy of the rural financial system using data on participants and non participants in a small farm credit programme from the pakistani punjab this article estimates the shadow price of capital endogenous switching regressions techniques are employed to control for the likely heterogeneity of borrowers versus non borrowers results indicate that an individual selected at random from the population of small farmers would experience a 200 per cent rate of return on the first rupee borrowed from the small farm credit programme indicating a high shadow price of capital and a prima facie case for small farm credit programmes

the merit order effect of wind and photovoltaic electricity generation in germany 2008 2016 estimation and distributional implications abstract generation from renewable energy sources in germany has experienced a considerable uptake in recent years mainly responsible for this development is the german renewable energy sources act erneuerbare energien gesetz eeg this paper considers redistributive implications of the eeg for different electricity consumers using time series regression analysis we show that electricity generation by wind and pv has reduced spot market prices considerably by 6 mwh in 2010 rising to 10 mwh in 2012 we use these results to build a near term forecasting tool for merit order effects projected to reach 14 16 mwh in 2016 on the other hand the costs of the eeg are passed forward to consumers in the form of a surcharge our findings highlight significant redistributive transfers under the current design of the eeg in particular some energy intensive industries are benefiting from lower wholesale electricity prices whilst being largely exempted from contributing to the costs of the scheme we also highlight implications of our results for other areas for reform of the eeg such as adequate remuneration mechanisms that ensure efficient operation and investment decisions are made under the scheme more generally these findings suggest that policy makers need to integrate distributional assessments into policy design and implementation