a short run solution to the power crisis of pakistan abstract pakistan is in a deep power crisis since 2008 which the government is trying to control by adding new generation capacity this strategy however will not be helpful in the short run the only way the power crisis can be controlled or mitigated in the short run is to efficiently utilize the available resources government lacks such a strategy at this point the paper provides such a strategy by setting up a power sector model with multiple modules of generation transmission and distribution the model provides an efficient way of utilizing the available resources and can be used to perform simulations at different stages of the supply chain the results of model show that if the given resources are utilized efficiently the power generation increases by 3222 gwh or 5 percent of the current output and the revenue increases by 945 million or 12 percent the extra generated power decrease the cost of power production by 0 52 kwh cents and reduces the power load shedding for 2 3 h these outcomes can significantly relieve the sector and the people of pakistan the results of the model have important policy implications on working of the sector and circular debt reduction

position auctions with consumer search this paper examines a model in which advertisers bid for sponsored link positions on a search engine the value advertisers derive from each position is endogenized as coming from sales to a population of consumers who make rational inferences about rm qualities and search optimally consumer search strategies equilibrium bidding and the welfare benets of position auctions are analyzed implications for reserve prices and a number of other auction design questions are discussed

distributed energy resource system optimisation using mixed integer linear programming in this study a mixed integer linear programming milp model is created for the design i e technology selection unit sizing unit location and distribution network structure of a distributed energy system that meets the electricity and heating demands of a cluster of commercial and residential buildings while minimising annual investment and operating cost the model is used to analyse the economic and environmental impacts of distributed energy systems at the neighbourhood scale in comparison to conventional centralised energy generation systems additionally the influence of energy subsidies such as the uk s renewable heat incentives and feed in tariffs is analysed to determine if they have the desired effect of increasing the economic competitiveness of renewable energy systems

competition under consumer loss aversion we address the effect of expectation based consumer loss aversion on firm strategy in imperfect competition consumers are fully informed about match value and price at the moment of purchase however some consumers are initially uninformed about their tastes and form a reference point consisting of an expected match value and price distribution whereas others are perfectly informed all the time we show that if firms have symmetric costs a larger share of informed consumers leads to a more competitive outcome the reverse holds if cost asymmetry in duopoly is sufficiently large

behavioral contract theory abstract this review provides a critical survey of psychology and economics behavioral economics research in contract theory first i introduce the theories of individual decision making most

income inequality in france 1901 1998 this paper uses data from income tax returns 1915 98 wage tax returns 1919 98 and inheritance tax returns 1902 94 in order to compute homogeneous yearly estimates of income wage and wealth inequality for twentieth century france the main conclusion is that the decline in income inequality that took place during the first half of the century was mostly accidental in france and possibly in a number of other countries as well wage inequality has been extremely stable in the long run and the secular decline in income inequality is for the most part a capital income phenomenon holders of large fortunes were badly hurt by major shocks during the 1914 45 period and they were never able to fully recover from these shocks probably because of the dynamic effects of progressive taxation on capital accumulation and pretax income inequality

navigating the paradox of openness in energy and transport innovation insights from eight corporate clean technology research and development case studies using an inductive case study approach drawn from original interview data this article investigates the innovation approaches among a sample of international energy companies or corporate firms it first presents a conceptual framework synthesized from the business studies entrepreneurship evolutionary economics innovation studies management science organization studies political science and sociology literature this framework suggests that corporate approaches to clean technology innovation will cut across the four dimensions of organizational multiplicity and stakeholder involvement information sharing coordination and control and market orientation it then explores how eight firms the algal carbon conversion flagship and aurora algae biofuel dong and statoil carbon capture and storage tesla and volkswagen electric vehicles and siemens and vestas offshore wind turbines approach clean technology development with open innovation attributes mixed with closed attributes although the study finds striking similarities among the particular approaches embraced by each corporate actor it also notes that approaches are technology and firm specific and the potential for different permutations leads to an almost endless number of possible stylistic combinations the innovation profiles depicted also reveal conflict and competition among various stakeholders the implication being that corporate innovation in the energy sector remains a conflicted disjointed and messy process

reputation and prices on the e market evidence from a major french platform we use an exhaustive data set from one of france s largest e commerce platforms priceminister com to estimate a statistical causal effect of a seller s reputation rating and size on transaction prices we go beyond the results currently available by tackling the issue of seller unobserved heterogeneity and the dynamics of reputation in price equations we can also produce results for a large range of product categories books cds video games or dvds product conditions used or new and seller types individual or professional sellers our results show large scale empirical evidence of a significant positive and strong effect of seller reputation on prices

are rich people smarter abstract we formulate a general stochastic process of wealth accumulation by capital investment and analyze the conditions required to ensure convergence to the empirically observed pareto wealth distribution while homogeneous investment talent leads to the pareto distribution under very general conditions even a mild degree of differential investment talent results in a non pareto wealth distribution this finding suggests that chance rather than differential investment talent is the dominant factor in the process of wealth accumulation by financial investment our findings conform with market efficiency and may have implications regarding the origins the economic significance and the social desirability of wealth inequality at the high wealth range

energy production system optimization evidence from pakistan abstract the ongoing energy crisis in pakistan and the dependency on thermal electricity generation has contributed to the necessity to optimize energy production system the expensive thermal electricity and inability to recover its cost gives unprecedented rise to the electricity tariffs in this study optimization of the energy production system has been performed using linear programing model as the high cost of electricity generation has been found as the root cause of energy crises the objective function of the proposed model is cost minimization that will also reduce the circular debt specifically it has examined the optimum proportion of energy production from each available source under two different scenarios the first scenario considers that the existing system should be used at its maximum capacity in the second scenario seventy percent utilization of power plants has been examined the second scenario summarizes the optimum mix of energy production which minimizes the cost of electricity production the differential cost that is payable by the government as a subsidy is also compensated similarly it reduces circular debt that is a bottleneck between power generation companies and oil supply companies thus the proposed model has a tendency to minimize the cost of energy production and further reduce circular debt as well as the burden of a subsidy on the government the study specifies the problems confronting pakistan s energy sector and identifies the key elements of a potential policy response to address the country s severe power crisis

price directed consumer search abstract we extend stahl s 1989 model to a setting with differentiated products to study the effects of price directed consumer search consumers engage in costly search to find out whether products meet their needs consumer search is directed by prices when they are observable before search in contrast to the case in which prices are discovered only after search where search is naturally random the equilibrium under price directed search differs substantially from that under random search despite certain similarities we show that as search costs decrease sales become more likely and firms earn higher expected profits under price directed search whereas the opposite holds under random search moreover compared with random search under price directed search firms expected profits are always lower but consumer surplus and total welfare are higher provided that the search cost is sufficiently small

search theoretic models of the labor market a survey we survey the literature on search theoretic models of the labor market we show how this approach addresses many issues including the following why do workers sometimes choose to remain unemployed what determines the lengths of employment and unemployment spells how can there simultaneously exist unemployed workers and unfilled vacancies what determines aggregate unemployment and vacancies how can homogeneous workers earn different wages what are the tradeoffs firms face from different wages how do wages and turnover interact what determines efficient turnover we discuss various modeling choices concerning wage determination and the meeting process including recent models of directed search

internet advertising and the generalized second price auction selling billions of dollars worth of keywords we investigate the generalized second price gsp auction a new mechanism used by search engines to sell online advertising although gsp looks similar to the vickrey clarke groves vcg mechanism its properties are very different unlike the vcg mechanism gsp generally does not have an equilibrium in dominant strategies and truth telling is not an equilibrium of gsp to analyze the properties of gsp we describe the generalized english auction that corresponds to gsp and show that it has a unique equilibrium this is an ex post equilibrium with the same payoffs to all players as the dominant strategy equilibrium of vcg

secular changes in wealth inequality and inheritance data suggest that the distribution of wealth among households in the usa and uk has become more equal over the last century though at least for the usa the pattern may have reversed recently this paper shows that a model in which all households save for life cycle reasons and some for dynastic purposes as well offers a possible or partial explanation the model predicts rising cross sectional equality of wealth when longevity increases there may also be implications about very recent changes expansion of social security programmes and government deficits can lead toward more wealth inequality slower growth may do the same

prominence complexity and pricing this paper analyzes prominence in a homogeneous product market where two firms simultaneously choose both prices and price complexity levels complexity limits competing offers comparability and results in consumer confusion confused consumers are more likely to buy from the prominent firm in equilibrium there is dispersion in both prices and price complexity the nature of equilibrium depends on prominence compared to its rival the prominent firm makes higher profit associates a smaller price range with lowest complexity puts lower probability on lowest complexity and sets a higher average price however higher prominence may benefit consumers and conditional on choosing lowest complexity the prominent firm s average price is lower which is consistent with confused consumers bias

the dynamics of electricity demand in pakistan a panel cointegration analysis abstract this paper examines the dynamics of electricity demand in pakistan at the aggregate and sectoral levels over the period 1978 2012 panel cointegration test and fully modified ordinary least squares method is employed to determine the long run relationship between electricity consumption real income real price of electricity and domestic price of non energy products the results reveal that electricity demand is more responsive to changes in income than changes in prices at the aggregate and disaggregate levels short run and long run income elasticities are positive and statistically significant supporting the conservation hypothesis it appears from the results that long run price elasticities are negative and significant at the aggregate level and for the agriculture commercial residential sectors and public utilities the short run price elasticities are significant but low in magnitude which implies that changes in electricity price exert minimal effect on the electricity consumption in pakistan the domestic price of non energy products is positive and significant for aggregate sample in the short run the domestic price of non energy products exert significant negative positive impact on electricity demand in the agriculture industrial sectors the results thus provide important information to the agents operating in the electricity market regarding the income and pricing policies and helps in planning the future strategy of electricity demand management

corporate venturing and value creation a review and proposed framework abstract over the past decade companies worldwide have used corporate venturing cv as a means of revitalizing their operations building new capabilities and achieving strategic renewal creating value for shareholders business interest in cv has stimulated academic interest in the topic resulting in a rapidly growing but fragmented body of literature despite the growing international scholarly interest in cv researchers have devoted little effort to integrating prior findings in a cumulative fashion as a result studies do not build upon one another making it difficult to gauge the progress being made in addressing the fundamental research questions related to cv in this paper we examine the literature on cv seeking to synthesize integrate and link its key findings to do so we analyze this literature over the past decade to identify its major themes and research findings setting the stage for greater coherence in future research on cv we give special attention to the challenges and rewards of theory building in future cv research our review clearly shows that cv is an area of scholarly inquiry that has important implications for managerial practice

wealth distribution with random discount factors abstract to explain the pareto tail behavior empirically observed in wealth distributions the quantitative macro literature has occasionally assumed that agents have random discount factors this paper formally proves that the stationary wealth distribution in a simple huggett model with random discounting has power law tails and characterizes the pareto exponents analytically i find that in general there is no clear relationship between the return on wealth and inequality and that the pareto exponent is highly sensitive to the persistence of the discount factor process i also provide a practical guidance for how to characterize the pareto exponents in richer models

overcoming electricity crisis in pakistan a review of sustainable electricity options abstract pakistan is facing severe electricity supply shortages causing forced power outages over the last decade ranging from 8 to 12 h a day in urban areas and up to 18 h in rural areas the major causes behind the increasing gap between supply and demand are mainly increases in electricity demand on one hand and depleting energy resources and financial constraints on the other in this context the government has been taking various measures including a partial restructuring of the electricity sector under guidelines from international financing institutes at present the country is therefore not only facing a serious challenge of meeting the electricity demand but is also facing the challenge of ensuring energy security in the context of globally important climate change issues the role of policy makers at this stage is crucial for not only assessing and reviewing the current strategies to minimize the electricity supply and demand gap but also the need to develop future strategies ensuring affordable electricity with efficient generation transmission and distribution towards sustainable development in the country this paper provides a review of the current energy situation discussion on policy drivers and plans analysis of the issues of the power sector as well as recommendations for narrowing the electricity supply demand gap towards sustainable electricity for the country

against the wind bargaining recentralisation and wage inequality in norway 1987 91 in the late 1980s norway s labour market experienced similar supply and demand shifts for skills to other countries but unlike other oecd nations norway s wage setting system became more centralised the pay distribution in norway became more compressed at the bottom from 1987 to 1991 while low wage workers in other countries lost ground relatively using norwegian microdata for 1987 and 1991 i found that changing labour market prices helped cause this wage compression further the less educated had declining relative overall employment but increasing relative public sector employment both possible labour market responses to the wage compression

the distribution of ncome in the uk and oecd countries in the twentieth century distributional changes are an important part of the economic history of the oecd countries over the twentieth century in the uk income inequality in the 1970s was substantially lower than 40 years earlier and is now much higher than in 1979 the pattern of change in the usa has similarities to that in the uk but other countries have exhibited significant differences in order to explain diversity of experience over time and differences in income inequality across countries today we need to recognize that the distribution of income is subject to a variety of forces affecting earnings wealth and income these forces include the policy choices made by governments affecting market incomes and fiscal redistribution what we need to explain is why in some periods a number of these forces combine to produce episodes of rising or falling inequality any single theory such as that based on a global shift of demand away from unskilled workers cannot provide a fully adequate explanation

retrospectives pareto s law vilfredo pareto using data for england a number of italian cities several german states paris and peru plotted cumulative distributions of income for these countries on double logarithmic paper he claimed that in each case the result was a straight line with about the same slope thus he asserted a law of income distribution i discuss pareto s discovery of this relationship his theory of income distribution pareto s law and pareto optimality the attack on pareto s law the counterattack and the more recent literature for all the excesses of the paretian camp followers there remains the significant insight that the history of all hitherto existing society is a history of social hierarchies there is the feel of structure behind income distributions something is going on here

a model of biased intermediation this paper studies situations in which some consumers rely on a potentially biased intermediary to choose among downstream firms we introduce the notion that firms and consumers payoffs can be congruent or conflicting and show that this has important implications for the effects of bias under congruence the firm towards which the intermediary is biased invests more than its rival and consumers can be better off than under no bias under conflict bias hurts consumers and the favored firm charges higher prices we study various oft proposed policies for dealing with a biased intermediary and show that the efficacy of each intervention depends strongly on whether the environment exhibits congruence or conflict we discuss how the model relates to recent issues in online markets

contextual influences on the corporate entrepreneurship performance relationship a longitudinal analysis abstract over the past several years corporate entrepreneurship has been widely touted by executives and researchers alike as an effective means for revitalizing companies and improving their financial performance for the most part the call for greater entrepreneurial behavior on the part of established companies has been accepted on faith as an inherently desirable objective the implicit logic behind the pervasive belief in the value of corporate entrepreneurship seems to be that risk taking innovation and aggressive competitive action the key elements of entrepreneurial corporations will help in identifying and pursuing lucrative product market opportunities and in providing new bases for achieving superior competitive positions but what do we really know about the financial consequences of corporate entrepreneurship most of the evidence that corporate entrepreneurship pays off is anecdotal in nature or based on cross sectional studies that focus on the short term implications of entrepreneurial behaviors as such in a definitive sense we know very little about the financial consequences of corporate entrepreneurship in an attempt to improve our understanding of this issue this article describes a study of corporate entrepreneurship and its impact on company financial performance data were collected from three different samples over a seven year period to assess the longitudinal impact of corporate entrepreneurship on firm performance these samples consist of 24 medium sized manufacturing firms representing 14 industry segments 39 chemical companies and 45 fortune 500 industrial firms representing five industry segments data were gathered on each sample using both primary and secondary sources regression analysis was then used to analyze the data the results suggest that corporate entrepreneurship has a positive impact on financial measures of company performance this effect on performance which tends to be modest over the first few years increases over time suggesting that corporate entrepreneurship may indeed be a generally effective means for improving long term company financial performance moreover the results indicate that corporate entrepreneurship is a particularly effective practice among companies operating in hostile environments as opposed to benign environments the study has three principal implications for practicing managers first the study documents the general financial viability of engaging in corporate entrepreneurship this is not to suggest that corporate entrepreneurship is a panacea for improving financial performance however entrepreneurial behavior when considered on the whole i e across firms and industries is associated with superior financial performance second the study suggests a need to use a long term time horizon in order to adequately judge the financial consequences of corporate entrepreneurship the use of a shorter evaluation period may not allow sufficient time for entrepreneurial actions to have their full market and corresponding financial impact finally the study identifies the context specific character of effective entrepreneurial practice specifically corporate entrepreneurship appears to be a particularly effective strategic practice among firms operating in hostile business settings

advertising for attention in a consumer search model we model the idea that when consumers search for products they first visit the firm whose advertising is most salient the gains a firm derives from being visited early increase in search costs so equilibrium advertising increases as search costs rise as a result higher search costs may decrease both consumer welfare and firm profits we extend the basic model by allowing for firm heterogeneity in advertising costs firms that raise attention more easily advertise more but also charge lower prices and obtain higher profits as advertising cost asymmetries increase consumer surplus falls and aggregate profits rise

a search model of costly product returns abstract this paper analyses a market in which consumers buy horizontally differentiated products without knowing their exact valuations by paying return costs the consumers may return less preferred items and obtain refunds the consumers shop sequentially and their shopping strategy is similar to the search strategy of a consumer in a sequential costly search model thus the pricing strategies of firms are identical to those in a price directed sequential search model price competition is more intense and the symmetric equilibrium price is lower when returns are costlier as a result consumer surplus is increasing in the return cost

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

a position paradox in sponsored search auctions we study the bidding strategies of vertically differentiated firms that bid for sponsored search advertisement positions for a keyword at a search engine we explicitly model how consumers navigate and click on sponsored links based on their knowledge and beliefs about firm qualities our model yields several interesting insights a main counterintuitive result we focus on is the position paradox the paradox is that a superior firm may bid lower than an inferior firm and obtain a position below it yet it still obtains more clicks than the inferior firm under a pay per impression mechanism the inferior firm wants to be at the top where more consumers click on its link whereas the superior firm is better off by placing its link at a lower position because it pays a smaller advertising fee but some consumers will still reach it in search of the higher quality firm under a pay per click mechanism the inferior firm has an even stronger incentive to be at the top because now it only has to pay for the consumers who do not know the firms reputations and therefore can bid more aggressively interestingly as the quality premium for the superior firm increases and or if more consumers know the identity of the superior firm the incentive for the inferior firm to be at the top may increase contrary to conventional belief we find that the search engine may have the incentive to overweight the inferior firm s bid and strategically create the position paradox to increase overall clicks by consumers to validate our model we analyze a data set from a popular korean search engine firm and find that i a large proportion of auction outcomes in the data show the position paradox and ii sharp predictions from our model are validated in the data

search prominence and return costs abstract it is widely held that sellers prefer to appear early in a consumer s search but evidence suggests this need not be the case we develop a model which incorporates costly search and costly return and demonstrate that appearing later may be better when return is free prominence is desirable by standard logic however costly return induces a tradeoff it benefits an earlier seller by reducing the initial search but also benefits a later seller by preventing return conditional on search we show that for small search costs later is better whenever high outcomes have a low likelihood or whenever two independent match value draws are likely to be near one another later can still be better if sellers compete in prices prior to search finally with many sellers the optimal position may be first last or in between but earlier positions are favored as the number of sellers grows

family education and sources of wealth among the richest americans 1982 2012 we examine characteristics of the 400 wealthiest individuals in the u s over the past three decades as tabulated by forbes magazine and analyze which theories of increasing inequality are most consistent with these data the forbes 400 in recent years did not grow up as advantaged as in decades past they are more likely to have started their businesses and to have grown up upper middle class not wealthy today s forbes 400 were able to access education while young and apply their skills to the most scalable industries technology finance and mass retail most of the change occurred by 2001

integration and search engine bias competition authorities all over the world worry that integration between search engines mainly google and publishers could lead to abuses of dominant position in particular one concern is that of own content bias meaning that google would bias its rankings in favor of the publishers it owns or has an interest in to the detriment of competitors and users in order to investigate this issue we develop a theoretical framework in which the search engine i allocates users across publishers and ii competes with publishers to attract advertisers we show that the search engine is biased against publishers that display many ads even without integration although integration may lead to own content bias it can also reduce bias by increasing the value of a marginal consumer to the search engine integration also has a positive eect on users by reducing the nuisance costs due to excessive advertising its net eect is therefore ambiguous in general and we provide sucient conditions for it to be desirable or not

methodological and theoretical issues and advancements in cross cultural research this paper summarizes the issues and concerns of critics of cross cultural research and discusses how they are being addressed by researchers given the state of the art and the complexity of this field of research the author recommends more inductive research and the pursuit of appropriate but not overambitious sampling designs so as to increase our understanding of cultures and encourage the building of richer theory bases taking an optimistic view of the field the author predicts useful contributions by researchers which will enrich the art and science of cross cultural management

coordination economies advertising and search behavior in retail markets we introduce a model of the retail firm in which consumers and active firms benefit collectively from coordination of sales at fewer firms using this model we show that ostensibly uninformative advertising plays a key role in bringing about coordination economies by directing consumer search toward firms that offer the best deals optimal consumer search takes the form of a simple rule of thumb that uses observed advertising information to guide search both industry concentration and social surplus are higher in the presence of advertising relative to a no advertising benchmark jel d83 l15 many observed advertisements seem to be at odds with rational behavior in a variety of ads mostly on tv and radio multiproduct sellers provide little hard information choosing instead to impart only vague slogans that are suggestive of good deals examples are plentiful a hardware store

advertising for consideration abstract we analyze markets where firms competing on price advertise to increase the probability of entering consumers consideration sets we find that moderately costly advertising allows firms to raise prices and possibly profits by reducing the fraction of price conscious consumers and by segmenting the market according to whether or not consumers consider the lower priced firm however when the cost of advertising is sufficiently low advertising leads to a prisoners dilemma that adversely impacts profits without affecting expected prices

in google we trust we examine the incentives of a monopolistic search engine funded by advertising to provide reliable search results we distinguish two types of search results sponsored and organic not paid for organic results are most important in searches for online content while sponsored results are more important in product searches by modeling the underlying markets for online content and offline products we can identify the sources of distortions for each type of result and their interaction this explicit treatment proves crucial for understanding not only spillovers across markets but also fundamental policy issues such as the welfare effects of integration in particular integration of the engine with a small fraction of content providers is welfare enhancing when incentives to distort are stronger for sponsored than organic search but welfare reducing in the opposite case

prices and heterogeneous search costs we study price formation in a model of consumer search for differentiated products in which consumers have heterogeneous search costs we provide conditions under which a pure strategy symmetric nash equilibrium exists and is unique search costs affect two margins the intensive search margin or search intensity and the extensive search margin or the decision to search rather than to not search at all these two margins affect the elasticity of demand in opposite directions and whether lower search costs result in higher or lower prices depends on the properties of the search cost density

toward a theory of the political entrepreneur evidence from local government political scientists have been increasingly interested in entrepreneurs individuals who change the direction and flow of politics in this research note we synthesize aspects of an economic approach to entrepreneurship with concepts used in political science we then tie these theoretical observations to the emergence of entrepreneurs in local governments and test components of our theory using observations from a large set of suburban municipal governments empirically we identify several conditions that affect the probability that an entrepreneur will emerge in a local government especially slack budgetary resources that the political entrepreneur can reallocate we also find that the probability with which an entrepreneur is found in local government is a function of the difficulty of overcoming collective action problems in a community

an examination of the psychometric properties of some commonly researched individual differences job and organizational variables in two cultures this study examines the transferability and applicability of selected measures of individual differences job and organizational climate factors across two cultures questionnaires were administered to a sample of 267 white collar bank employees in the u s and 307 bank employees in india the individual difference dimensions examined were four manifest needs sense of competence and locus of control the job factors included variety autonomy identity and feedback the organizational climate factors related to communication stress participation in decision making and self esteem from the workplace the data were analyzed for internal consistency dimensionality and criterion related validity the results showed that the job and organizational climate measures were more reliable and were related more consistently to the criterion measures than the individual difference measures both within and across cultures the results suggested that psychometrically sound measures may be transferable to other cultures

incorporating life cycle external cost in optimization of the electricity generation mix the present work aims to examine the strategic decision of future electricity generation mix considering together with all other factors the effect of the external cost associated with the available power generation technology options not only during their operation but also during their whole life cycle the analysis has been performed by integrating the life cycle assessment concept into a linear programming model for the yearly decisions on which option should be used to minimize the electricity generation cost the model has been applied for the case of greece for the years 2012 2050 and has led to several interesting results firstly most of the new generating capacity should be renewable mostly biomass and wind while natural gas is usually the only conventional fuel technology chosen if externalities are considered wind energy increases its share and hydro power replaces significant amounts of biomass generated energy furthermore a sensitivity analysis has been performed one of the most important findings is that natural gas increases its contribution when externalities are increased summing up external cost has been found to be a significant percentage of the total electricity generation cost for some energy sources therefore significantly changing the ranking order of cost competitiveness for the energy sources examined

polish energy policy 2050 an instrument to develop a diversified and sustainable electricity generation mix in coal based energy system abstract polish economy is still undergoing the transformation process and seeks to converge with the most developed economies in europe while many economic reforms have been made the generating sector was left to its own devices and lack of the investments caused that electricity supply in poland is ineffective and not secure the coal is a primary fuel and it constitutes over 80 of the energy mix thus with energy mix restructuration ahead the ambitious and balanced energy policy is highly required the article aims to present the 2050 energy policy for poland which should facilitate the transformation of coal based electricity generation system towards more sustainable and diversified energy mix comprehensive description and review of the current conditions of energy sector in poland are accompanied with strengths and problems that need to be solved taking into account european requirements additionally in the paper the authors describe the development process of the polish energy policy as they actively participated in the calculations of optimal energy mix for poland the manuscript presents the emix model energy mix optimization tool developed by the authors that constituted a background for ministry of economy to create energy policy hundreds of simulations scenarios were performed for the ministry of economy to provide the clear view of the electricity generation sector and to understand the impacts of all external stimuli to the mix assumptions for the model and results of calculations according to the policy scenarios are presented in the paper finally the authors evaluate the final decisions of the policy makers integrated in the polish energy policy 2050 taking into account the challenges for the polish power sector

diagnosing measurement equivalence in cross national research many researchers have pointed out that it is necessary to ensure measurement equivalence in cross national comparative research three aspects of measurement equivalence translation metric and calibration equivalence are necessary to establish the cross national reliability and validity of items used to measure theoretical constructs this paper discusses these issues and proposes two recently developed empirical techniques multiple group lisrel and optimal scaling for use in diagnosing cross national measurement equivalence these techniques are illustrated by reanalysis of a pioneering u s and japanese study the two techniques yield convergent results indicating measurement equivalence for some but not all ordinal level items under consideration the findings demonstrate that the proposed methods are useful diagnostic tools for exploring measurement equivalence several suggestions for reducing the likelihood of problems with measurement equivalence and a number of methods for dealing with items where lack of equivalence persists are also discussed

wealth concentration in a developing economy paris and france 1807 1994 using large samples of estate tax returns we construct new series on wealth concentration in paris and france from 1807 to 1994 inequality increased until 1914 because industrial and financial estates grew dramatically then adverse shocks rather than a kuznets type process led to a massive decline in inequality the very high wealth concentration prior to 1914 benefited retired individuals living off capital income rentiers rather than entrepreneurs the very rich were in their seventies and eighties whereas they had been in their fifties a half century earlier and would be so again after world war ii our results shed new light on ongoing debates about wealth inequality and growth

a model of directed consumer search abstract we present a framework to study directed consumer search firms sell products with two attributes one is readily observable the other is observed only after visiting a firm search is directed as the order of search is influenced by the observable characteristics moreover if prices are readily observable firms also influence search direction by their choice of price we show that when consumers observe prices before search prices and profits are lower than when they do not a lower price then not only retains more consumers but is also more likely to attract them the latter effect makes demand more elastic when consumers observe prices before searching prices decrease in search costs consumer surplus initially increases in search costs but may ultimately decrease

online shopping and platform design with ex ante registration requirements we study platform design in online markets in which buying involves a nonmonetary cost for consumers caused by privacy and security concerns firms decide whether to require registration at their website before consumers learn relevant product information we derive conditions under which a monopoly seller benefits from ex ante registration requirements and demonstrate that the profitability of registration requirements is increased when taking into account the prospect of future purchases or an informational value of consumer registration to the firm moreover we consider the effectiveness of discounts store credit as a means to influence the consumers registration decision finally we confirm the profitability of ex ante registration requirements in the presence of price competition the online appendix is available at https doi org 10 1287 mnsc 2016 2595 this paper was accepted by j miguel villas boas marketing

entrepreneurship and human development a capability approach abstract we provide a formal model of entrepreneurship in human development the framework is provided by the capabilities approach ca hence we extend not only the conceptualisation of entrepreneurship in development but the reach of the ca into entrepreneurship from a ca view entrepreneurship is not only a production factor or a means to an end as is often taken to be the case by economists but also an end in itself entrepreneurship can be a human functioning and can contribute towards expanding the set of human capabilities through being both a resource and a process our model shows however that entrepreneurship is not automatically a functioning where it is a necessity it stops being a valued functioning the model also shows that even when entrepreneurship is valued entrepreneurs may often not match their ideas with suitable opportunities policy implications are discussed

paying for prominence we investigate three ways in which firms can become prominent and thereby influence the order in which consumers consider options first firms can affect an intermediary s sales efforts by means of commission payments when firms pay commission to a salesman the salesman promotes the product with the highest commission and steers ignorant consumers towards the more expensive product second sellers can advertise prices on a price comparison website so that consumers investigate the suitability of products in order of increasing price in such a market equilibrium prices are lower when search costs are higher since a firm s benefit from being investigated first increases with search costs finally consumers might first consider their existing supplier when they purchase a new product which suggests a relatively benign rationale for the prevalence of cross selling in markets such as retail banking

raising search costs to deter window shopping can increase profits and welfare consumers tend to browse products they are interested in and firms often invest resources in selling to them a consequence i show is that it is optimal for a firm to increase the cost of browsing even though this drives away potential customers because doing so allows it to target sales efforts at those consumers most likely to buy despite representing pure waste this can increase welfare by facilitating efficient allocation of sales or marketing resources for a similar reason consumers often benefit from search costs in aggregate and prefer them to other means of screening such as price increases

the correlates of entrepreneurship in three types of firms the objective of the research was to discover the chief determinants of entrepreneurship the process by which organizations renew themselves and their markets by pioneering innovation and risk taking some authors have argued that personality factors of the leader are what determine entrepreneurship others have highlighted the role played by the structure of the organization while a final group have pointed to the importance of strategy making we believed that the manner and extent to which entrepreneurship would be influenced by all of these factors would in large measure depend upon the nature of the organization based upon the work of a number of authors we derived a crude typology of firms simple firms are small and their power is centralized at the top planning firms are bigger their goal being smooth and efficient operation through the use of formal controls and plans organic firms strive to be adaptive to their environments emphasizing expertise based power and open communications the predictiveness of the typology was established upon a sample of 52 firms using hypothesis testing and analysis of variance techniques we conjectured that in simple firms entrepreneurship would be determined by the characteristics of the leader in planning firms it would be facilitated by explicit and well integrated product market strategies and in organic firms it would be a function of environment and structure these hypotheses were largely borne out by correlational and multiple regression analyses any programs which aim to stimulate entrepreneurship would benefit greatly from tailoring recommendations to the nature of the target firms

beliefs and consumer search in a vertical industry this paper studies vertical relations in a search market as the wholesale arrangement between a manufacturer and its retailers is typically unobserved by consumers their beliefs about who is to be blamed for a price deviation play a crucial role in determining wholesale and retail prices the common assumption in the consumer search literature is that consumers exclusively blame an individual retailer for a price deviation we show that in the vertical relations context predictions based on this assumption are not robust in the sense that if consumers assign just a small probability to the event that the upstream manufacturer is responsible for the deviation equilibrium predictions are qualitatively di erent for the robust beliefs the vertical model can explain a variety of observations such as retail price rigidity or alternatively low cost pass through non monotonicity of retail prices in search costs and seemingly collusive retail behavior the model can be used to study a monopoly online platform that sells access to nal consumers

optimal auction design in two sided markets a key feature of online markets for advertising e g sponsored links is that clicking rates depend on the searchers expectations that the platform selects relevant advertisers this article studies auction design by a platform that maximizes profits in the long run where clicking rates are mechanism dependent in line with the practice of the major search engines the revenue maximizing mechanism is a scoring auction that combines the willingness to pay and the relevance to searchers of advertisers by trading off rent extraction and clicking volume this mechanism works as a cross subsidization device between searchers and advertisers

consideration sets and competitive marketing we present a model of competitive marketing based on the notion that consumers are boundedly rational and that firms use marketing tactics in an attempt to influence consumers decision process the standard model of consumer behaviour assumes that the consumer applies well defined preferences to a perfectly perceived set of available alternatives we retain the assumption that consumers have stable preferences but relax the assumption that they have a perfect perception of what is relevant for their consumption problem thus allowing firms to manipulate that perception our aim is to explore the market implications of this departure from the standard model especially for the way firms deploy marketing strategies in competitive environments the cornerstone of our model is the observation that in the modern marketplace consumers face an overwhelmingly large variety of products and therefore often use screening criteria deliberate as well as unconscious in order to reduce the number of relevant alternatives as a result consumers apply their preferences not to the set of objectively feasible alternatives but to a potentially smaller set which they construct at an earlier stage of the decision process borrowing a term from the marketing literature we refer to this set as the consideration set the basic idea underlying this term is that consumers may be unaware of some of the feasible products and even when they become aware of a new product they still need to be persuaded to consider it as a potential substitute to their currently consumed product

sustainable energy systems role of optimization modeling techniques in power generation and supply a review electricity is conceivably the most multipurpose energy carrier in modern global economy and therefore primarily linked to human and economic development energy sector reform is critical to sustainable energy development and includes reviewing and reforming subsidies establishing credible regulatory frameworks developing policy environments through regulatory interventions and creating market based approaches energy security has recently become an important policy driver and privatization of the electricity sector has secured energy supply and provided cheaper energy services in some countries in the short term but has led to contrary effects elsewhere due to increasing competition resulting in deferred investments in plant and infrastructure due to longer term uncertainties on the other hand global dependence on fossil fuels has led to the release of over 1100 gtco2 into the atmosphere since the mid 19th century currently energy related ghg emissions mainly from fossil fuel combustion for heat supply electricity generation and transport account for around 70 of total emissions including carbon dioxide methane and some traces of nitrous oxide this multitude of aspects play a role in societal debate in comparing electricity generating and supply options such as cost ghg emissions radiological and toxicological exposure occupational health and safety employment domestic energy security and social impressions energy systems engineering provides a methodological scientific framework to arrive at realistic integrated solutions to complex energy problems by adopting a holistic systems based approach especially at decision making and planning stage modeling and optimization found widespread applications in the study of physical and chemical systems production planning and scheduling systems location and transportation problems resource allocation in financial systems and engineering design this article reviews the literature on power and supply sector developments and analyzes the role of modeling and optimization in this sector as well as the future prospective of optimization modeling as a tool for sustainable energy systems

intrapreneurship construct refinement and cross cultural validation abstract intrapreneurship entrepreneurship within existing organizations has been of interest to scholars and practitioners for the past two decades intrapreneurship is viewed as being beneficial for revitalization and performance of corporations as well as for small and medium sized enterprises the concept has four distinct dimensions first the new business venturing dimension refers to pursuing and entering new businesses related to the firm s current products or markets second the innovativeness dimension refers to the creation of new products services and technologies third the self renewal dimension emphasizes the strategy reformulation reorganization and organizational change finally the proactiveness dimension reflects top management orientation in pursuing enhanced competitiveness and includes initiative and risk taking and competitive aggressiveness and boldness while differing somewhat in their emphasis activities and orientations the four dimensions pertain to the same concept of intrapreneurship because they are factors of schumpeterian innovation the building block of entrepreneurship the pursuit of creative or new solutions to challenges confronting the firm including the development or enhancement of old and new products and services markets administrative techniques and technologies for performing organizational functions e g production marketing sales and distribution as well as changes in strategy organizing and dealings with competitors are innovations in the broadest sense intrapreneurship theory and measures have an american basis while being considered universal their generalizability has been limited because their cross cultural testing has been extremely limited two main measures of intrapreneurship the entrescale and the corporate entrepreneurship scale were developed independently but lack validity for cross national comparisons and do not tap all four dimensions of intrapreneurship when used independently in order to fill the gaps in previous research these two scales are integrated into a four dimensional measure of intrapreneurship refinement and validation was done by using two samples from two distinct economies slovenia a small transition economy from central and eastern europe with a short entrepreneurship tradition and the united states a large developed and advanced economy that is a leader in entrepreneurship research and practice the refined multidimensional measure of intrapreneurship was developed to be cross culturally generalizable because its refined dimensions scales include only cross culturally comparable items the refined intrapreneurship construct measure showed reasonably good convergent and discriminant validity as well as good nomological validity in terms of expected positive relationships to its antecedents organizational and environmental characteristics and consequences growth and profitability across the two samples that included large medium sized and smaller firms from a variety of different industries manufacturing consumer and industrial goods consumer and business services trade and construction in addition to the generalizability of the refined intrapreneurship construct measure the results of this study support the notion that intrapreneurship is an important predictor of firm growth in terms of absolute growth growth in number of employees and in total sales and relative growth growth in market share in comparison to competition firms that nurture organizational structures and values conducive to intrapreneurial activities are more likely to grow than organizations that are low in such characteristics open and quality communication existence of formal controls intensive environmental scanning management support organizational support and values all help an organization become more intrapreneurial intrapreneurial organizations are those that engage in new business venturing are innovative continuously renew themselves and are proactive in transition economies which are adapting their economies to more developed economies standards of doing business and where growth may not yet be the primary goal intrapreneurship may be even more important for the growth and profitability of existing organizations

distribution of wealth and incomplete markets theory and empirical evidence abstract this paper analyses the equilibrium distribution of wealth in an economy where firms productivities are subject to idiosyncratic shocks returns on factors are determined in competitive markets households have linear consumption functions and government imposes taxes on capital and labour incomes and equally redistributes the collected resources to households the equilibrium distribution of wealth is explicitly calculated and its shape crucially depends on market incompleteness with incomplete markets it follows a paretian law in the top tail and the pareto exponent depends on the saving rate on the net return on capital on the growth rate of population and on portfolio diversification the characteristics of the labour market crucially affects the bottom tail but not the upper tail of the distribution of wealth in the case of completely decentralized labour market the analysis also suggests a positive relationship between growth and wealth inequality the theoretical predictions find a corroboration in the empirical evidence of united states in the period 1989 2004

entrepreneurial personalities in political leadership societies around the globe respond to the contemporary technological and economic change by defining entrepreneurship and innovation as core principles for future competitive advantage does this rise of the entrepreneurial society also imply that entrepreneurial personalities are becoming increasingly widespread and powerful in political leadership joseph a schumpeter already argued that highly influential entrepreneurs are unique and show a certain personality pattern that can be described as being not only high in creativity and change orientation but also high in competitiveness and rule breaking it is interesting to ask whether such schumpeterian personalities indeed play an increasingly important role in political leadership given that daily routines of policy leaders at least at first glance usually require rather non entrepreneurial strategies such as careful risk averse diplomacy to address this question we first survey the existing literature on personality and political leadership we further present a novel personality analysis of an influential business leader that recently made a transition to political leadership donald j trump the incumbent us president employing a language based computerized method of analyzing twitter statements we compare his online personality to the online personality of other influential entrepreneurs and business managers who do not engage in political leadership the results indicate that trump is indeed distinct in that he shows stronger features of a schumpeterian personality however he is also comparatively high in neuroticism we discuss these findings focusing on the potential implications of a concentration of entrepreneurial mindsets in political leadership

cross cultural reliability and validity of a scale to measure firm entrepreneurial orientation abstract this study presents a foreign language version of a popular scale for measuring entrepreneurship and tests the instrument s utility in cross cultural settings as a means of validating it for use abroad entrepreneurship refers to the pursuit of creative or novel solutions to challenges confronting the firm including the development or enhancement of products and services as well as new administrative techniques and technologies for performing organizational functions entrepreneurship is a fundamental posture instrumentally important to strategic innovation particularly under shifting conditions in the firm s external environment and is applicable to any firm regardless of its size and type scholars note that entrepreneurial activity is critical because it stimulates superior performance and may well be the key fundamental element in the procurement of advantages relative to competitors researchers have developed a popular scale for measuring entrepreneurship at the firm level which has been found to be highly valid and reliable this scale the entrescale examines eight items reflecting the innovative and proactive disposition of management at a given firm however as the entrescale s measurement properties have never been comprehensively assessed in a cross cultural setting the instrument lacks strong evidence of international validity and reliability accordingly the cross cultural correspondence between the entrescale and the construct it is supposed to measure is unknown as is the extent of its utility to international practitioners this situation reflects a problem common to measuring instruments developed in the united states and is particularly troublesome for scales intended to measure foreign phenomena of interest in international business the researcher who assumes that a scale developed at home will function with equal efficacy abroad is most likely asking for trouble there is a risk that such assumptions will lead to invalid inferences an outcome potentially disastrous for the practitioner seeking to design appropriate strategies for international success sound measures of entrepreneurship are especially critical for managers attempting to understand the construct s cultural dynamic at both the organizational and country levels within subsidiaries agencies and other such entities presently representing or offering to represent the firm s interests abroad by understanding the entrepreneurial dynamic in foreign settings the multinational firm may be able to structure operations in ways that better suit existing local conditions and thereby avoid potentially adverse consequences further it is useful to discern by means of national studies the entrepreneurial characteristics of management at firms including existing or potential competitors across entire countries as a means of addressing this issue this study seeks to test the measurement properties of the entrescale using samples of english and french speaking managers results indicate that the scale performs well in terms of both reliability and validity and possesses a unique factor structure in concrete terms this implies that the entrescale is suitable for measuring the entrepreneurship construct abroad it is hoped that these results will 1 contribute to improving future research endeavors of scholars studying the role of entrepreneurship in the increasingly global environment of business 2 provide practitioners with a scale that can be used to measure the extent of entrepreneurial orientation among main operations subsidiaries and potential partner firms in foreign lands and 3 raise the standard by which measuring instruments are designed and used for research in cross cultural contexts

prominence and consumer search this article examines the implications of prominence in search markets we model prominence by supposing that the prominent firm will be sampled first by all consumers if there are no systematic quality differences among firms we find that the prominent firm will charge a lower price than its less prominent rivals making a firm prominent will typically lead to higher industry profit but lower consumer surplus and welfare the model is extended by introducing heterogeneous product qualities in which case the firm with the highest quality product has the greatest incentive to become prominent and making it prominent will boost industry profit consumer surplus and welfare

the forbes 400 and the pareto wealth distribution abstract statistical regularities at the top end of the wealth distribution are examined using the forbes 400 lists during 1988 2003 we find that the wealth is distributed according to a pareto power law distribution with an average exponent of 1 49

measurement issues in cross national research substantive inference from cross national studies have important implications for theory e g because they reveal insights into generalizability and boundary conditions and managerial practice e g because they offer guidelines to mnc managers however few empirical studies attend to measurement issues involved in cross national research and still fewer recognize the risk of inferential errors that are likely to occur by overlooking measurement issues we discuss four measurement issues namely 1 standardized versus unstandardized coefficients 2 the impact of measurement error and unequal reliability 3 the overall error rate and simultaneous analysis and 4 construct equivalence using illustrate examples we demonstrate the nature of each of these problems the likely impact they can have on substantive conclusions and approaches for tackling these problems additionally we reanalyze a recently published three nation study by dubinsky michaels kotabe lim and moon 1992 to clarify these measurement concerns highlight a methodological approach and delineate the extent and severity of inferential errors our reanalysis shows that the interactive effects of these measurement issues are pervasive complex and unpredictable we close with implications for cross national research in general

russia s billionaires abstract using data collected by forbes since the 1990s i examine the emergence and survival of the super wealthy in russia over the past two decades and compare russia s record to those of other countries the major surge in the number of russian billionaires came in the mid 2000s mirroring the dynamic worldwide while early billionaires were predominantly found in the oil gas metals and banking sectors the distribution has become more diverse now including some in trade real estate chemicals and information technology only a minority of today s russian billionaires acquired significant assets in the privatization of the 1990s

information gatekeepers on the internet and the competitiveness of homogeneous product markets we examine the equilibrium interaction between a market for price information controlled by a gatekeeper and the homogenous product market it serves the gatekeeper charges fees to firms that advertise prices on its internet site and to consumers who access the list of advertised prices gatekeeper profits are maximized in an equilibrium where a the product market exhibits price dispersion b access fees are sufficiently low that all consumers subscribe c advertising fees exceed socially optimal levels thus inducing partial firm participation and d advertised prices are below unadvertised prices introducing the market for information has ambiguous social welfare effects

can prominence matter even in an almost frictionless market consumer search on the internet is rarely random sponsored links appear higher up a webpage and consumers often click them firms also bid aggressively for these prominent positions at the top of the page but why should prominence matter when visiting an additional website is almost costless i present a model in which consumers know their valuations for the products offered in the market but do not know which retailer sells which product i show that a prominent retailer earns significantly more profit than other firms even when the cost of searching websites and comparing products is essentially zero

entrepreneurs creativity and firm innovation the moderating role of entrepreneurial self efficacy there are several studies in entrepreneurship investigating determinants of innovation outcomes in smes although entrepreneurs entrepreneurial creativity is often seen as a prerequisite previous research indicates it is not an exclusive determinant of innovation we use theoretical logics of social cognitive theory and innovation theory to develop a conceptual model of entrepreneur s creativity self efficacy and innovation outcomes the model is then tested on a large sample of small and medium firms from two distinct economies the united states and slovenia empirical findings partially support the proposed moderation effects of entrepreneurial self efficacy but with the same variations between countries the implications of these results in relation to entrepreneurship theory and practice are discussed

true monopolistic competition as a result of imperfect information the paper restates hart s 1985a 1985b definition of large group monopolistic competition distinguishes it from oligopolistic competition and raises the question of whether there are reasonable circumstances that give rise to true monopolistic competition as defined the purpose is to show that consumers imperfect information may create conditions that will turn an otherwise oligopolistic market into a truly monopolistically competitive one