prices and quantities unsustainable consumption and the global economy abstract the ecological unsustainability of current consumption patterns is now well documented one aspect of this problem which has not been sufficiently addressed is the growth of excess consumption driven by falling goods prices the index of department store prices have fallen substantially since the early 1990s in large part because global capital mobility and excess global labor supply has allowed firms to depress wages and avoid paying environmental costs consumers have responded by purchasing increasing numbers of these artificially cheap goods the example of apparel is discussed in some detail and data from other goods categories are presented these trends suggest that achieving sustainable consumption in the us is not only a technical issue but will also involve fundamental changes in the global political economy to eliminate the artificially low prices of imported goods

the hidden information content of price movements dynamic patterns of prices in different markets may motivate strategic consumers who could be monitoring price movements over time to game vendors do past price movements carry information about the probability and magnitude of future price drops conducting empirical work in the airline industry on near 1000 us domestic routes we find that some price metrics carry information about future price swings these variables can assist in predicting the likelihood and magnitude of price drops these price metrics yield significantly different signals which also vary as the prediction horizon changes

degrowth and collaborative value creation reflections on concepts and technologies abstract the concept of degrowth aims fundamentally at reducing material and energy throughput equitably while questioning the desirability of further economic growth in order to achieve this reduction of society s throughput radical changes in the ways goods and services are produced distributed and used are required in this think piece concepts of consumer integration into the value creation process and new enabling technologies are discussed as possible constituting elements of alternative organizational models in a degrowth society to date collaborative value creation concepts such as crowdsourcing and mass customization have been discussed almost exclusively as business model patterns for companies in economies that are set to grow the same applies to the assessment of new technologies such as additive manufacturing web based user interfaces for co creation and other flexible production technologies that allow for collaborative and individualized production potential positive and negative effects of these concepts and technologies with regard to the objectives of degrowth are discussed in order to initiate a debate about the inclusion of cvc for the design of alternative organizational models that are in line with degrowth thinking this think piece illustrates that several elements of collaborative value creation and its enabling technologies coincide with degrowth objectives but do not lead per se to their attainment thereby a starting point for future empirical work in this area is generated

sacrifice and stigma reducing free riding in cults communes and other collectives this paper presents an economic analysis of religious behavior that accounts for the continuing success of groups with strange requirements and seemingly inefficient prohibitions the analysis does not presuppose any special motives for religious activity rather religion is modeled as a club good that displays positive returns to participatory crowding the analysis demonstrates that efficient religions with perfectly rational members may benefit from stigma self sacrifice and bizarre behavioral restrictions the model also addresses sacrifice in nonreligious social clubs fraternities communes political parties work groups and families

fostering change to sustainable consumption and production an evidence based view this note from the field is an edited version of a policy brief summarizing the key findings from the first half of the sustainable consumption research exchange network score for the policy programs in the field of sustainable consumption and production scp we recommend a framework for action to change to scp that mentions the key domains to include food mobility and energy use housing the last two clearly related to urban development it should use a systemic perspective on the scp challenge and differentiate between developed fast developing and base of the pyramid economies score focuses mainly on developed economies and here we propose to differentiate between 1 measures that fit with mainstream beliefs and paradigms here governments could make operational agreements on implementation of instruments like green public procurement stimulating ecodesign etc 2 problems where a rough agreement on goals exists but where change is radical or means are uncertain and hence planning difficult here governments could foster visioning experimentation and support e g international collaboration in leapfrogging programs 3 problems that outright clash with the mainstream beliefs and paradigms here governments could foster informed deliberation on the more fundamental issues related to markets governance and growth 2007 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

an economic model of representative democracy this paper develops an approach to the study of democratic policy making where politicians are selected by the people from those citizens who present themselves as candidates for public office the approach has a number of attractive features first it is a conceptualization of a pure form of representative democracy in which government is by as well as of the people second the model is analytically tractable being able to handle multidimensional issue and policy spaces very naturally third it provides a vehicle for answering normative questions about the performance of representative democracy

consumer normal price estimation market versus personal standards in reference price models internal reference price is typically estimated from actual market prices given the generally poor price knowledge consumers have exhibited in prior research the question is whether it is reasonable to use actual market prices to estimate consumers internal reference price standards the initial answer provided in this research surprisingly is yes although internal reference prices are measurable and do affect consumer price perception the gains in measuring and using those standards in predicting brand choice for frequently purchased products may not be worth the costs reasons why the surrogate price measure may work and implications for the measurement of internal reference price standards are considered

global equity and environmental crisis an argument for reducing working hours in the north abstract is an improvement in the distribution of income between north and south compatible with environmental reconstruction to date economic growth rather than redistribution has been the dominant strategy for redressing global inequality but environmental constraints on growth at least in the north may prove desirable this paper argues that one strategy for reconciling these two goals is for the north to take productivity increases in the form of leisure time rather than increased output it discusses the feasibility of such an approach

sect subsidy and sacrifice an economist s view of ultra orthodox jews israeli ultra orthodox men study full time in yeshiva until age 40 on average why do fathers with families in poverty choose yeshiva over work draft deferments subsidize yeshiva attendance yet attendance typically continues long after exemption fertility rates are high tfr 7 6 and rising a social interaction approach explains these anomalies yeshiva attendance signals commitment to the community which provides mutual insurance to members prohibitions strengthen communities by effectively taxing real wages inducing high fertility historically the incursion of markets into traditional communities produces ultra orthodoxy subsidies induce dramatic reductions in labor supply and unparalleled increases in fertility illustrating extreme responses social groups may have to interventions

sustainable energy prices and growth comparing macroeconomic and backcasting scenarios how do results from the sustainability research world of backcasting relate to the macroeconomic scenarios used for policy evaluation and planning the answer is that they don t mostly they come

incorporating reference price effects into a theory of consumer choice although there has been a good deal of research on incorporating the effects of reference price formation into empirical models of consumer buying behavior little formal theoretical work had been undertaken to date this paper incorporates reference price effects into the traditional economic theory of consumer choice and examines the effects of reference price formation on the results of the traditional theory its marketing implications and the implications for empirical models which examine the effects of reference price formation on actual consumer behavior several implications of the theoretical model are empirically tested using weekly retail egg sales data from southern california this analysis indicates that reference price formation does have significant effects on consumer behavior furthermore these effects are asymmetric with consumers two and a half times more responsive to egg price increases that are in excess of the reference price than they are to comparable egg price decreases

the impact of heterogeneity in purchase timing and price responsiveness on estimates of sticker shock effects the notion that individuals have an internal reference price against which they compare observed prices is well supported by several psychological theories empirically several papers in the marketing literature employing scanner panel data have modeled the impact of reference prices on brand choice via the sticker shock formulation in which consumers evaluate choice alternatives using differences between shelf prices and reference prices most of the studies reported thus far have not accounted for heterogeneity in price response among consumers and have typically imputed reference prices from the shelf prices of brands that a consumer is supposed to have observed on previous purchases in the category since category marketing activity can differentially affect the purchase timing of households we argue that this measure of reference price may follow certain systematic patterns across consumers and when combined with unaccounted for price response heterogeneity may result in a spurious sticker shock effect specifically we show that estimates of sticker shock are biased upward if households that are price sensitive in the brand choice decision are also more responsive to category promotion activity in their purchase timing decision we discuss some general conditions under which the bias occurs and conduct a simulation experiment to confirm our specific hypotheses our simulation results show that changes in purchase timing are a critical determinant of the bias in the sticker shock effect we also show that unaccounted for price response heterogeneity can in itself result in a biased sticker shock parameter however this requires very large differences in price sensitivities across consumers far greater than what is normally observed we develop a hierarchical bayes version of the nested logit model which models heterogeneity via individual level parameters in a continuous random effects framework we estimate the model on scanner panel data from the yogurt and ketchup categories we find in both categories that the 95 probability interval of the posterior distribution of the mean sticker shock coefficient contains the value zero therefore at least for the data used in this study there is no evidence for the sticker shock effect at the aggregate level in contrast the corresponding coefficient from a standard model which ignores this heterogeneity is highly significant and supports the existence of a possibly spurious sticker shock effect consistent with our explanation of the underlying cause of the bias households that are more price sensitive in the choice decision are also found to be more responsive to category promotion activity in their decision to purchase in the category the results highlight the measurement problems associated with imputing reference prices from past prices since the frequency duration and price level of a retailer s promotional program depend on its size and prevalence accurate estimates of the sticker shock effect are essential for formulating optimal promotion strategies an adequate accounting of consumer heterogeneity is critical to this effort

dynamic stochastic inventory management with reference price effects we analyze the joint inventory and pricing decisions of a firm when demand depends on not only the current selling price but also a memory based reference price and customers are loss averse the presence of reference price effect leads to a nonconcave one period expected revenue in price and reference price we introduce a transformation technique that allows us to prove under some mild assumptions the optimality of a reference price dependent base stock list price policy which is characterized by a base stock level and a target reference price in addition we show that the target reference price is increasing in the reference price but except in the loss neutral case the base stock level is not monotone in the reference price we also show that in the steady state of the model with the reference price effect the optimal price is lower while the optimal base stock level is higher than their counterparts in the model without the reference price effect

specifying price judgments with range frequency theory in models of brand choice abstract to construct a price judgment consumers compare a focal price with one or more reference prices however reference price operationalizations in the brand choice literature use single point summary measures that cannot account for several distributional effects to account for effects beyond the first moment of the reference price distribution the authors specify price judgments in models of brand choice in accordance with range frequency theory the findings indicate that range frequency price judgments provide a more complete specification of reference price effects and become more important with an increase in the second and third moments of a reference price distribution the data also indicate that range effects are stronger for coupon users and frequency effects are stronger for consumers exposed to a trend of prices the results have several implications for choice modeling pricing theory and pricing strategy

multiattribute loss aversion and reference dependence evidence from the performing arts industry we study the prevalence of multiattribute loss aversion and reference effects in a revenue management setting based on data of individual level purchases over a series of concert performances the reference dependence that drives consumer choice is not only based on the price but also on observed sales as a fraction of the seating capacity during their past visits we find that consumers suffer from loss aversion on both prices and seats sold consumers incur significant utility loss when prices are above their references or when the actual seat sales are lower than their references we suggest pricing policies that can address consumer decisions driven by such reference dependence and loss aversion this paper was accepted by vishal gaur operations management

the design of an environmental index of sustainable food consumption a pilot study using supermarket data monitoring of the environmental impacts of consumption is necessary for the evaluation of current performance and to support the understanding of how initiatives for change can be implemented we discuss design issues and methodology for an environmentally sensitive shopper ess index to measure the environmental sustainability of food consumption at the household level the ess index is based on revealed consumer preferences and uses scanner data provided by the largest uk food retailer as a pilot illustration of the methodology we use the index to identify environmentally critical periods during the calendar year

personal liberties religiosity and effort abstract in this paper we study the role of religiosity in influencing the choice of labor effort many religions promote restrictions on personal liberties such as divorce abortion gender parity or gay marriage often regulated by law we assume that the higher the degree of religiosity of an individual the less he enjoys such personal liberties and the less he likes to be in a society which allows them while seculars enjoy such liberties by standard consumer theory the differential valuation induced by religiosity influences individual decisions on other dimensions as well notably labour supply we show empirically that this nexus holds and that the size of the effect is large specifically we construct an index of personal liberties and find solid evidence in support of the joint effect of religiosity and liberties on labor effort our empirical results indicate that religiosity interacted with the legal level of liberties has a significant and strong negative effect on labor supply and that increases in the cap on liberties have a negative effect on the labor supply of the religious individuals and positive for the secular

political economy of climate change ecological destruction and uneven development abstract the purpose of this paper is to analyze climate change and ecological destruction through the prism of the core general principles of political economy the paper starts with the principle of historical specificity and the various waves of climate change through successive cooler and warmer periods on planet earth including the most recent climate change escalation through the open circuit associated with the treadmill of production then we scrutinize the principle of contradiction associated with the disembedded economy social costs entropy and destructive creation the principle of uneven development is then explored through core periphery dynamics ecologically unequal exchange metabolic rift and asymmetric global in justice the principles of circular and cumulative causation ccc and uncertainty are then related to climate change dynamics through non linear transformations complex interaction of dominant variables and threshold effects climate change and ecological destruction are impacting on most areas especially the periphery earlier and more intensely than previously thought likely a political economy approach to climate change is able to enrich the analysis of ecological economics and put many critical themes in a broad context

belief in a just world and redistributive politics international surveys reveal wide differences between the views held in different countries concerning the causes of wealth or poverty and the extent to which people are responsible for their own fate at the same time social ethnographies and experiments by psychologists demonstrate individuals recurrent struggle with cognitive dissonance as they seek to maintain and pass on to their children a view of the world where effort ultimately pays off and everyone gets their just deserts this paper offers a model that helps explain i why most people feel such a need to believe in a just world ii why this need and therefore the prevalence of the belief varies considerably across countries iii the implications of this phenomenon for international differences in political ideology levels of redistribution labor supply aggregate income and popular perceptions of the poor the model shows in particular how complementarities arise endogenously between individuals desired beliefs or ideological choices resulting in two equilibria a first american equilibrium is characterized by a high prevalence of just world beliefs among the population and relatively laissez faire policies the other european equilibrium is characterized by more pessimism about the role of effort in economic outcomes and a more extensive welfare state more generally the paper develops a theory of collective beliefs and motivated cognitions including those concerning money consumption and happiness as well as religion

does religion distract the poor income and issue voting around the world this article asks whether religion undermines the negative relationship between income and left voting that is assumed in standard political economy models of democracy analysis of cross country survey data reveals that this correlation disappears among religious individuals in countries that use proportional representation this is the case in large part because there is a moral values dimension that has a correlation with income that is equal in magnitude but has the opposite sign as the economic dimension and the votes of the religious are better explained by their positions on moral than economic issues especially in countries with multiparty systems the authors conclude by discussing implications for theories of redistribution

the role of explanations and need for uniqueness in consumer decision making unconventional choices based on reasons this research investigates the interaction between a very common task explaining decisions and an individual difference need for uniqueness nfu on buyer decision making we propose that explaining or providing reasons for decisions shifts the focus from the choice of options to the choice of reasons furthermore buyers who explain their decisions and have high nfu tend to select unconventional reasons and are consequently more likely to make unconventional choices these predictions were supported in a series of studies involving choices between conventional and less conventional options such as whether to switch to a brand on sale whether to select a compromise option and whether to accept a gamble with a possible loss the findings also indicate that the effects of providing reasons are not due to attempts to act rationally or to concerns about being evaluated three boundary conditions on the generalization that high nfu consumers who provide reasons tend to make unconventional choices we

econ 101 in need of a sustainability transition abstract ecological economics was one of the first of a number of scientific communities to develop transdisciplinary understandings of the sustainability challenges faced by society as a field with economics in its name ecological economics differs from the other communities and should face the particular task of contributing to the development of a new economics for economics to promote sustainability transitions it is not enough to call for more pluralism a new basic structure of economic knowledge should be developed in order to provide the foundation for a sustainability transition to econ 101 this paper argues that the performativity of economics needs to change and proposes a way of structuring econ 101

an empirical analysis of latitude of price acceptance in consumer package goods scanner panel data analyses for sweetened and unsweetened drink categories with four brands in each support the presence of a region of price insensitivity around a reference price the analyses also suggest that consumers with higher average reference price have a wider latitude of price acceptance consumers with a higher frequency of purchase i e shorter average interpurchase time interval are found to have a narrower latitude of price acceptance because they are more aware of the range of price distributions finally consumers with a higher average brand loyalty have a wider latitude of price acceptance demonstrating greater tolerance of price fluctuations

an empirical comparison of the validity of a neural net based multinomial logit choice model to alternative model specifications applications of choice models to brand purchase data as a rule specify a linear deterministic utility function we estimate deterministic utility by means of a neural net able to approximate any continuous multivariate function and its derivatives to a desired level of precision we compare this model to related alternatives both with linear and nonlinear utility functions alternatives with nonlinear utility functions are based on generalized additive modeling and taylor series expansion respectively we analyze purchase data of the six largest brands in terms of market share for two product groups neural choice models outperform the alternative models studied w r t posterior probabilities they also attain the best crossvalidated log likelihood values these results demonstrate that the increase in complexity caused by the neural choice model is justified by higher validity in the empirical study the neural choice models imply elasticities different from those obtained by linear utility multinomial logit models for several predictors neural choice models discover inversely s shaped saturation and interaction effects on utility

the value of time ten studies are used to document that time is valued in accordance with a double kinked value function there is a zone of indifference for small time gains losses increasing marginal utility disutility for moderate time gains losses and diminishing marginal utility disutility for large time gains losses moderate amounts of time exhibit increasing marginal utility disutility because larger blocks of time provide a more diverse set of usage opportunities it is only when it is difficult to imagine how more less time would be beneficial detrimental that there is diminishing marginal utility disutility for time thus time valuation shows increasing marginal utility when there is a time deficit but diminishing marginal utility when there is a time surplus these findings have implications for how other resources might be valued

why the poor do not expropriate the rich an old argument in new garb we consider a political economy with two partisan parties each party represents a given constituency of voters if one party labour represents poor voters and the other christian democrats rich voters if a redistributive tax policy is the only issue and if there are no incentive considerations then in equilibrium the party representing the poor will propose a tax rate of unity if however there are two issues tax policy and religion for instance then this is not generally the case the analysis shows that if a simple condition on the distribution of voter preferences holds then as the salience of the non economic issue increases the tax rate proposed by labour in equilibrium will fall possibly even to zero even though a majority of the population may have an ideal tax rate of unity 1998 elsevier science s a all rights reserved

church state separation and redistribution we analyze how religion affects voting and redistribution our model directs attention away from the particular faith belief or risk attitudes of religious individuals and emphasizes instead how organized religion opens the door to standard group based distributive politics we argue that organized religion makes it possible for the rich and the religious poor to form electoral coalitions in favor of low taxes and limited redistribution such electoral coalitions form out of simple material self interest and they occur at the expense of the secular poor however the material reward to the religious poor from supporting such electoral coalitions depends on the institutional context as state support for religion increases poor religious voters have greater incentives to vote with poor secular voters in favor of parties that support high taxes the analysis therefore highlights the possibilities of understanding how religion affects politics without asserting that religious individuals differ systematically from secular ones in their values or preferences

national natural capital accounting with the ecological footprint concept abstract there is a growing consensus among natural and social scientists that sustainability depends on maintaining natural capital however progress to put this ecological condition to practice has been slow not least because of the inability of making these objectives measurable therefore to overcome this obstacle assessment frameworks for natural capital are needed this study presents a simple framework for national and global natural capital accounting it demonstrates using the example of italy an accounting framework which tracks national economies energy and resource throughput and translates them into biologically productive areas necessary to produce these flows this calculation has been applied to over 52 countries with this framework based on the ecological footprint concept human consumption can be compared with natural capital production at the global and national level using existing data

an empirical analysis of the relationship between brand loyalty and consumer price elasticity this empirical paper explores the relationship between consumer brand preference or loyalty and price elasticity in purchase behavior this behavior is conceptualized as resulting from two distinct but related decisions namely a brand choice decision and a purchase quantity decision we argue that loyal consumers will be less price sensitive in the choice decision than nonloyal consumers however this direction is expected to be reversed in the quantity decision with loyal consumers expected to be more price sensitive than nonloyal consumers we model the choice and quantity decisions jointly using the limited dependent variable framework described in krishnamurthi and raj the data used are diary panel data on a frequently purchased product class from burke and caffeinated ground coffee scanner data from iri we show that loyals are less price sensitive than nonloyals in the choice decision but more price sensitive in the quantity decision managerial implications of the differing elasticities are disc

reference effects of price and promotion on brand choice behavior when consumers are exposed to pricing and promotional activity by frequently purchased packaged goods they may develop expectations that are used as points of reference in evaluating future activi

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

are we consuming too much this paper articulates and applies frameworks for examining whether consumption is excessive we consider two criteria for the possible excessiveness or insufficiency of current consumption one is an intertemporal utility maximization criterion actual current consumption is deemed excessive if it is higher than the level of current consumption on the consumption path that maximizes the present discounted value of utility the other is a sustainability criterion which requires that current consumption be consistent with non declining living standards over time we extend previous theoretical approaches by offering a formula for the sustainability criterion that accounts for population growth and technological change in applying this formula we find that some poor regions of the world are failing to meet the sustainability criterion in these regions genuine wealth per capita is falling as investments in human and manufactured capital are not sufficient to offset the depletion of natural capital

commercial use of upc scanner data industry and academic perspectives the authors report the findings from an exploratory investigation of the use of upc scanner data in the consumer packaged goods industry in the u s the study examines the practitioner community s view of the use of scanner data and compares these views with academic research forty one executives from ten data suppliers packaged goods manufacturers and consulting firms participated in wide ranging in person interviews conducted by the authors the interviews sought to uncover key questions practitioners would like to answer with scanner data how scanner data is applied to these questions and the industry s perspective regarding the success that the use of scanner data has had in each area the authors then compare and contrast practitioners views regarding the resolution of each issue with academic research this produces a 2 2 classification of each question as resolved or unresolved from the perspectives of industry and academia along the diagonal of the 2 2 issues viewed as unresolved by both groups are important topics for future research issues deemed resolved by both groups are correspondingly of lower priority in the off diagonal cells industry and academics disagree these topics should be given priority for discussion information exchange and possible further research practitioners reported that scanner data analysis has had the most success and been most widely adopted for decision making in consumer promotions i e coupons trade promotions and pricing for example logit and regression models applied to scanner data have revealed very low average consumer response to coupons which has directly led to reduced couponing activity managers also reported high levels of comfort with and impact from analyses of trade promotions and price elasticities while industry views most of the issues in these areas to be resolved academic research raises concerns about a number of practices in common commercial use these include price threshold analysis and trade promotion evaluation using baseline and incremental sales in product strategy advertising and distribution management practitioners reported that the use of scanner data has had more limited development success and impact in the case of new product decisions scanner data use has been slow to develop due to the inherent limitations of historicaldata for these decisions and a heavy reliance on traditional primary research methods in advertising scanner data is widely analyzed with models but confusion among practitioners is very high due to controversies about methods e g what level of data aggregation is best and conflicting results in distribution and retail management scanner data use has tremendous potential but a mixed track record to date thus practitioners view the use of scanner data as unresolved for most issues in product strategy advertising and distribution this view is largely though not entirely consistent with academic research which has only begun to address many of the key questions raised by practitioners in light of the large number of unresolved issues and mixed record of scanner data use to date the authors offer aseries of specific recommendations for immediate and long term research priorities that are likely to have the greatest impact on commercial utilization of upc scanner data topics of immediate priority include price thresholds and gaps baseline and incremental sales base price elasticity competitive reactions measurement of advertising effects management of brand equity rationalization of product assortments and category management long term priorities include a greater emphasis on profitability versus sales or market share developing prescriptive models versus descriptive models and the need for industry standards

the effects of consumers price expectations on sellers dynamic pricing strategies abstract the authors propose a dynamic market equilibrium model to investigate how consumers form price expectations and how these expectations influence their sequential search behavior and prices in the market they derive a perfect bayesian nash equilibrium and show that whereas higher current period prices induce search consumers who observe higher historical prices form higher price expectations become more pessimistic and search less furthermore the authors show that when prices increase as a result of an increase in marginal costs consumers respond by searching more which then leads to higher prices and instant price adjustment in contrast because consumer search activities decline when prices fall sellers may respond by lowering their prices just enough to dampen consumers search tendencies when costs decrease the authors test their theoretical model and its implications and find support for it in a series of simulated market experiments

are the disabled less loss averse evidence from a natural policy experiment i introduction a large literature points to differences in cognitive bias among diverse populations according to lunn and lyons 2010 lower income less educated and older populations are more prone to decision making that deviates from economic rationality also see mather et al 2012 and tymula et al 2013 however as discussed by lunn and lyons 2010 little is known about the decision making biases of other vulnerable populations notably the physically disabled or implications thereof for their economic well being in this study we examine differences in cognitive bias and behavioral heuristics among nondisabled and physically disabled populations specifically using data from a unique israeli government natural policy experiment we assess loss aversion among nondisabled and disabled populations in the decision to purchase a home our empirical tests are motivated by previous findings in physiology and psychology showing that disabled persons often develop physical and mental mechanisms to help compensate for disabilities according to bishop 2005 disabled persons utilize such coping mechanisms to minimize gaps caused by their impairments as further suggested by devins et al 1983 yoshida 1993 livneh and antonak 1997 and bishop and feist price 2002 such strategies and mechanisms allow disabled persons increased control over their health and environment specifically nirje 1972 sands and wehmeyer 1996 and wehmeyer 1998 suggest that disabled populations seek compensatory mechanisms to enhance autonomy efficacy self reliance and self management among noteworthy examples cattaneo and vecchi 2011 summarize a long series of studies indicating the development of compensatory mechanisms among visually impaired persons results of those analyses indicate enhanced nonvisual perceptual sensorial and cortical level abilities among the visually disabled e g amedi et al 2003 crawford et al 2008 hamilton pascual leone and schlaug 2004 hull and mason 1995 muchnick et al 1991 roder rosier and neville 2001 niemeyer and starlinger 1981 in other recent work keysar hayakawa and an 2012 provide evidence of compensatory cognitive mechanisms among persons with language impairments results of experimental analysis indicate diminished decision biases and reduced loss aversion among non native language speakers the authors hypothesize that use of a foreign language reduces the opportunity for spontaneous response and results in a more consciously measured and considered mode of thinking 1 as with visually or language impaired persons the compensatory mechanisms acquired by physically disabled persons may extend beyond the psychophysiological domain to include cognitive adjustments indeed as discussed by stanovich and west 2000 lower levels of cognitive bias could compensate for physical disability and provide for improved coping prospects over the past decade the israeli government sought to privatize public housing via an offer to sell rental units to tenants at a discount from the market price the algorithms utilized by the government to determine the magnitudes of the price reductions varied over time furthermore the price reductions were not forecastable among targeted program participants tenants had the opportunity to either accept or decline government sales offers extended at each successive program iteration our research employs survival analysis to specify and empirically test whether physically nondisabled and disabled tenants exhibited different degrees of loss aversion behavior in their home purchase decisions 2 as first described by kahneman and tversky 1979 loss aversion pertains to household behavior when the aggravation that one experiences in losing a sum of money appears to be greater than the pleasure associated with gaining the same amount p 279 in experimental work tversky and kahneman 1992 find that under even odds for winning and losing the gain should be at least twice as large as the loss for a prospect to be acceptable whereas putler 1992 finds for example that consumers are two and a half times more responsive to price increases that are in excess of the reference price than they are to comparable price declines

global inequities and emissions in western european textiles and clothing consumption abstract rising demand for cheaper textiles and clothing in western europe is well documented as are changes in the textiles and clothing industry s globalised production structure we apply a sub systems global multi regional input output accounting framework to examine the sustainability implications of meeting western european demand for textiles and clothing goods between 1995 and 2009 our framework estimates environmental and socio economic impacts of consumption in a consistent manner and shows where these occur both geographically and in the value chain the results demonstrate that western european textiles and clothing consumption remains dependent on low cost labour from brazil russia india and china bric principally in the textiles and clothing and agricultural sectors conversely we show that the wage rate for bric workers in the global value chains serving western european textiles and clothing consumption has risen over time but remains low relative to the wage rate paid to western european workers likewise we find that profits are increasingly generated within bric and that they are now at comparable levels to those generated in western europe we find a slight overall decrease in the amount of carbon emitted in the production of textiles and clothing goods for western europe between 1995 and 2009 however the trend is not linear and the importance of different underlying drivers varies over the timeseries we conclude by discussing the implications of these results for a more sustainable future for western european textiles and clothing consumption

correlates of price acceptability the cognitive tradeoff between price and product quality is used as a basis for hypothesizing interrelationships between two individual difference variables and two price related responses results of a correlational study support the hypothesis of an inverse relationship between price consciousness and product involvement and the hypotheses that price consciousness and product involvement have opposite implications for several price related constructs results also indicate a positive relationship between price acceptability level and the width of the latitude of price acceptance

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

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

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

a model of political competition with citizen candidates the authors develop a model of electoral competition in which citizens choose whether or not to run as candidates a winner implements her favorite policy the equilibrium number of candidates depends negatively on the cost of running and positively on the benefits of winning for some parameter values all equilibria under plurality rule have exactly two candidates whose positions are distinct two candidate elections are more likely under plurality rule than under a runoff system the candidates positions are less differentiated under a runoff system there exist equilibria under both systems in which some candidates have no chance of winning

liberte egalite religiosite abstract we study the effect of religiosity on the political choices over redistribution and the legal restrictions on personal liberties we assume that the more religious an individual is i the less he enjoys the use of liberties prohibited by his religion and ii the higher the negative externality experienced when others practice those liberties we show that legal restrictions on liberties has an impact on income inequality we find that when the religious cleavage in society is large high intolerance due to negative externalities leads to a political outcome consisting of repression of liberties and relatively low taxes

the cross price effect on willingness to pay estimates in open ended contingent valuation abstract previous literature has shown that potential buyers use a reference price or product to form their opinion about the value of a new product therefore the pricing decision is an interactive process we investigate the two generalizations of the cross price effect the neighborhood price effect and the asymmetric price effect on consumer willingness to pay wtp for multiple similar products in an open ended contingent valuation context results show that the cross price effect on wtp is prominent with the neighborhood price effect holding in contingent valuation no conclusions are reached about the asymmetric price effect

understanding reference price shoppers a within and cross category analysis abstract the authors attempt to draw profiles of reference price shoppers specifically the authors study how selected factors that affect brand choice are correlated with consumer sensitivity to gains and losses with respect to internal reference prices they also study the interaction between sociodemographics and gain and loss sensitivity furthermore the authors analyze cross category correlations in gain and loss sensitivity to shed light on their individual and category specific characters in three categories the results show significant heterogeneity in loss sensitivity among consumers and indicate that loss sensitivity is greater and more heterogeneous than gain sensitivity across categories the results show that loss sensitive shoppers are less influenced by past brand use and that both loss and gain sensitive shoppers more sensitive to price display and feature than the average consumer loss sensitive households tend to be larger and their heads are less likely to be fully employed

the sufficiency strategy would rich world frugality lower environmental impact abstract one alleged weapon against unsustainable environmental impact is for the wealthy to consume less this sufficiency strategy is to complement the efficiency strategy of lowering ratios of resource inputs to economic outputs the former would reduce the affluence factor in i pat the latter the technology factor that the latter strategy suffers from a consumption rebound is widely recognized this paper identifies a similar rebound when the affluence factor is autonomously lowered the lower initial demand lowers prices which in turn stimulates new demand by others the strategy moreover addresses only the rich raising questions of its theoretical maximum efficacy its proponents usually conflate frugality with the north south dichotomy and intra generational with inter generational equity moreover there are difficulties with the supporting arguments that frugality is good for one s own sake as well as for the environment and that the rich should lead the way to living more lightly personal behaviour change is furthermore not a substitute for international political efforts finally since all changes in right side factors of the i pat equation change other right side factors such indirect attacks on impact should be abandoned in favor of supply and emissions quotas