strikes as a result of imperfect information this paper proposes a model of the bargaining process that recognizes that negotiators have only imperfect information at their command the author argues that the probability of a strike occurring will increase if one party bases its perception of the opponent s position on the same variables employed to form its own position when the opponent s position is in fact based on different variables strike probability is therefore assumed to be related to movements in variables of interest to only one side the model is tested on a sample of fourteen bargaining relationships drawn from the series wage chronology published by the bureau of labor statistics which details settlements between particular firms and unions over a period of about thirty years estimates of strike probability are derived from the maximum likelihood logit procedure the findings suggest that although both relative and absolute wage increases in a firm have a negative effect on strike frequency relative changes are more important

an economic theory of self control the concept of self control is incorporated in a theory of individual intertemporal choice by modeling the individual as an organization the individual at a point in time is assumed to be both a farsighted planner and a myopic doer the resulting conflict is seen to be fundamentally similar to the agency conflict between the owners and managers of a firm both individuals and firms use the same techniques to mitigate the problems which the conflicts create this paper stresses the implications of this agency model and discusses as applications the effect of pensions on saving saving and the timing of income flows and individual discount rates

efficient mechanisms for bilateral trading we consider bargaining problems between one buyer and one seller for a single object the seller s valuation and the buyer s valuation for the object are assumed to be independent random variables and each individual s valuation is unknown to the other we characterize the set of allocation mechanisms that are bayesian incentive compatible and individually rational and show the general impossibility of ex post efficient mechanisms without outside subsidies for a wide class of problems we show how to compute mechanisms that maximize expected total gains from trade and mechanisms that can maximize a broker s expected profit journal of economic literature classification number 026

information on strikes and union settlements patterns of coverage in a newspaper of record the authors investigate whether the new york times coverage of strikes and non strike wage settlements in large bargaining units changed during the 1980s a time when a transformation of industrial relations is said to have taken place although the total number of new york times articles on such events declined during the 1980s the authors find that when appropriate control variables are included in the analysis the apparent drop in coverage disappears important variables determining the extent of news coverage were occurrence of a strike strike duration number of workers involved occurrence of federal intervention key industry status that is whether the affected industry was among those industries identified as exceptionally important for wage setting and proximity to new york city they speculate that the reduced number of articles may simply reflect a decreased incidence of strikes

oil and natural gas prospects in south america can the petroleum industry pave the way for renewables in brazil abstract a large share of brazil s current investments is concentrated in the development of petroleum resources in new frontiers perspectives for large offshore pre salt fields are particularly good however challenges are also huge on one hand pre salt resources development will draw vast amounts of economic and human resources and pose significant macroeconomic risks on the other hand the petroleum industry can generate multiplicative effects into the country s economy and even more importantly generate rents that can be diverted towards the promotion of renewable energy sources this paper simulates the rent generation of brazil s petroleum development up to 2030 according to the country s current fiscal regime projections of petroleum supply and a probability analysis of brent price evolution and assesses how these economic resources if properly allocated can pave the way for an increased use of renewables in brazil findings show that an ambitious energy innovation program based on a target oriented agency plus a program for solar development would cost less than half the minimum average annual petroleum rent free for investing in renewables between 2013 and 2030 the remaining budget could improve the security of ethanol fuel supply by avoiding the negative impacts of sugar prices spikes on brazil s ethanol production

does product market competition increase strike activity evidence from the uk although many studies have examined the effect of labour market characteristics macroeconomic fluctuations and workplace level factors on strike activity much less is known about industry level determinants of industrial conflict and in particular the role of product market competition i examine the effect of competition on strike activity using evidence from a natural experiment of policy reform the introduction of cartel legislation in the uk in the late 1950s my econometric analysis which takes advantage of the fact that different industries were affected to varying degrees by cartel policy establishes that both the number of strikes and the number of working days lost as a result of strikes increased significantly when competition intensified after the abolition of cartels i propose an interpretation of these results with reference to theoretical models of bargaining with asymmetric information

strikes and holdouts in wage bargaining theory and data we develop a private information model of union contract negotiations in which disputes signal a firm s willingness to pay previous models have assumed that all labor disputes take the form of a strike yet a prominent feature of u s collective bargaining is the holdout negotiations often continue without a strike after the contract has expired production continues with workers paid according to the expired contract we analyze the union s decision to strike or hold out and highlight its importance to strike activity strikes are more likely to occur after a drop in the real wage or a decline in unemployment

unions and strikes with asymmetric information strikes seem to be a pareto inefficient outcome of bargaining between a union and a firm however this paper shows that strikes can be the outcome of rational behavior by both agents if the firm has more information than the union concerning the state of nature the union can use strikes as a way of gaining information the paper uses an asymmetric information model where the firm has information about the state i e profitability that the union does not know the schedule of wage offers by the union then depends on the probability that a given state will occur

the future of oil and bioethanol in brazil abstract this work compares the return on investments roi of oil versus biofuels in brazil although several renewable energy sources might displace oil the country s forte is sugarcane biofuels in our analysis we carry out simplified benefit cost analyses of producing oil fields pre salt oil fields without and with enhanced oil recovery a business as the usual ethanol scenario and a high ethanol scenario excluding the roi from existing oil fields which is the highest when the discount rate is 4 or more the roi of the high ethanol scenario is greater than that of the roi of pre salt oil considering a us 40 t co2 tax the high ethanol scenario s roi is greater than the pre salt oil s roi if a discount rate of 2 or more is adopted moreover the high ethanol scenario throughput up to 2070 compares to 97 of the pre salt oil reserve without eor and demands 78 of its investment pre salt oil production declines beyond 2042 when the country might become a net oil importer in contrast ethanol production reaches 2 1 million boe per day and another 0 9 million boe of fossil demand is displaced through bioelectricity yielding a total of 3 million boe 62 of the country s oil demand

cyclical fluctuations in strike activity using a set of data on contracts and strikes for the period 1970 81 the author distinguishes among the roles of aggregate business conditions labor market conditions and product market conditions in the determination of strike incidence and duration strike incidence is found to be highest in industries that are depressed relative to the rest of the economy but in regions with low unemployment this finding is consistent with the theory that the cost of a strike to a firm increases with the demand for its product and the cost of a strike to the union increases with unemployment another finding however is that strikes are longest in industries that are booming relative to the rest of the economy

strikes in colonial india 1921 1938 newly collected data on india s textile industry over the years 1921 38 show strike rates far higher than those observed in the british or u s textile industries when they were at a similar stage

an empirical analysis of consumer purchase decisions under bucket based price discrimination bucket based price discrimination is a unique price format that involves monthly subscription fees and instantaneous quotas the number of rental products that can be checked out we propose an empirical model in which consumers make dynamic purchase decisions under consumption uncertainty accounting for the constraints imposed by the instantaneous quota applying the model to an online dvd rental data set we find that 1 consumers incur a large disutility 8 from stockout i e unmet consumption needs 2 such a disutility drives consumers overpurchase of the service quota as a way to avoid potential stockout situations and 3 the dynamics of overpurchase are driven by the interplay between trends in consumption needs and the magnitude of consumers plan switching costs we run counterfactual exercises to better understand how the instantaneous quota and stockout risk affect consumers consumption rates purchase decisions and firm profitability we find that the instantaneous quota induces a greater stockout compared with a monthly quota we further demonstrate that the company should recognize the drivers of the dynamics in overpurchase to balance short and long term profitability for example by offering targeted discounts to customers with excess overpurchase

some recent results in bargaining theory two person bargaining situations are very frequent in economic life among the most natural examples one can think of wage negotiations between an employer and a person he wishes to hire another example at a more aggregate level concerns wage renegotiations that take place periodically in large firms between the manager and the workers representative as a final example let me mention the simple and very usual situation of a seller and a potential buyer who bargain over the price of some indivisible object unlike for competitive markets economic theory and especially mathematical economics has not until recently been very helpful in explaining how prices are determined in these bargaining situations the usual explanations refer to a vague notion of respective bargaining powers of the two agents there is a clear need to precise the relations between this mysterious notion and quantifiable economic data like preferences what bargainers can get in case of an agreement outside options what they can get if agreement fails impatience risk aversion and finally information of bargainers about each other after the seminal contributions of hicks and zeuthen in the thirties john nash 1950 1953 was the first to adopt in the early fifties a systematic theoretical approach to the bargaining problem nash introduced a distinction between the axiomatic or normative approach on the one hand and the strategic or positive approach on the other hand of course the two approaches must not be viewed as independent what has come to be known as the nash program can be described as follows starting from an axiomatic solution having desirable normative properties like the solution proposed by nash himself is it possible to design a particular bargaining process that would naturally lead rational negotiators to the outcome prescribed by the axiomatic solution behind the word rational hides the main difficulty of this program find a satisfactory concept of non cooperative equilibrium for bargaining games

short run needs and long term goals a dynamic model of thirst management beverage consumption occurs many times a day in response to short run needs that fluctuate we develop a model in which consumers are heterogeneous in self regulating consumption by balancing short run needs e g hydration and mood with long term goals e g health the model has two novel features 1 utility depends on the match between occasion specific needs and product attributes and 2 dynamics of consumption and stockpiling are at the level of product attributes we estimate the model using unique intraday beverage consumption activity and psychological needs data we find that only a third of individuals do not self regulate of the two thirds who self regulate over 40 self regulate adaptively based on past choice whereas 25 self regulate both adaptively and anticipating future needs our attribute need match model enables us to assess unmet demand for new products with attributes that match co occurring occasion specific needs specifically we find that a product satisfying a combination of health hydrating needs expands overall beverage consumption by as much as 5 our framework of modeling heterogeneity in self regulation by balancing short run needs with long term goals is more broadly applicable in contexts where situational needs vary and long term effects are gradual and hard to discern e g nutrition smoking and preventive health care

research note quantity discounts in differentiated consumer product markets in this paper we extend the standard hotelling model of product differentiation to incorporate a second dimension of consumer heterogeneity that relates to the quantity of the product consumers wish to buy this extension allows us to derive optimal nonlinear pricing rules chosen by competing sellers when offering differentiated products in the marketplace it also permits us to assess whether sellers find it optimal to offer quantity discounts in such a setting and the implications of such discounts on their profitability we find that offering quantity discounts corresponds indeed to equilibrium behavior the extent of discounting declines the less differentiated the products surprisingly when sellers offer to consumers a choice between two different sized packages their profits are at most as high as when such a choice is unavailable moreover when utilizing nonlinear pricing rules is not feasible the profits of the sellers actually decline when they offer consumers a choice between different sized packages a limited empirical investigation supports the comparative statics we derive in our theoretical model

bargaining search and outside options abstract this paper studies a two sided incomplete information bargaining model between a seller and a buyer the buyer has an outside option which is modeled as a sequential search process during which he can choose to return to bargaining at any time two cases are considered in regime i both agents have symmetric information about the search parameters we find that in contrast to bargaining with complete information the option to return to bargaining is not redundant in equilibrium however the no delay result still holds in regime ii where agents have asymmetric information about the outside option delay is possible the solution characterizes the parameters for renegotiation and those for search with no return to the bargaining table

competitive strategies for late entry into a market with a dominant brand this paper considers optimal positioning advertising and pricing strategies for a firm contemplating entry in a market dominated by an entrenched competitor drawing on behavioral research on consumer preference formation we develop an individual level model that reflects differing consumer responses to similar products offered by the dominant brand and later entrants an effect we term asymmetric preferences from the resulting aggregate market response model we derive several competitive implications notably 1 that preference asymmetry can make a differentiated late entry strategy optimal even if preferences would appear to dictate otherwise and 2 that me too strategies are not equilibrium late entry strategies more generally our analysis suggests that preference asymmetry can contribute to the persistent competitive advantage of dominant brands

bargaining over reform abstract this paper models the delay in a macroeconomic stabilization as the outcome of a bargaining game between two parties who must reach an agreement over how the stabilization cost is to be shared the paper modifies alesina and drazen s 1991 american economic review 81 1170 1189 war of attrition model by endogenizing the distribution of the stabilization costs through a bargaining game using this bargaining framework the paper analyzes the role of crises and foreign assistance in bringing about a settlement to the distributional conflict in the bargaining game a crisis that increases the welfare loss from not stabilizing the economy will lower the probability of delay in contrast foreign aid that is used to reduce the stabilization costs will further increase the delay in reaching an agreement between the two parties

does fact finding promote settlement theory and a test nonbinding recommendations such as provided by fact finders are shown to significantly increase voluntary settlements in bargaining theoretically it is unclear whether recommendations will increase settlement rates a recommendation may reduce outcome uncertainty thereby chilling bargaining and increasing dispute rates on the other hand a recommendation may give the parties a focal point around which an agreement is made which of these effects dominates is a question that we consider using theory and data from controlled bargaining experiments the data show the dominance of a focal point effect for suggestions highlighting their potential role in improving dispute settlement procedures

is strike behavior cyclical we examine cyclicality of strike frequency and incidence using canadian data on strikes and contracts total strike frequency exhibits significant procyclicality to which within contract strikes contribute appreciably evidence is weaker for procyclical behavior of contract expiry strikes both in total and disaggregated by issue strike incidence is also procyclical particularly in manufacturing though the procyclicality here is confined to strikes over nonwage issues these results mirror those obtained by analyzing the frequency of strikes in the contract data industry specific cyclical variables positively affect strike incidence in manufacturing but region specific variables have no effect

is addiction rational theory and evidence this paper makes two contributions to the modeling of addiction first we provide new and convincing evidence that smokers are forward looking in their smoking decisions using state excise tax increases that have been legislatively enacted but are not yet effective and monthly data on consumption second we recognize the strong evidence that preferences with respect to smoking are time inconsistent with individuals both not recognizing the true dife culty of quitting and searching for self control devices to help them quit we develop a new model of addictive behavior that takes as its starting point the standard rational addiction model but incorporates time inconsistent preferences this model also exhibits forward looking behavior but it has strikingly different normative implications in this case optimal government policy should depend not only on the externalities that smokers impose on others but also on the internalities imposed by smokers on themselves we estimate that the optimal tax per pack of cigarettes should be at least one dollar higher under our formulation than in the rational addiction case

packaging of sin goods commitment or exploitation abstract we consider the shopping and consumption decision of an individual with a self control problem the consumer believes that restricting the consumption of a sinful product such as chips is in his long run interest but when facing the actual decision he is tempted to overeat we ask how firms react to such self control problems and possibly exploit them by offering different package sizes in a competitive market either one or three package sizes are offered in contrast to common intuition the large and not the small package might be a commitment device the latter may serve to exploit the naive consumer

the empirical relations between employers striker replacement strategies and strike duration this analysis of general accounting office survey data on strikes in 1985 and 1989 shows that employers permanent replacement of striking workers was associated with longer strikes than would otherwise have occurred furthermore the authors find that simply announcing the intent to replace strikers was also associated with longer strikes finally when employers permanently replaced strikers the probability of settlement fell approximately 30 these findings are consistent with models focusing on the joint costs of a strike and on private information in the bargaining process t o the firm that seeks to operate during a strike a major obstacle is securing a work force to do the work normally performed by members of the striking bargaining unit of the four possible strategies for securing such a work force reassigning struck work to non bargaining unit employees utilizing members of the bargaining unit who return to work during the strike hiring temporary replacement employees and hiring permanent replacement employees the strategy of hiring permanent replacements for strikers has become the most controversial before the passage of new deal labor legislation u s employers regularly exercised their common law right to replace striking workers the wagner act of 1935 protected employees right to strike but did not explicitly grant employers the right to replace strikers the supreme court however upheld the legality of permanently replacing strikers in its 1938 decision nlrb v mackay radio

managing channel profits a channel of distribution consists of different channel members each having his own decision variables however each channel member s decisions do affect the other channel members profits and as a consequence actions a lack of coordination of these decisions can lead to undesirable consequences for example in the simple manufacturer retailer consumer channel uncoordinated and independent channel members decisions over margins result in a higher price paid by the consumer than if those decisions were coordinated in addition the ensuing suboptimal volume leads to lower profits for both the manufacturer and the retailer this paper explores the problems inherent in channel coordination we address the following questions what is the effect of channel coordination what causes a lack of coordination in the channel how difficult is it to achieve channel coordination what mechanisms exist which can achieve channel coordination what are the strengths and weaknesses of these mechanism what is the role of nonprice variables e g manufacturer advertising retailer shelf space in coordination does the lack of coordination affect normative implications from in store experimentation can quantity discounts be a coordination mechanism are some marketing practices actually disguised quantity discounts we review the literature and present a simple formulation illustrating the roots of the coordination problem we then derive the form of the quantity discount schedule that results in optimum channel profits this article was originally published in marketing science volume 2 issue 3 pages 239 272 in 1983

slippage in rebate programs and present biased preferences present biased preferences capture the idea that individuals may find immediate payoffs significantly more salient than any future payoffs rather than simply discounting the future in a time consistent manner in this paper we show that consumers present biased preferences can generate slippage and we explore whether this can explain firms use of mail in rebates we assume that the consumer population comprises members who have various degrees of present bias the model demonstrates that if consumers have homogeneous willingness to pay for a product and thus rebates do not serve as a mechanism for traditional price discrimination rebates may still profitably exploit slippage but to do so they must generate very high slippage rates this is because the rebate must greatly exceed the price markup because the rebate must compensate consumers for the cost of redemption and the delay in receiving the rebate the ability of rebate programs to take advantage of present biased consumers is quite limited in settings where there is significant variance in the degree of present bias within the population unless the extent of consumers present bias is highly correlated with their rebate redemption costs

emissions reduction scenarios in the argentinean energy sector in this paper the leap tiam ecn and gcam models were applied to evaluate the impact of a variety of climate change control policies including carbon pricing and emission constraints relative to a base year on primary energy consumption final energy consumption electricity sector development and co2 emission savings of the energy sector in argentina over the 2010 2050 period the leap model results indicate that if argentina fully implements the most feasible mitigation measures currently under consideration by official bodies and key academic institutions on energy supply and demand such as the probiomass program a cumulative incremental economic cost of 22 8 billion us 2005 to 2050 is expected resulting in a 16 reduction in ghg emissions compared to a business as usual scenario these measures also bring economic co benefits such as a reduction of energy imports improving the balance of trade a low co2 price scenario in leap results in the replacement of coal by nuclear and wind energy in electricity expansion a high co2 price leverages additional investments in hydropower by way of cross model comparison with the tiam ecn and gcam global integrated assessment models significant variation in projected emissions reductions in the carbon price scenarios was observed which illustrates the inherent uncertainties associated with such long term projections these models predict approximately 37 and 94 reductions under the high co2 price scenario respectively by comparison the leap model using an approach based on the assessment of a limited set of mitigation options predicts an 11 3 reduction the main reasons for this difference include varying assumptions about technology cost and availability co2 storage capacity and the ability to import bioenergy an emission cap scenario 2050 emissions 20 lower than 2010 emissions is feasible by including such measures as ccs and bio ccs but at a significant cost in terms of technology pathways the models agree that fossil fuels in particular natural gas will remain an important part of the electricity mix in the core baseline scenario according to the models there is agreement that the introduction of a carbon price will lead to a decline in absolute and relative shares of aggregate fossil fuel generation however predictions vary as to the extent to which coal nuclear and renewable energy play a role

equilibrium in a durable goods market with lumpy adjustment abstract durable goods are an important component of the business cycle equilibrium models of durable goods markets are made difficult by the lumpy nature of individual purchases we show that a straightforward approximation of the distribution of durable goods holdings gives rise to a tractable equilibrium model we analyze the case of competition as well as that of a monopoly producer

consumption self control by rationing purchase quantities of virtue and vice consumers attempts to control their unwanted consumption impulses influence many everyday purchases with broad implications for marketers pricing policies addressing theoreticians and practitioners alike this paper uses multiple empirical methods to show that consumers voluntarily and strategically ration their purchase quantities of goods that are likely to be consumed on impulse and that therefore may pose self control problems for example many regular smokers buy their cigarettes by the pack although they could easily afford to buy 10 pack cartons these smokers knowingly forgo sizable per unit savings from quantity discounts which they could realize if they bought cartons by rationing their purchase quantities they also self impose additional transactions costs on marginal consumption which makes excessive smoking overly difficult and costly such strategic self imposition of constraints is intuitively appealing yet theoretically problematic the marketing literature lacks operationalizations and empirical tests of such consumption self control strategies and of their managerial implications this paper provides experimental evidence of the operation of consumer self control and empirically illustrates its direct implications for the pricing of consumer goods moreover the paper develops a conceptual framework for the design of empirical tests of such self imposed constraints on consumption in consumer goods markets within matched pairs of products we distinguish relative virtue and vice goods whose preference ordering changes with whet her consumers evaluate immediate or delayed consumption consequences for example ignoring long term health effects many smokers prefer regular relative vice to light relative virtue cigarettes because they prefer the taste of the former however ignoring these short term taste differences the same smokers prefer light to regular cigarettes when they consider the long term health effects of smoking these preference orders can lead to dynamically inconsistent consumption choices by consumers whose tradeoffs between the immediate and delayed consequences of consumption depend on the time lag between purchase and consumption this creates a potential self control problem because these consumers will be tempted to over consume the vices they have in stock at home purchase quantity rationing helps them solve the self control problem by limiting their stock and hence their consumption opportunities such rationing implies that per purchase occasion vice consumers will be less likely than virtue consumers to buy larger quantities in response to unit price reductions such as quantity discounts we first test this prediction in two laboratory experiments we then examine the external validity of the results at the retail level with a field survey of quantity discounts and with a scanner data analysis of chain wide store level demand across a variety of different pairs of matched vice regular and virtue reduced fat calorie or caffeine etc product categories the analyses of these experimental field and scanner data provide strong convergent evidence of a characteristic crossover in demand schedules for relative vices and virtues for categories as diverse as among others potato chips chocolate chip cookies cream cheese beer soft drinks ice cream and frozen yogurt chewing gum coffee and beef andturkey bologna vice consumers demand increases less in response to price reductions than virtue consumers demand although their preferences are not generally weaker for vices than for virtues constraints on vice purchases are self imposed and strategic rather than driven by simple preferences we suggest that rationing their vice inventories at the point of purchase allows consumers to limit subsequent consumption as a result of purchase quantity rationing however vice buyers forgo savings from price reductions through quantity discounts effectively paying price premiums for the opportunity to engage in self control thus purchase quantity rationing vice consumers are relatively price in sensitive from a managerial and public policy perspective our findings should offer marketing practitioners in many consumer goods industries new opportunities to increase profits through segmentation and price discrimination based on consumer self control they can charge premium prices for small sizes of vices relative to the corresponding quantity discounts for virtues virtue consumers on the other hand will buy larger amounts even when quantity discounts are relatively shallow a key conceptual contribution of this paper lies in showing how marketing researchers can investigate a whole class of strategic self constraining consumer behaviors empirically moreover this research is the first to extend previous theoretical work on impulse control by empirically demonstrating its broader implications for marketing decision making

smoking cessation a model of planned vs actual behavior for time inconsistent consumers we offer a simple model of intertemporal choice to characterize how planned versus actual behaviors evolve for time inconsistent smokers our results suggest that smokers participation and cessation decisions are governed by the interplay between three effects the cessation effect leads smokers to advance their plans to quit smoking whereas the procrastination effect leads them to consecutively revise their planned quitting age upwards consequently the duration of smoking is effectively governed by which one of these two effects is dominant finally for certain consumer segments a threshold effect causes an all or nothing type of extreme smoking behavior based on certain critical values of present biased preferences our results provide some preliminary evidence that both marketing efforts by tobacco firms and public policy initiatives can have a significant influence on smoking behavior in particular we find that reductions in the age at which individuals start smoking may not only vastly extend their duration of smoking but also convert potential never smokers into lifetime smokers finally we estimate a hazard model using survey data from over 800 smokers to provide evidence in support of our theoretical model

self control and incentives an analysis of multiperiod quota plans it is well known that individuals often fail to exert proper self control in organizational settings this can lead to reduced productivity and profits we use the literature on present biased preferences to model employees self control problems and examine how firms can design compensation plans to reduce the negative consequences of their employees self control problems our results suggest that firms can mitigate self control problems by delaying payment to the employees this can be achieved by using multiperiod quotas such as annual quotas to compensate employees for their cumulative performance although such plans are prevalent in the market there is little theoretical research that shows when multiperiod quota plans can be optimal the paper provides one potential explanation for the widespread use of such quota plans interestingly we find that such plans may be optimal despite the fact that they encourage more procrastination we also find that such plans lead to higher effort by the employees and can sometimes improve the welfare of not only the firm but also the employees

optimal selling strategies when to haggle when to hold firm a seller encountering risk neutral buyers one at a time should if commitments are feasible quote a single take it or leave it price to each this strategy is superior to any other for finite or infinite buyer populations whether there is learning or the distribution of buyer prices is known at the outset with one object for sale or many although haggling may offer advantages in terms of price discrimination these gains are more than offset by the losses it generates by encouraging buyers to refuse purchases at high prices

estimates of ghg emission reduction potential by country sector and cost abstract in this study emission reduction potentials in greenhouse gases ghg are assessed by country sector and cost using a ghg emission reduction assessment model with high resolutions with respect to region and technology and high consistency in terms of assumptions interrelationships and solution principles model analyses show that large potential reductions can be achieved at low cost in developing countries and power sectors in addition cost efficient emission reductions were evaluated for some international emission reduction targets that have been derived on the basis of the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities among developed and developing countries if 1 emission reduction measures at negative costs and below 50 tco 2 for developed countries 2 intensity improvement measures for selected sectors at negative costs and below 20 tco 2 for major developing countries and 3 all emission reduction measures with negative costs for other developing countries in 2020 are adopted then emission reductions of 8 9 14 8 and 27 7 gtco 2 eq yr compared to the technology frozen case can be expected in developed countries major developing countries and globally corresponding to a 11 decrease 40 increase and 17 increase from 2005 levels respectively large scale emission reductions can be achieved even if co 2 intensity targets for major sectors are assumed for major developing countries

dynamic bargaining with transaction costs a buyer and seller alternate making offers until an offer is accepted or someone terminates negotiations the seller s valuation is common knowledge but the buyer s valuation is known only by the buyer impatience to reach an agreement comes from two sources the traders discount future payoffs and there are transaction costs of bargaining equilibrium behavior involves either immediate trade delayed trade or immediate termination depending on the size of the gains from trade and the relative bargaining costs this contrasts with the pure discounting model where termination never occurs and the pure transaction cost model where delayed trade never occurs

bargaining and search with recall a two period model with complete information two standard results of previous bargaining models state that delay is generally not expected to occur under complete information and bargaining outcome depends crucially on the bargainers intrinsic characteristics that determine their reservation prices and in general bargainers with better reservation prices tend to get better outcomes this paper considers a bilateral bargaining problem with complete information in which one of the bargainers the buyer is allowed to search while bargaining more importantly we assume that the buyer is allowed to recall past outside offers we find that quite contrary to the standard results of previous complete information bargaining models complete information renders no guarantee for immediate resolution of bargaining and the effect of changing the buyer s search cost on each player s bargaining outcome is unpredictable the major driving force of these two results is the assumption that the buyer can recall past outside offers

package size decisions we describe a model examining how a firm might choose the package size and price for a product that deteriorates over time our model considers four factors 1 the usable life of the product 2 the rates at which consumers use the product 3 the relation between package size and the variable cost of the product and 4 the minimum quantities consumers seek to consume for each dollar they spend we call these reservation quantities we allow heterogeneity in the usage rates and reservation quantities for the consumers we show that when the cost increases as a linear or convex function of the package size the firm should make packages of the smallest possible size smaller packages reduce waste and allow consumers to more closely match their purchases with desired consumption this in turn allows the firm to charge a higher unit price and also sell more unit volume the results imply that in a market with multiple package sizes produced by the same or competing firms at least one of the packages must have the smallest possible size provided the fixed cost of making the product is sufficiently low for concave cost functions the firm may find it optimal to make larger than smallest size packages

cyclical fluctuations in strike durations canadian data on strikes between 1946 and 1983 are used to estimate linear regression models for the logarithm of completed duration a thorough investigation of the influence of the business cycle reveals strong support for the hypothesis that strike durations are countercyclical the cyclical effect is shown to be robust to both the choice of cyclical variable and the econometric specification and the magnitude of the effect is quite substantial experimentation with different representations of the cycle reveals that it is difficult to improve on a simple formulation involving a single continuous variable

are strikes less effective in conglomerate firms the author develops an extension of the ashenfelter johnson model of union wage bargaining to account for how diversification can improve a firm s ability to take strikes and therefore reduce wage settlements to test the model a wage equation is derived that is conditioned on the occurrence of a strike and is then estimated using union wage settlement data for 15 manufacturing firms covering contract settlements from 1954 to 1988 the estimation results support organized labor s contention that conglomerate firms enjoy a significant bargaining advantage over labor unions

contract negotiation and the coase conjecture a strategic foundation for renegotiation proof contracts what does contract negotiation look like when some parties hold private information and negotiation frictions are negligible this paper analyzes this question and provides a foundation for renegotiation proof contracts in this environment the model extends the framework of the coase conjecture to situations in which the quantity or quality of the good is endogenously determined and to more general environments in which preferences are nonseparable in the traded goods as frictions become negligible all equilibria converge to a unique outcome which is separating efficient and straightforward to characterize

providing business information to production workers correlates of compensation and profitability this study investigates some of the effects of a company s providing production workers with information on its financial condition productivity and relative standing in the labor market analyzi

concession bargaining the impact on shareholders equity this analysis of bargaining settlements in 1982 83 shows that on average shareholders in those firms that negotiated concessionary settlements enjoyed an 8 to 10 percent increase in the value of their holdings the author interprets this result to mean not that the value of the firm increased but rather that concessions enlarged the shareholders portion of the firm s value at the expense of the workers portion on the other hand concession bargaining does not seem to have reallocated business risk between shareholders and labor finally the evidence suggests that firm specific sources of risk can explain in part not only the magnitude of the concession effects but also the probability that concession bargaining will occur

a dual self model of impulse control we propose that a simple dual self model gives a unified explanation for several empirical regularities including the apparent time inconsistency that has motivated models of quasi hyperbolic discounting and rabin s paradox of risk aversion in the large and small the model also implies that self control costs imply excess delay as in the o donoghue and rabin models of quasi hyperbolic utility and it explains experimental evidence that increased cognitive load makes temptations harder to resist the base version of our model is consistent with the gul pesendorfer axioms but we argue that these axioms must be relaxed to account for the effect of cognitive load

pricing of conspicuous goods a competitive analysis of social effects abstract social needs play an important role in the purchase of conspicuous goods in this article the authors extend traditional economic models to accommodate social needs such as desire for uniqueness and conformism and examine their implications for pricing conspicuous goods first in the context of a duopoly the authors identify the conditions under which the desire for uniqueness can increase demand among some consumers as the price of a product increases second the authors show that though the desire for uniqueness leads to higher prices and firm profits a desire for conformity leads to lower prices and profits third the authors find that consumers purchase high quality products not because of their desire for uniqueness but despite it finally marketers of conspicuous goods may find it beneficial not to emphasize the functional differences among their products when the need for uniqueness is high in a laboratory test the authors find support for the claim that demand for a product amo

early settlement in european merger control we analyse the determinants of early settlement between merging parties and the european commission over remedies that remove concerns of anticompetitive effects this extends the previously narrow range of econometric literature on early settlement consistent with the theory of early settlement our results confirm the importance of delay costs and of uncertainty measured by the complexity of the economic analysis required for each merger we also find a non monotonic effect of agency resourcing which raises questions about the commission s efficiency in times of high case load econometrically we select a sample of merger decisions in which the european commission intervened due to concerns of anticompetitive effects and our selection model provides estimates of the factors determining intervention by the commission conclusions are drawn for public policy

dynamic bargaining with action dependent valuations abstract an infinite horizon dynamic bargaining model is presented in which actions affect the expected future value of the buyer seller match because actions directly affect the future surplus to be bargained over the model is unlike other models that tie the dynamic process to nature alone focusing on a subset of weak markov equilibria several results come about that are not found in static bargaining models using similar bargaining protocols in particular optimal price demands can be lower higher than the buyer s lowest highest possible valuation and several empirical features concerning wage settlements and strike incidence from labor union contract negotiations can be explained

the effect of labor unions on ceo compensation we find evidence that labor unions affect chief executive officer ceo compensation first we find that firms with strong unions pay their ceos less the negative effect is robust to various tests for endogeneity including cross sectional variations and a regression discontinuity design second we find that ceo compensation is curbed before union contract negotiations especially when the compensation is discretionary and the unions have a strong bargaining position third we report that curbing ceo compensation mitigates the chance of a labor strike thus providing a rationale for firms to pay ceos less when facing strong unions

leaving oil underground in ecuador the yasuni itt initiative from a multi criteria perspective abstract the ecuadorian proposal to keep 846 million barrels of crude oil in the yasuni national park underground for the purposes of avoiding co2 emissions and to protect both the biological diversity and the indigenous peoples in isolation who inhabit this area of the amazon is evaluated from a multi criteria analysis the main purpose of the paper is to compare this policy option with other alternatives across different values an analytical framework is used that recognises the inherent complexity of a problem of this nature in which the financial values are indeed relevant for policy but other values are also relevant the economic in a broad sense social environmental cultural and political the results confirm that from a financial standpoint extracting the oil is preferable but by incorporating the non monetary values into the multi criteria decision process one can plausibly defend the yasuni itt initiative as the most desirable policy option indeed the social and environmental benefits or criteria signalling an economic transition towards a model based on renewable sources of energy along with the protection of critical environmental and social capital make up for the financial gap

monetary policy as a process of search monetary policymakers are uncertain about the state of the economy and learn from the economy s reaction to policy private agents however anticipate any systematic attempt to incorporate this information into future policy the authors analyze this feedback in the context of a monetary authority s attempt to stimulate an economy in recession they show that modest stimuli may prove ineffectual if small reductions in interest rates are unlikely to promote a response then they may be followed by further cuts a vicious circle develops in which the expectation that the policy could fail leads investors to delay investment thereby promoting failure copyright 1996 by american economic association

the relationship between uncertainty the contract zone and efficiency in a bargaining experiment research on bargaining suggests that the efficiency of bargaining is related to the size of the surplus to be divided and to uncertainty about the opponent we conducted a bargaining experiment which manipulated both of these factors we find that the presence of uncertainty decreases bargaining efficiency while the effect of contract zone size depends on whether there is uncertainty or certainty

product variety and endogenous pricing with evaluation costs one important decision firms must make is to select the product line characteristics and number of products to offer consumers this paper explores the effect of the interaction between consumer evaluation costs and pricing on the optimal product line length to offer consumers before deciding to buy a product among all products offered a consumer learns the product line length given the product line length a consumer decides whether to evaluate the products available and their prices this decision to evaluate depends on the expected consumer surplus after the evaluation being greater than the evaluation costs when the firm offers few products the firm may not attract many consumers because of lack of product fit and may be forced to offer low prices when the firm offers many products all consumers will find a great product fit that is the variance of consumer valuations per product chosen is lower this allows the firm to charge high prices to extract ex post consumer surplus resulting in lower ex ante expected consumer surplus which may lead consumers not to evaluate the products in the first place that is by offering fewer products a firm can commit not to extract all possible consumer surplus these two forces may then lead to the existence of an interior optimal number of products to offer the optimal number of products offered is decreasing in the evaluation costs

commentaries and rejoinder to marketing of vice goods a strategic analysis of the package size decision by sanjay jain jain jain s 2012 marketing of vice goods a strategic analysis of the package size decision marketing sci 31 1 36 51 examines the impact of consumers self control problem on the equilibrium package sizes offered by firms marketing vice goods this series of discussions offers commentaries and a rejoinder that discuss competitive implications of firms offering small sizes and the impact of smaller sizes on the total consumer expenditure

bilateral trading and incomplete information price convergence in a small market abstract we study a model of decentralised bilateral interactions in a small market where one of the sellers has private information about her value in addition to this seller with private information there are two identical buyers and another seller whose valuation is commonly known to be in between the two possible valuations of the seller with private information we consider an infinite horizon game with simultaneous one sided offers and simultaneous responses we construct one particular pbe of the game and show that as the discount factor goes to 1 prices in all transactions converge to the same value we then show that this is the case with any stationary equilibrium of the game that is the asymptotic outcome is unique across all stationary equilibria

for a few cents more why supersize unhealthy food health care experts believe that increases in portion sizes served by food vendors contribute to the obesity epidemic this paper shows that food vendors can profit handsomely by using supersizing strategies where regular portion sizes are priced sufficiently high to discourage price conscious consumers from selecting them and the prices for enlarging food portions are set so low that these customers are tempted to order the larger portion sizes and overeat setting aside the impact of obesity on health care costs we show that using supersizing to steer customers toward consuming excessive amounts of food can destroy value from a social perspective thus this social value destruction trap adds another justification for pressuring food vendors to reduce supersizing for unhealthy food as a public policy response we consider how moderating policies may counter these effects through measures designed specifically to encourage eating in moderation by applying supersizing bans taxes and warnings

marketing of vice goods a strategic analysis of the package size decision consumers are often unable to resist the temptation of overconsuming certain products such as cookies crackers soft drinks alcohol etc to control their consumption some consumers buy small packages or abstain from purchasing the product altogether other consumers however still purchase large packages and overconsume from a strategic perspective firms have the option of introducing small packages or only offering large packages we use the literature on hyperbolic discounting to model consumers self control problems and examine conditions under which firms will offer small packages to help consumers combat their self control problem and how this offering in turn affects prices profits consumer and social welfare our results show that introducing small packages can increase firms profits only when a small fraction of consumers have overconsumption problems or when small packages can bring in new customers additionally we find that competition can sometimes reduce the incentives for firms to introduce small packages this is particularly true when a large fraction of consumers is attracted to small packages we also find that firms profits can sometimes decrease if they produce healthier alternatives of their goods our analysis of consumer welfare reveals that small packages enhance consumer and social welfare even though they sometimes increase the consumption of vice goods

bilateral trading in networks in many markets goods flow from initial producers to final customers travelling through many layers of intermediaries and information is asymmetric we study a dynamic model of bargaining in networks that captures these features we show that the equilibrium price demanded over time is non monotonic but the sequence of transaction prices declines over time with the possible exception of the last period the price dynamic is therefore reminiscent of fire sales and hot potato trading traders who intermediate the object arise endogenously and make a positive profit the profit earning intermediaries are not necessarily traders with many connections for the case of multilayer networks they belong to the path that reaches the maximum number of potential buyers using the minimal number of intermediaries this is not necessarily the path of the network that maximizes the probability of consumption by traders who value the most the object i e welfare

choice and procrastination author s o donoghue ted rabin matthew abstract recent models of procrastination due to self control problems assume that a procrastinator considers just one option and is unaware of her self control problems we develop a model where a person chooses from a menu of options and is partially aware of her self control problems this menu model replicates earlier results and generates new ones a person might forego completing an attractive option because she plans to complete a more attractive but never to be completed option hence providing a non procrastinator additional options can induce procrastination and a person may procrastinate worse pursuing important goals than unimportant ones

the environmental paradox in generation how south america is gradually becoming more dependent on thermal generation there has been an increasing focus on global warming emission of green house gases ghg and the problems this might create in this article we review the trend in sustainable and renewable electricity generation in south america where the generation portfolio increasingly depends on thermal generation in particular gas south america is a region that has relatively low emissions but the current development is not desirable in environmental terms we analyze the underlying reasons for this development which is related to security of supply deregulation and the cost of renewable energy we review and discuss the policies to promote renewables in the region we analyze the potential advantages and drawbacks of different types of market interventions such as direct subsidies that create potentially strong market distortions more sophisticated market interventions that might be less intrusive but not necessarily as effective as e g firm energy markets we also review market based solutions such as the clean market mechanism and its potential and the use of renewable electricity in non interconnected zones which might be one of the most economically attractive applications of renewables however without a stronger and more aggressive intervention from the governments in the region it is unlikely that the increase in thermal generation can be stopped

energy contribution to latin american indcs analyzing sub regional trends with a times model central and south america and the caribbean countries share energy and climate features that are quite different from the rest of the world including a highly renewable energy mix and very high renewable energy potentials along with high deforestation and degradation rates which call for regional answers to regional issues this paper assesses the impact of national contributions to the united nations framework convention on climate change using an energy prospective model from the markal times family this approach enables a bottom up comparison between past pledges nationally appropriate mitigation actions and the nationally determined contributions ndcs agreed on at cop21 long term economic optimization leads to decarbonizing the power sector even in the absence of climate constraints stringent climate policies as modeled here achieve emission reductions of 40 below the current baseline by 2050 ndcs produce stronger emission reductions than namas at regional scale however the first contributor to emission reductions in absolute terms in latin america is the agriculture forestry and other land use afolu sector not energy

a theory of bargaining deadlock abstract i study a dynamic one sided offer bargaining model between a seller and a buyer under incomplete information the seller knows the quality of his product while the buyer does not during bargaining the seller may receive an outside option the value of which depends on the quality of the product if the outside option is sufficiently important there is an equilibrium in which the buyer s belief about the product s quality stays constant and she continues to make the same randomized offer throughout the bargaining process as a result the equilibrium behavior produces an outcome path that resembles a bargaining deadlock and its resolution the equilibrium outcome exhibits bargaining delay that does not vanish even with frequent offers and the limiting delay may exist even without a static adverse selection problem under stronger parametric assumptions the equilibrium with deadlock is the only one in which behavior is monotonic in the buyer s belief

a rational reconstruction of the compromise effect using market data to infer utilities this article explores the possibility that consumers use market data to make inferences about product utilities the argument is made by means of an example based on the compromise effect found in extant experimental data this phenomenon is generally looked at as a manifestation of deviations from rationality in choice however assuming full rationality i describe a decision rule that is based on consumers inferences about their personal valuation of alternatives from the portfolio of market offerings and some information about their own relative tastes through a number of examples i will argue that consumers often use this or similar decision rules to make inferences about utility i then show that the decision rule may generate compromise effects in experiments and that it may be sustainable the compromise effect could therefore be seen as preliminary evidence that consumers make such inferences

an experimental comparison of dispute rates in alternative arbitration systems this paper reports the results of a systematic experimental comparison of the effect of alternative arbitration systems on dispute rates the key to our experimental design is the use of a common underlying distribution of arbitrator fair awards in the different arbitration systems this allows us to compare dispute rates across different arbitration procedures where we hold fixed the amount of objective underlying uncertainty about the arbitration awards there are three main findings first dispute rates are inversely related to the monetary costs of disputes dispute rates were much lower in cases where arbitration was not available so that the entire pie was lost in the event of a dispute this confirms the empirical importance of the so called chilling effect on bargaining that has been conjectured is produced by the adoption of arbitration systems second the dispute rate in a final offer arbitration system is at least as high as the dispute rate in a comparable conventional arbitration system contrary to the usual argument we find no evidence that final offer arbitration eliminates the chilling effect third dispute rates are inversely related to the uncertainty costs of disputes dispute rates were lower in conventional arbitration treatments where the variance of the arbitration award was higher and imposed greater costs on risk averse negotiators our results can also be interpreted as providing tentative evidence that the negotiators were risk averse on average finally we find general agreement between the dispute rates in our experiment and dispute rates found in the field in comparable settings

strategic bargaining models and interpretation of strike data attrition screening and signalling models of strategic bargaining are characterized in terms of their predictions about the incidence mean duration and settlement rates of strikes and the terms of wage settlements these predictions are compared with the general features observed in empirical studies of strikes in canada and the united states conclusions are drawn about the types of models capable of generating these features and about the conformity of the models to the evidence methods are described for computing the numerical examples used to illustrate the models

cheap talk can matter in bargaining this paper describes an intuitive way in which cheap talk can matter in a twostage bargaining game in which talk may be followed by serious negotiation the intuition that all buyers would claim to have low reservation prices is incorrect in our model instead if good faith participation is endogenously determined then the parties can use talk to trade off bargaining position against the probability of continued negotiation our cheap talk equilibrium features bargaining behavior that could not be equilibrium behavior in the absence of talk

union relative wage effects a survey of macro estimates this paper surveys union wage effect estimates drawn from empirical cross section wage equations fitted to macro aggregated data in 34 post 1963 studies containing such equations each estimate is the partial derivative of the dependent wage variable in logarithmic units with respect to the extent of unionism fraction unionized variable in the equation this paper shows that these estimates contain a mixture in uncertain ratio of the union nonunion wage differential or wage gap on the one hand and an extent of unionism effect on the other therefore the macro estimates should not be interpreted as wage gap estimates

durable goods monopoly with discrete demand we analyze a dynamic game between consumers and the sole seller of a durable good unlike previous analyses we assume that there exists a finite collection of buyers rather than a continuum none of the main conclusions of the literature on durable goods monopoly survives this change in assumption coase s conjecture that a durable goods monopolist cannot earn supracompetitive profits in the continuous time limit bulow s proposition that renting a durable is always more profitable than selling it and stokey s proposition that precommitting to a time path of prices is always optimal are all false when the set of buyers is finite thus the assumption of a continuum of consumers so innocuous and useful a simplification in other contexts has proved misleading in the context of durable goods monopoly

stationarity rationalizability and bargaining strategies for the seller and the buyer which are weakly stationary we demonstrate that any initial offer from the seller induced by a strategy rationalized by a weakly stationary acceptance rule for the buyer must entail the coase property our result does not presume the selection of a particular equilibrium and follows directly from the weak stationarity assumption of the buyer s acceptance rule and the rational behaviour of the players

strikes and wages a test of an asymmetric information model this paper describes a simple model of labor disputes based on the hypothesis that unions use strikes to infer the profitability of the firm the model posits the existence of a negatively sloped resistance curve between wages and strike duration in addition it offer a series of predictions relating wage and strike outcomes to changes in the expected profitability of the firm and changes in the alternative opportunities of striking workers these implications are tested using data on wage outcomes strike probabilities and strike durations for a large sample of collective bargaining agreements

market competition and strike activity we develop a model of wage bargaining with private information in a duopoly we investigate how product differentiation and market competition bertrand vs cournot competition affect wages and strikes if bargaining takes place at the industry level then both the wage outcome and the strike activity do not depend on the degree of product differentiation whatever the type of market competition however if bargaining takes place at the firm level then wages and strikes are increasing with the degree of product differentiation and the strike activity is smaller under bertrand than under cournot competition

the effect of labour relations legislation on strike incidence the impact on strike incidence of nine labour relations policy variables representing legislation in eleven canadian jurisdictions is estimated using logit analysis of 3 347 individual collective agreements mandatory strike votes compulsory dues check off and compulsory conciliation boards are associated with significantly lower strike probabilities prohibition of replacement workers and employer initiated strike votes are associated with significantly higher strike probabilities no significant association was found between strike incidence and the length of cooling off period following conciliation and negotiated or automatic reopeners policy impacts are interpreted in a framework emphasizing the influence of asymmetric inforrnation and joint costs on strikes

strategic ignorance as a self disciplining device we analyse the decision of an agent with time inconsistent preferences to consume a good that exerts an externality on future welfare the extent of the externality is initially unknown but may be learned via a costless sampling procedure we show that when the agent cannot commit to future consumption and learning decisions incomplete learning may occur on a markov perfect equilibrium path of the resulting intra personal game in such a case each agent s incarnation stops learning for some values of the posterior distribution of beliefs and acts under self restricted information this conduct is interpreted as strategic ignorance all equilibria featuring this property strictly pareto dominate the complete learning equilibrium for any posterior distribution of beliefs

an investigation into the determinants of u s strike activity this paper outlines the steps involved in constructing a new panel dataset of u s contract negotiations and strike activity this data set has a much broader coverage of firms and unions than micro data sets analyzed to date key findings include the discovery that the variability and not the level of firm profitability affects the probability of a strike personal characteristics of the union workforce also emerge as key determinants of strike activity finally strikes are found to be more likely when the local labor market is tight but less likely when the industry labor market is tight copyright 1986 by american economic association

a multistage model of bargaining this paper presents a simple multistage model of bargaining wherein a seller makes an offer that can be either accepted or refused if rejected the process continues how the seller s ability to make commitments affects bargaining outcomes is analysed by comparing the commitment equilibria to those arising when commitment is impossible the effects of increasing uncertainty about preferences and varying the length of the bargaining horizon are analysed the ways in which the bargaining environment can be changed to improve outcomes are discussed

sequential bargaining with incomplete information this paper describes a simple two person two period bargaining game and solves it using the concept of perfect bayesian equilibrium in which the actions of each player convey information which is used by his opponent the paper examines the effects of changes in bargaining costs the size of the contract zone and the length of the bargaining process on such aspects of the solution as the probability of impasse and the likelihood of concessions the combination of information transfer and the lack of pre commitment embodied in perfectness yields many surprising results common perceptions about the effects of parameter changes on bargaining processes are suspect and should be checked in the particular game being discussed

that s what i thought i wanted miswanting and regret for a standard good in a mass customized world how can a standardized product survive in a mass customized world this requires understanding that consumers often experience problems predicting their future hedonic reactions to new experiences such as custom products leading to feelings of regret this form of regret occurs not because the custom product differs from specifications but because consumers miswanted the design they ordered our analytic model shows that regret aversion induces consumers to design custom products to reflect the attributes of the available standard products consequently regret averse consumers may choose the standard product rather than place a custom order the number of available standard products however moderates both these effects two experiments empirically substantiate the key predictions of the analytical model a the custom product s resemblance to the standard product grows with regret aversion associated with miswanting b there exists a segment of regretfully loyal consumers for the standard product in a mass customized world and it expands with regret aversion c both the above effects are weakened by the presence of a second standard product and d the custom product can increase its market share when the number of standard products increases

damaged durable goods i analyze a durable goods monopolist s incentives to introduce a damaged good a stripped down version of the original good in an infinite horizon framework the damaged good helps the monopolist to mitigate the coasian time inconsistency problem however it may lead to a welfare reduction low valuation buyers are induced to purchase the low quality damaged good early rather than buy the high quality original good later and when the players are patient the surplus loss from quality reduction outweighs the gain from earlier consumptions this welfare result contrasts with the previous literature based on a static framework

the effects of public policy on strike duration hazard function estimates are utilized to analyze the effect of numerous public policy variables on strike duration based on 7 546 strikes in canada between 1967 and 1985 we find that only the mandatory strike vote substantially reduced conditional duration however the policy variables generally had a more favorable effect on reducing strike incidence so that on net they tended to reduce unconditional duration incidence times conditional duration specifically reduced unconditional duration was associated with the existence of conciliation and the requirement of a mandatory strike vote but the prohibition on replacement workers had a perverse effect