representing the influence of multiple social interactions on monthly tourism participation behavior abstract based on japanese panel data derived from 12 monthly waves and 1253 questionnaires the study examines the impact of social interactions on tourism participation social interactions are classified into three types namely endogenous exogenous and correlated effects it is empirically confirmed that endogenous social effects have significant influences on tourism participation behavior for example it is found that interactions with people of the same income groups an example of endogenous social effects are generally significant across most months of the year however it is worth noting that endogenous social effects will be overestimated if the correlated social effect is not taken into account the results suggest that social multiplier effects can be discerned that have potential implications for promotion and management of tourism participation rates

the visible hand demand effects of recommendation networks in electronic markets online commercial interactions have increased dramatically over the last decade leading to the emergence of networks that link the electronic commerce landing pages of related products to one another our paper conjectures that the explicit visibility of such product networks can alter demand spillovers across their constituent items we test this conjecture empirically using data about the copurchase networks and demand levels associated with more than 250 000 interconnected books offered on amazon com over the period of one year while controlling for alternative explanations of demand correlation using a variety of approaches our findings suggest that on average the explicit visibility of a copurchase relationship can lead to up to an average threefold amplification of the influence that complementary products have on each others demand levels we also find that newer and more popular products use the attention they garner from their network position more efficiently and that diversity in the sources of spillover further amplifies the demand effects of the recommendation network our paper presents new evidence quantifying the role of network position in electronic markets and highlights the power of basing virtual shelf position on consumer preferences that are explicitly revealed through shared purchasing patterns this paper was accepted by pradeep chintagunta marketing

research on the motion picture industry state of the art and new directions off the beaten track away from theatrical release the motion picture industry has been subject of extensive academic research over the last decades however most scholars focused on the u s theatrical motion picture market the number of research activities regarding even more profitable release windows such as home video or television has been substantially lower although international distribution is essential for a motion picture project to break even there has been little significant re search on most other markets this paper aims at summarizing the current state of research on the motion picture industry particularly from marketing and management perspective revealing research gaps and proposing recommendations for future research endeavors therefore a three pillar scheme is developed to systemize previous findings research on intraorganizational decision making contractual relationships between national stakeholders and international market competition are differentiated since these insights are mainly derived from u s theatrical exhibition they can hardly be applied to other markets and exhibition windows thus potential research areas are identified to expand knowledge of posttheatrical and international markets

cheap tuesdays and the demand for cinema many movie markets are characterised by extensive uniform pricing practices hampering the ability to estimate price elasticities of demand australia presents a rare exception with most cinemas offering cheap tuesday ticket prices we exploit this feature to estimate a random coefficients discrete choice model of demand for the sydney region in 2007 we harness an extensive set of film cinema and time dependent characteristics to build a rich demand system our results are consistent with a market expansion effect from the practice of discounted tuesday tickets and suggest that cinemas could profit from price dispersion by discounts based on observable characteristics

dynamic pricing in the presence of social learning and strategic consumers when a product of uncertain quality is first introduced consumers may choose to strategically delay their purchasing decisions in anticipation of the product reviews of their peers this paper investigates how the presence of social learning affects the strategic interaction between a dynamic pricing monopolist and a forward looking consumer population within a simple two period model our analysis yields three main insights first we find that the presence of social learning has significant structural implications for optimal pricing policies in the absence of social learning decreasing price plans are always preferred by the firm by contrast in the presence of social learning we find that i if the firm commits to a price path ex ante preannounced pricing an increasing price plan is typically announced whereas ii if the firm adjusts price dynamically responsive pricing prices are initially low and may either rise or decline over time second we establish that under both preannounced an

take up of free school meals price effects and peer effects 29 of the 1 4 million eligible children do not participate in the uk s free school meals programme like other welfare benefits take up of free school meals is affected by stigma and lack of information this paper uses a fixed effect instrumental variables strategy to evaluate the role of peer group participation in overcoming these barriers identification of endogenous peer effects is achieved by exploiting a scheme that extended free school meal entitlement to all children in some areas results show that a 10 percentage point rise in peer group take up reduces non participation by 3 3 4 0 percentage points or between 29 and 35

how much is a dollar worth tipping versus equilibrium coexistence on competing online auction sites theory models of platform competition predict that prices and buyer seller ratios should be approximately equal on coexisting auction sites using field experiments on ebay and yahoo auctions we find evidence that is inconsistent with equilibrium hypotheses and suggest that the market is tipping prices on ebay are consistently 20 70 percent higher than those on yahoo and ebay attracts two additional buyers per seller on yahoo prices and bidders counts are unaffected by the auction ending rule various differences between the sites cannot account for the magnitude of these disparities however a model of imitation dynamics can rationalize our findings

momentum and social learning in presidential primaries this paper investigates social learning in sequential voting systems in the econometric model candidates experience momentum effects when their performance in early states exceeds expectations the empirical application uses daily polling data from the 2004 presidential primary we find that kerry benefited from surprising wins in early states and took votes away from dean owing to these momentum effects early voters had up to five times the influence of late voters in the selection of candidates and this helps to explain the distribution of advertising expenditures finally we use the estimated model to conduct two counterfactual experiments

a new product growth for model consumer durables this article originally appeared in management science january 1969 volume 15 number 5 pp 215 227 published by the institute of management sciences a growth model for the timing of initial purchase of new products is developed and tested empirically against data for eleven consumer durables the basic assumption of the model is that the timing of a consumer s initial purchase is related to the number of previous buyers a behavioral rationale for the model is offered in terms of innovative and imitative behavior the model yields good predictions of the sales peak and the timing of the peak when applied to historical data a long range forecast is developed for the sales of color television sets

financial slack strategy and competition in movie distribution organizations that enjoy some slack are believed to make good use of it in their strategic decisions using panel data on firms in the u s film distribution industry between 1985 and 2007 this article examines how financial slack affects the volume of new product introductions the competitive strategies for those releases and their economic performance unexpectedly successful sleeper films are exploited as a source of exogenous financial slack in the econometric analysis the results suggest that unexpected financial slack leads to more product introductions less marketing support for the new products and no improvement in performance these findings are consistent with an attribution process in which managers attempt to replicate extraordinary success even if it is largely random providing real world evidence of a mechanism recently developed in theory and laboratory research

consumer search with observational learning this article studies observational learning in a consumer search environment consumers observe the purchasing decision of a predecessor with similar preferences consumers rationally emulate by initiating their search at the firm from which their predecessor purchased free riding on search effort and reacting less to price changes prices are nonmonotone in search costs and may be as low as marginal costs we discuss several extensions and show that the effect of emulation on prices is stronger when i the number of firms increases ii consumers first visits are more elastic with respect to market shares and iii prices are adjusted more frequently

the influence of expert reviews on consumer demand for experience goods a case study of movie critics an inherent problem in measuring the influence of expert reviews on the demand for experience goods is that a correlation between good reviews and high demand may be spurious induced by an underlying correlation with unobservable quality signals using the timing of the reviews by two popular movie critics siskel and ebert relative to opening weekend box office revenue we apply a difference in differences approach to circumvent the problem of spurious correlation after purging the spurious correlation the measured influence effect is smaller though still detectable positive reviews have a particularly large influence on the demand for dramas and narrowly released movies

does movie violence increase violent crime laboratory experiments in psychology find that media violence increases aggression in the short run we analyze whether media violence affects violent crime in the field we exploit variation in the violence of blockbuster movies from 1995 to 2004 and study the effect on same day assaults we find that violent crime decreases on days with larger theater audiences for violent movies the effect is partly due to voluntary incapacitation between 6 p m and 12 a m a one million increase in the audience for violent movies reduces violent crime by 1 1 to 1 3 after exposure to the movie between 12 a m and 6 a m violent crime is reduced by an even larger percent this finding is explained by the self selection of violent individuals into violent movie attendance leading to a substitution away from more volatile activities in particular movie attendance appears to reduce alcohol consumption the results emphasize that media exposure affects behavior not only via content but also because it changes time spent in alternative activities the substitution away from more dangerous activities in the field can explain the differences with the laboratory findings our estimates suggest that in the short run violent movies deter almost 1 000 assaults on an average weekend although our design does not allow us to estimate long run effects we find no evidence of medium run effects up to three weeks after initial exposure

institutional change in the common agricultural policy of the european community the common agricultural policy cap of the european community ec is a complex institutional structure with major effects on world agriculture this study analyzes the cap from a public choice perspective as a case of induced institutional innovation the demand for change is analyzed as a function of a newly enlarged community time consuming decisions unequal distribution of net benefits increasing budget expenditures and rising pressures to renationalize farm subsidies drive the demand for change alternative institutional arrangements respond to these demands which reflect preferences for fairness and equity as well as improved efficiency in the cap

invited paper learning models an assessment of progress challenges and new developments learning models extend the traditional discrete choice framework by postulating that consumers have incomplete information about product attributes and that they learn about these attributes over time in this survey we describe the literature on learning models that has developed over the past 20 years using the model of erdem and keane as a unifying framework erdem t keane m 1996 decision making under uncertainty capturing dynamic brand choice processes in turbulent consumer goods markets marketing sci 15 1 1 20 we describe how subsequent work has extended their modeling framework and applied learning models to a wide range of different products and markets we argue that learning models have contributed greatly to our understanding of consumer behavior in particular in enhancing our understanding of brand loyalty and long run advertising effects we also discuss the limitations of existing learning models and potential extensions one key challenge is to disentangle learning as a source of

social interaction at work abstract stock market investment decisions of individuals are positively correlated with those of coworkers sorting of unobservably similar individuals to the same workplaces is unlikely to explain this pattern as evidenced by the investment behavior of individuals who move between plants purchases made under stronger coworker purchase activity are not associated with higher returns moreover social interaction appears to drive the purchase of within industry stocks overall we find a strong influence of coworkers on investment choices but not an influence that improves the quality of investment decisions

learning from the behavior of others conformity fads and informational cascades learning by observing the past decisions of others can help explain some otherwise puzzling phenomena about human behavior for example why do people tend to converge on similar behavior why is mass behavior prone to error and fads the authors argue that the theory of observational learning and particularly of informational cascades has much to offer economics business strategy political science and the study of criminal behavior

social learning and peer effects in consumption evidence from movie sales using box office data for all movies released between 1982 and 2000 i quantify how much the consumption decisions of individuals depend on information they receive from their peers when quality is ex ante uncertain in the presence of social learning we should see different box office sales dynamics depending on whether opening weekend demand is higher or lower than expected i use a unique feature of the movie industry to identify ex ante demand expectations the number of screens dedicated to a movie in its opening weekend reflects the sales expectations held by profit maximizing theatre owners several pieces of evidence are consistent with social learning first sales of movies with positive surprise and negative surprise in opening weekend demand diverge over time if a movie has better than expected appeal and therefore experiences larger than expected sales in week 1 consumers in week 2 update upward their expectations of quality further increasing week 2 sales second this divergence is small for movies for which consumers have strong priors and large for movies for which consumers have weak priors third the effect of a surprise is stronger for audiences with large social networks finally consumers do not respond to surprises in first week sales that are orthogonal to movie quality like weather shocks overall social learning appears to be an important determinant of sales in the movie industry accounting for 32 of sales for the typical movie with positive surprise this implies the existence of a large social multiplier such that the elasticity of aggregate demand to movie quality is larger than the elasticity of individual demand

filtered social learning knowledge sharing is economically important but also typically incomplete we filter our communication this paper analyzes the consequences of filtering in the model homogeneous agents share knowledge with their peers whenever the private benefits exceed communication costs the welfare implications of this transmission mechanism hinge on whether units of knowledge complement substitute for or are independent of each other both substitutability and complementarity generate externalities cheaper communication eliminates externalities in the former case but not necessarily in the latter complementary basic skills such as numeracy catalyze technology adoption and adoption may be path dependent even when payoffs are certain and independent across agents

the effect of peer observation on consumption choices evidence from a lab in field experiment abstractwe investigate the impact of peer observation on consumption decisions using a lab in field experiment respondents make consumption decisions either alone or under peer observation we fin

social learning in networks of friends versus strangers networks and the embedded relationships are critical determinants of how people communicate and form beliefs the explosion of social media has significantly increased the scope and impact of social learning among consumers this paper studies observational learning in networks of friends versus strangers a consumer decides whether to adopt a product after receiving a private signal about product quality and observing the actions of others the preference for the product has greater heterogeneity in the stranger network than in the friend network we show that when the network is small observing friends actions helps the consumer make more accurate inferences about quality as the network grows however the stranger network becomes more effective underlying these results are two competing effects of network heterogeneity on social learning these are the individual preference effect which allows one to make a better quality judgment when the preference element of past actions is more certain and the social conforming effect wherein private signals are underused in quality judgment as people follow others actions we find cascading is more likely to occur in the friend network than in the stranger network for a high quality firm the stranger network generates greater sales than the friend network when the network size is sufficiently large or the private signal is sufficiently accurate we also examine the existence of experts and firms using advertising to influence consumers finally we show how networks that are highly homogeneous or heterogeneous could impede observational learning

national interests and the cap abstract development of the cap is heavily circumscribed by differing national interests reflecting the usual agricultural policy conflicts between different regional and sectoral interests but as a supranational policy with principles of community preference and common financing the cap also redistributes the burdens and benefits of agricultural support between member states the implications of these features of the cap with reference to specified alternative policies are explored and conclusions drawn the conflict between national and supranational interests is inadequately reflected to decision makers the single instrument of price support at a common level is inadequate to meet a mix of differing national objectives and the assumption that the common policy serves unification and integration of the community may be incorrect

policy dependency and reform economic gains versus political pains economic analysis condemns market intervention in favour of farmers as inefficient and ineffective and therefore worthy of radical reform practical experience however indicates that such lessons are hard to learn and implement economic analysis tends to ignore the path dependencies generated by the policy evolution process without reform strategies that take full account of these dependencies policy reform will continue to be reluctant slow and frequently counterproductive this paper reconsiders the evolution of farm policies and the economic assessment of their costs and benefits in so doing it re phrases conventional economic arguments in terms which seem to accord better with sensible intuition which may prove more accessible and credible to policymakers and advisors the difficulties of reconciling economic efficiency with political acceptability are identified the paper concludes with a substantial challenge to the agricultural economics profession

something to talk about social spillovers in movie consumption we exploit the randomness of weather and the relationship between weather and moviegoing to quantify social spillovers in movie consumption instrumenting for early viewership with plausibly exogenous weather shocks captured in lasso chosen instruments we find that shocks to opening weekend viewership are doubled over the following five weekends our estimated momentum arises almost exclusively at the local level and we find no evidence that it varies with either ex post movie quality or the precision of ex ante information about movie quality suggesting that the observed momentum is driven in part by a preference for shared experience and not only by social learning

learning from the crowd regression discontinuity estimates of the effects of an online review database internet review forums increasingly supplement expert opinion and social networks in informing consumers about product quality however limited empirical evidence links digital word of mouth to purchasing decisions we implement a regression discontinuity design to estimate the effect of positive yelp com ratings on restaurant reservation availability an extra half star rating causes restaurants to sell out 19 percentage points 49 more frequently with larger impacts when alternate information is more scarce these returns suggest that restaurateurs face incentives to leave fake reviews but a rich set of robustness checks confirm that restaurants do not manipulate ratings in a confounding discontinuous manner

the social multiplier aggregate data is often used to make inferences about individual level behavior if there are social interactions in which one person s actions influence his neighbor s incentives or information then these inferences are inappropriate the presence of positive social interactions or strategic complementarities implies the existence of a social multiplier where aggregate relationships will overstate individual elasticities we present a brief model and then estimate the size of the social multiplier in three areas the impact of education on wages the impact of demographics on crime and group membership among dartmouth roommates in these contexts there is a significant social multiplier jel ho jo co

how do school report cards affect school choice decisions we estimate the effect of information about school achievement that is disseminated to the public through websites and school report cards on school choice decisions we find that students are more likely to leave their school when public information reveals poor school level performance some parents school choice decisions respond to information soon after it becomes available others including non english speaking parents alter their school choice decisions only in response to information that has been disseminated widely and discussed in the media parents in low income neighbourhoods are most likely to alter their school choice decisions in response to new information jel classification i21 d83 les auteurs evaluent les effets de l information sur la performance des ecoles diffusee au public via les sites web ou les bulletins sur les decisions de choix d ecole il appert que les etudiants sont davantage susceptibles de quitter leur ecole quand l information publique revele sa pauvre performance les decisions de choix d ecole par certains parents repondent a l information tot apres que l information devient disponible d autres incluant les parents dont l anglais n est pas la premiere langue ne modifient leurs decision de choix d ecole qu en reponse a une information qui a ete vastement disseminee et discutee dans les medias les parents des milieux defavorises sont moins susceptibles de modifier leur decision de choix d ecole en reponse a l information nouvelle

seasonality in the u s motion picture industry the observed seasonality of box office revenues reflects both seasonality in underlying demand for movies and seasonality in the number and quality of available movies i separately identify these aspects by estimating weekly demand for movies using movie fixed effects a long panel of movies weekly revenues and restrictions on their decay pattern i find that the estimated seasonality in underlying demand is much smaller and slightly different from the observed seasonality of sales the biggest movies are released at times when demand is highest amplifying the underlying seasonality price rigidities in the industry may facilitate this amplification effect

sequential sales learning and cascades when ipo shares are sold sequentially later potential investors can learn from the purchasing decisions of earlier investors this can lead rapidly to cascades in which subsequent investors optimally ignore their private information and imitate earlier investors although rationing in this situation gives rise to a winner s curse it is irrelevant the model predicts that 1 offerings succeed or fail rapidly 2 demand can be so elastic that even risk neutral issuers underprice to completely avoid failure 3 issuers with good inside information can price their shares so high that they sometimes fail 4 an underwriter may want to reduce the communication among investors by spreading the selling effort over a more segmented market consider a scenario in which an issuer is selling a new security of uncertain value for example an ipo initial public offering of stock or high yield debt through an underwriter the s e c has banned variable price sales while the value of this new security is highly uncertain to individual market participants investors hold perfectly accurate information when aggregated moreover there are many potential investors and a small number of these investors can jointly determine the value of the firm or its project with high precision it would seem that in this scenario underpriced offerings would succeed and overpriced offerings would fail nevertheless this paper shows that if the distribution channels of invest ment banks are limited underpriced offerings can fail and overpriced offer ings can succeed with limited distribution channels it takes the under writer time to approach interested investors therefore later investors can observe how well an offering has sold to date or at least how successful it has sold relative to offerings previously undertaken by this underwriter

eu agri environmental programs and the restaurant table effect the share of agricultural area enrolled in eu agri environmental programs varies significantly between eu member states these national differences are explained based on a model that reflects both that these programs internalize externalities and the political economy we identify six factors that affect the extent to which agri environmental programs are implemented environmental benefits opportunity costs of participation budgetary pressure the share of program expenditures financed by the eu the political weight attributed to farmers at the national and the political influence of each country at the eu level in addition we demonstrate that if the policy decision making process is noncooperative at the eu level countries that contribute less to the eu budget will ceteris paribus implement more programs using data of four years and feasible generalized least square methods we are able to confirm our theoretical results including a noncooperative behavior of eu member states

germany and the cap a bargaining model of ec agricultural policy formation a bargaining model of ec agricultural policy formation is formulated the model allows for more explicit consideration of political factors than is possible in standard political economy models it shows how the political system in germany has increased the power of german farm interests relative to farm interests elsewhere in the ec the paper recognizes cap negotiations are an on going process results of the previous bargaining round form the basis for the current round and give momentum to price changes understanding this momentum provides insight into the fluctuating price supports that have characterized the cap