measuring heterogeneous reservation prices for product bundles this paper develops a model for capturing continuous heterogeneity in the joint distribution of reservation prices for products and bundles our model is derived from utility theory and captures both within and among subject variability furthermore it provides dollarmetric reservation prices and individual level estimates that allow the firm to target customers and develop customized and nonlinear pricing policies our experiments show that regardless of whether the products are durables or nondurables the model captures heterogeneity and predicts well models that assume homogeneity perform poorly especially in predicting choice of the bundle furthermore the methodology is robust even when respondents evaluate few profiles self stated reservation prices do not have any informational content beyond that contained in the basic model the direct elicitation method appears to understate overstate the variation in reservation prices across consumers for low priced high priced products and bundles hence this method yields biased demand estimates and leads to suboptimal product line pricing policy the optimization results show that the product line pricing policy depends on the degree of heterogeneity in the reservation prices of the individual products and the bundle a uniformly high price strategy for all products and bundles is optimal when heterogeneity is high otherwise a hybrid strategy is optimal

game theoretic pricing models in hotel revenue management an equilibrium choice based conjoint analysis approach abstract this paper explores a game theoretically founded approach to conjoint analysis that determines equilibrium room rates under differentiated price competition in an oligopolistic hotel market competition between hotels is specified in terms of market share functions that can be estimated using multinomial logit models of consumer choice the approach is based on choice based conjoint analysis that permits the estimation of attributes weights part worths for an additive utility formulation of the utility function from this room rates that equilibrate the market conditioned on the differences in services and facilities offered by competing hotels can be determined the approach is illustrated by an example

analysis of an industrial component commonality problem we discuss a case study of an industrial production marketing coordination problem involving component commonality for the product line considered the strategic goal of the company is to move from the current low volume market to a high volume market the marketing department believes that this can be achieved by substantially lowering the end products prices however this requires a product redesign to lower production costs in order to maintain profit margins the redesign decision involves grouping end products into families all products within one family use the same version of some components this paper fits in the stream of recent literature on component commonality where the focus has shifted from inventory cost savings to production and development cost savings further we consider both costs and revenues leading to a profit maximization approach the price elasticity of demand determines the relationship between the price level and number of units sold consequently we integrate information from different functional areas such as production marketing and accounting we formulate the problem as a net present value investment decision we propose a mixed integer nonlinear optimization model to find the optimal commonality decision the recommendation based on our analysis has been implemented in the company in addition the application allows us to experimentally validate some claims made in the literature and obtain managerial insights into the trade offs

relative efficiencies and comparative advantages in job search a model of employed and unemployed job search is estimated from a panel of new entrants into the labor force as well as prime age workers after investigating the relative efficiency of the two mai

centralized pricing versus delegating pricing to the salesforce under information asymmetry the issue of delegating pricing responsibility to the salesforce is of interest to marketing academics and practitioners it has been shown by lal 1986 that under certain situations with information asymmetry it is more profitable for the firm to delegate pricing authority to the salesforce than to have centralized pricing in this paper we re examine situations where information asymmetry exists and analyze its effect on the decision of the firm to set a price or delegate pricing responsibility to the salesforce using contract theory we find that when the salesperson s private information can be revealed to the firm through contracting centralized pricing performs at least as well as price delegation we derive the optimal centralized pricing contract under a set of standard assumptions used in the economics and business literature

bundle pricing of inventories with stochastic demand we consider a retailer selling a fixed inventory of two perishable products over a finite horizon assuming poisson arrivals and a bivariate reservation price distribution we determine the optimal product and bundle prices that maximize the expected revenue our results indicate that the performances of mixed bundling pure bundling and unbundled sales strategies heavily depend on the parameters of the demand process and the initial inventory levels bundling appears to be most effective with negatively correlated reservation prices and high starting inventory levels when the starting inventory levels are equal and in excess of average demand most of the benefits of bundling can be achieved through pure bundling however the mixed bundling strategy dominates the other two when the starting inventory levels are not equal we also observe that an incorrect modeling of the reservation prices may lead to significant losses the model is extended to allow for price changes during the selling horizon it is shown that offering price bundles mid season may be more effective than changing individual product prices

commentary on industrial pricing theory and mangerial practice noble and gruca 1999 this issue provide useful insights into the pricing practices managers employ their findings indicate managerial pricing practices are heavily dominated by internal cost based approaches particularly relevant is the absence of value based pricing practices noble and gruca s findings indicate that the emerging market orientation work has not connected to pricing practice this work poses a significant challenge for marketing theoreticians and educators how can managers be helped to move beyond internally focused to externally customer focused pricing practice

a review of residential tiered electricity pricing in china abstract at present the unformed market oriented pricing mechanism has become a great challenge faced by china s electricity pricing and the unreasonable electricity pricing caused by cross subsidization has become increasingly serious with the economic development and energy shortage tiered electricity price tep which was developed and used since 1970s was introduced into china as a new electricity pricing method for residential electricity consumption the tep can also improve the tariffs the behaviors and the efficiency of residential electricity consumption in this study we use the fundamental theory of the electricity economics to analyze the pricing methods and the forms of china s power market with the reform of electric power industry we also point out the characteristics of residential tiered electricity pricing in china which is also compared with other countries such as the united states and japan the main factors influencing the residential tiered electricity pricing design are discussed in this paper from the perspectives of users the electric power enterprise and government regulation then we point out the main problems of china s existing tiered electricity pricing including inadequate level of public awareness and acceptance unreasonable tiered and electricity price standard insufficient reflection in regional differences less combination with other electricity pricing forms and low level of smart meter application

dollar vs percentage markup pricing schemes under a dominant retailer abstract we investigate two very common pricing schemes for a stackelberg dominant retailer percentage markup and dollar markup we show that when a dominant retailer switches from dollar to percentage markup the channel s overall pie and the retailer s pie piece are both enlarged in contrast the manufacturer will be forced to levy a lower wholesale price thus receiving a smaller pie piece despite the larger pie the preceding statements hold regardless of whether the demand is deterministic or stochastic however the effects of switching to percentage markup on the retail price and sales volume will depend not only on whether the demand is stochastic but also on the assumed demand curve shape and on whether demand stochasticity is additive or multiplicative besides presenting a comprehensive set of answers on the comparative performance of dollar and percentagemarkups our results also highlight the often overlooked importance of choosing between i dollar and percentage markup and ii the formats of the assumed stochasticity and demand curves

job search and mobility in developing countries theory and policy implications abstract a labor market model is developed in which the formal sector is characterized by search frictions whereas the informal sector is competitive we show that there exists a unique steady state equilibrium in this dual economy we then consider different policies financed by a tax on firms profits we find that reducing the unemployment benefit or the firms entry cost in the formal sector induces higher job creation and formal employment reduces the size of the informal sector but has an ambiguous effect on wages we also find that an employment wage subsidy policy and a hiring subsidy policy have different implications in particular the former increases the size of the informal sector while the latter decreases it

wages and employment in a segmented labor market this paper analyzes the impact of business cycle fluctuations on a labor market segmented into a unionized primary sector and a competitive secondary sector either permanent or temporary changes in real aggregate demand are shown to widen the intersectoral wage differential in recession and under reasonable specifications of key parameters to cause greater fluctuations of primary sector employment than secondary sector employment this pattern agrees with the stylized facts of the u s economy

an econometric analysis of reservation wages this paper describes an analysis of survey data on unemployed people who reported their asking wage and the wage they expected to earn we show that if agents behavior is described by the standard optimal job search model one can use these data to deduce structural parameters rather than estimate them and we report our deductions from two surveys 1 of british unemployed people

research note cost uncertainty is bliss the effect of competition on the acquisition of cost information for pricing new products we examine the optimal acquisition of information about a common uncertain cost factor by two competing firms seeking to price a new product we show that existing findings regarding the acquisition of demand information or the acquisition of either cost or demand information related to quantity decisions do not extend to this case for cost information with price competition the information acquisition strategies are strategic substitutes even though the price decisions that are based on the information are strategic complements competition decreases the expected value of cost information moreover when competition is intense and the cost of information low identical firms do not acquire the same amount of cost information even when information is free cost uncertainty acts like a fog that lessens the destructive effect of price competition when products are close substitutes and thus increases expected profits buyers on the other hand are better off when competing firms are informed about cost even though the expected value of cost information strictly decreases with competition the optimal price for industry specific cost information set by an information vendor increases with competition when the firms products are sufficiently substitutable

subsidised training and youth employment distinguishing unobserved heterogeneity from state dependence in labour market histories using the 1990 2 wave of the french labour force survey to study the employment histories of young people i consider transitions between six labour market states employment contracts whether permanent or temporary unemployment training education and non participation i use a fixed effect estimator in a dynamic multinomial logit model which can accommodate any form of unobserved heterogeneity in levels this analysis can be extended to markov processes of any order i relate heterogeneity components to individual and family characteristics by using simulated maximum likelihood methods these procedures allow evaluation of the effects training schemes have on youth employment histories

how changes in labor demand affect unemployed workers this study analyzes the manner in which certain favorable shifts in labor demand affect job search although all shifts increase reservation wages they do not necessarily decrease expected unemployment spell durations and increase expected post unemployment wages so that upward sloping short run phillips curves may occur a result due to chamberlain is used to demonstrate that if the wage offer distribution is restricted to be logconcave two of the shifts guarantee downward sloping phillips curves for one of these two shifts previous research by flinn and heckman used logconcavity in a different manner to achieve properly shaped phillips curves

learning more from tobit coefficients extending a comparative analysis of political protest tobit analysis is the appropriate strategy for many sociological problems unfortunately clear procedures for interpreting its coefficients are not available using walton and ragin s 1991 tobit analysis of austerity protests in debtor nations i show that tobit coefficients can be decomposed into two effects 1 an effect representing an increase in the severity of protests in countries that have experienced protests and 2 an effect representing a change in the probability of experiencing an austerity protest in countries that recorded no protests finally an analogue to afully standardized regression coefficient is defined for tobit coefficients decomposing tobit coefficients reveals important additional findings that could not be discernedfrom the ordinary tobit coefficients

the prospects for smart energy prices observations from 50 years of residential pricing for fixed line telecoms and electricity this study focuses on how energy and communications have evolved over the last 50 years and what we can learn from history in order to examine the prospects for smart energy pricing by 2050 we begin by discussing the nature of energy and telecoms products and why price discrimination should be expected we then review various business and pricing strategies that have evolved in the two industries we find that business models for both the telecoms and energy sectors have changed from the traditional services business model i e offering of calls and messages for telecoms and utility supply services for energy to more dynamic integrated and complex business models these new business models include the managed services provider model the bundled services model and the prosumer business model among others similarly several changes in pricing structure have evolved there has been a reduction in the number of distanced based and increasing time based price differentiation in fixed line telecoms and the abolition of residential floor area based differentiation in electricity pricing we conclude with a discussion on how the rollout of the next generation of electricity meters smart and advanced meters may further shape electricity pricing in the future

an empirical examination of the sources of changes over time in the job finding rate using reservation wages and rejected wage offers we consider a structural dynamic job search model where nonstationarity originates from the change over time in the benefit level the job offer arrival rate and the wage offer distribution the model is estimated on the french sample of the echp taking advantage of direct observation of reservation wages rejected job offers and associated rejected wages we find that the offered wages deteriorate rapidly 13 8 over six months 19 2 over one year and 30 over two years and that changes in the wage offer distribution are the unique source of negative duration dependence in the hazard

alternative models of earnings determination and labor market structures there are three distinct research traditions in the analysis of individual earnings determination human capital or earnings function analyses aggregate wage analyses and labor demand analyses an important and incongruous aspect of each is the treatment of geographical differences in labor markets this paper first investigates the magnitude and character of geographical wage differentials the sizable differences discovered there are then related to the existing and highly simplified models of labor market differences while the two major classes of models compensating differentials and labor demand differ significantly in assumptions and implications it is impossible to distinguish adequately between them there appears to be a clear need for more structural analyses of labor market operations

inflation and unemployment the world economy today is vastly different from the 1930s when seymour harris the chairman of this meeting infected me with his boundless enthusiasm for economics and his steadfast confidence in its capacity for good works economics is very different too both the science and its subject have changed and for the better since world war ii but there are some notable constants unemployment and inflation still preoccupy and perplex economists statesmen journalists housewives and everyone else the connection between them is the principal domestic economic burden of presidents and prime ministers and the major area of controversy and ignorance in macroeconomics i have chosen to review economic thought on this topic on this occasion partly because of its inevitable timeliness partly because of a personal interest reaching back to my first published work in 1941

estimating the effect of counseling and monitoring the unemployed using a job search model this paper examines the impact of the counseling and monitoring program for the unemployed with particular reference to their job finding rate application intensity and matching probability the effectiveness of counseling and monitoring is measured by using a job search model in which the job finding rate is equal to the product of the application intensity and the matching probability counseling and monitoring is an intensive job search assistance program designed to help unemployed people receiving unemployment benefits to find a job as quickly as possible the empirical analysis is based on data from a social experiment a sample of the inflow into unemployment was randomly assigned to a treatment and a control group the empirical results based on formal reduced form models show that counseling and monitoring does reduce the time taken to find a job because people participating in the program make more applications than those who are not participating although no differences are found in matching probabilities

the role of the business model in capturing value from innovation evidence from xerox corporation s technology spin off companies this paper explores the role of the business model in capturing value from early stage technology a successful business model creates a heuristic logic that connects technical potential with the realization of economic value the business model unlocks latent value from a technology but its logic constrains the subsequent search for new alternative models for other technologies later on an implicit cognitive dimension overlooked in most discourse on the topic we explore the intellectual roots of the concept offer a working definition and show how the xerox corporation arose by employing an effective business model to commercialize a technology rejected by other leading companies of the day we then show the long shadow that this model cast upon xerox s later management of selected spin off companies from xerox parc xerox evaluated the technical potential of these spin offs through its own business model while those spin offs that became successful did so through evolving business models that came to differ substantially from that of xerox the search and learning for an effective business model in failed ventures by contrast were quite limited

the determinants of migrating with a pre arranged job and of the initial duration of urban unemployment an analysis based on indian data on rural to urban migrants abstract based on survey data on 1 400 rural migrants in delhi this paper examines within a multivariate context the determinants of migrating with a pre arranged job and of the initial duration of urban unemployment the results show that the probability of moving with a prearranged job increases with education and with age and is higher for those who seek non manual jobs for migrants who arrive in the city without a pre arranged job unemployment duration depends on marital status premigration information on urban employment opportunities and on the reliance on contacts for job search

search benefits and entitlement in a simultaneous analysis of unemployment duration and search intensity we estimate a non structural search model accounting explicitly for two features of the benefit system benefit level and time remaining until exhaustion of the entitlement period residual entitlement special attention is paid to the number of search contacts as an indicator for search intensity to assess the effect of the benefit level and residual entitlement on the number of search contacts we estimate a poisson model our results suggest that benefits work through a reduction of search efforts whereas residual entitlement is effective mainly through the reservation wage

modelling the informal sector formally abstract the theoretical characterization of formal informal sector dualism by labor market dualism is integrated with its empirical characterization by size dualism by supposing that the minimum formal sector wage is only enforced for firms greater than a certain size a firm s size varies directly with the talent of its enterpreneur manager and the choice between formal and informal sector entrepreneurship is determined endogenously it is then shown that the size gap between the smallest formal sector firm and largest informal sector firm varies directly with the formal informal sector wage differential which in turn is shown as expected to increase the further is the minimum wage above the market clearing wage the comparative statics of changes in the size of the firm above which the minimum wage is enforced are also examined

a two stage supply chain coordination mechanism considering price sensitive demand and quantity discounts abstract this paper explores the coordination between a supplier and a buyer within a decentralized supply chain through the use of quantity discounts in a game theoretic model within this model the players face inventory and pricing decisions we propose both cooperative and non cooperative approaches considering that the product traded experiences a price sensitive demand in the first case we study the dynamics of the game from the supplier s side as the leader in the negotiation obtaining a stackelberg equilibrium and then show how the payoff of this player could still improve from this point in the second case a cooperative model is formulated where decisions are taken simultaneously emulating a centralized firm showing the benefits of the cooperation between the players we further formulate a pricing game where the buyer is allowed to set different prices to the final customer as a reaction to the supplier s discount decisions for the latter we investigate the difference between feasibility of implementing a retail discount given a current coordination mechanism and without it finally the implications of transportation costs are analyzed in the quantity discount schedule our findings are illustrated with a numerical example showing the difference in the players payoff in each case and the optimal strategies comparing in each case our results with existing work

optimal pricing and quantity of products with two offerings this paper analyzes the decision of a firm offering two versions of a product a deluxe and a regular while both products satisfy the same market the deluxe version is sold at a high price relative to its cost and is aimed at the high end of the demand curve the regular version is sold at a low price relative to its cost and is targeted to customers at the low end of the demand curve this two offering strategy is especially popular with book publishers where a paperback book is introduced some time after the hardbound version is introduced the time between the introduction of the two versions of the product is accompanied by a downward shift in the demand curve due to customers losing interest in the product or satisfying their demand from a secondary used market we solve a profit maximization model for a firm using a two offering strategy the model is solved for linear and exponential deterioration in demand which is assumed to be deterministic also a model with linear deterioration in demand which is assumed to be stochastic is solved the results indicate that substantial improvements in profit can be obtained by using the two offering strategy numerical sensitivity analysis and examples are used to illustrate the results

a search model applied to the transition from education to work this paper presents the specification and estimation of a search model applied to the transition from education to work the theoretical search model includes the possibility of variable search intensity the empirical model with a reservation wage relation is estimated using maximum likelihood methods a data set containing information on new law graduates is used for the estimation finally the model is estimated for two separate subperiods to investigate the effects of market changes

on the job search in a developing country an analysis based on indian data on migrants job search by those who are employed has received increasing attention in recent years in both the theoretical and the empirical literature on labor markets in developed countries much of the interest stems from the observation that job changes often take place without an intervening period of unemployment and that there is a close relationship between searching for a job and quitting the current job also on the job search affects the rate of unemployment during the period between jobs a major preoccupation of the empirical research has been to estimate the returns to on the job search and to test the determinants of job search the bulk of this work uses data for the united states and the united kingdom 2 job search theory has not been empirically tested in the context of a developing country on the job search particularly in the so called informal sector of the urban labor market is an important feature of probabilistic models of migration in developing countries in the vein of michael p todaro and of john r harris and todaro 3 such models hypothesize that individuals migrate to urban centers with the aim of obtaining employment in the formal sector and that informal sector employment is a transitional phase during which migrants are searching for formal sector jobs recent work by gary s fields has formalized the theoretical aspects of this job search process within the framework of a multisector model 4 thus it would be of interest to find out if there are significant differences between developed and developing countries with respect to the determinants of on the job search

industrial pricing theory and managerial practice we organize the existing theoretical pricing research into a new two level framework for industrial goods pricing the first level consists of four pricing situations new product competitive product line and cost based the second level consists of the pricing strategies appropriate for a given situation for example within the new product pricing situation there are three alternative pricing strategies skim penetration and experience curve pricing there are a total of ten pricing strategies included in the framework we then identified a set of cost product market and information conditions which determine what pricing situation s a firm is facing as well as which strategies are appropriate within a given situation some of these determinant conditions are common to many pricing strategies e g highly elastic demand while others are unique to a given strategy within a particular pricing situation for example within the product line situation the profitability of supplementary sales is a unique determinant of the complementary product pricing strategy razor and blade pricing using this framework as a basis for an empirical study we examined how well current industrial pricing practice matches the prescriptions from the existing research our sample consisted of 270 respondents 27 response rate of these more than 50 indicated that they used more than one pricing strategy in formulating their most recent pricing decision for a high value industrial product sold in the united states as in previous research cost plus pricing was the most often cited pricing strategy 56 of the respondents since the respondents were able to indicate their use of more than one pricing strategy the data are of the pick k from n variety in order to model the managers pricing strategy choices we constructed a stacked binary logit with a separate observation for each strategy within a given pricing situation the signs of the determinant variables were estimated as interaction terms the new product pricing strategies skim penetration experience curve were used for new models in the market skim pricing was used in markets with high levels of product differentiation by firms at a cost disadvantage due to scale penetration pricing was used by firms with a cost advantage due to scale in markets with high level of overall elasticity but low brand elasticity experience curve pricing was used for minor innovations by firms with low capacity utilization in markets with a high level of differentiation the competitive pricing strategies leader parity and low price supplier were used in mature markets parity pricing was used by firms in a poor competitive situation i e high costs low market share low product differentiation these firms were also unable to take advantage of high levels of elasticity since their capacity utilization was high in contrast the low price supplier strategy was used by firmswith low costs due to scale advantages since they have low utilization these firms can take advantage of elastic brand demand none of the determinants were significantly related to the choice of leader pricing product line pricing strategies bundling complementary product and customer value pricing were more likely to be used by firms which sell substitute or complementary products bundle pricing was used for per sale contract pricing in markets with high levels of brand elasticity complementary product pricing razor and blade was used by firms that enjoyed high profitability on its supplementary sales using customer value pricing a firm offers a stripped down version of its current products to appeal to more price sensitive segments or to leverage new distribution channels this strategy was used to target a narrow segment in high growth markets where price changes are difficult to detect cost based pricing was more likely to be used in marketswhere demand is very difficult to estimate in such a situation cost based pricing makes a great deal of sense in general the results show that the managers pricing strategy choices are consistent with normative pricing research however questions about how managers combine their strategies to arrive at a final price as well as the organizational influences on pricing strategies remain important areas for future research

supplier initiated outsourcing a methodology to exploit synergy in transportation over the last decades transportation has been evolving from a necessary though low priority function to an important part of business that can enable companies to attain a competitive edge over their competitors to cut down transportation costs shippers often outsource their transportation activities to a logistics service provider of their choice this paper proposes a new procedure that puts the initiative with the service provider instead supplier initiated outsourcing this procedure is based on both operations research and game theoretical insights to stress the contrast between the traditional push approach of outsourcing and the here proposed pull approach where the service provider is the initiator of the shift of logistics activities from the shipper to the logistics service provider we will refer to this phenomenon as insinking insinking has the advantage that the logistics service provider can proactively select a group of shippers with a strong synergy potential moreover these synergies can be allocated to the participating shippers in a fair and sustainable way by means of a so called shapley monotonic path of customized tariffs insinking is illustrated by means of a practical example based on data from the dutch grocery transportation sector

on the job search in a labor market model a comment abstract using a three sector model of the labor market built by fields 1989 this note shows that when the demand for goods produced in the traditional sector increases with modern sector employment modern sector enlargement may reduce the level of urban unemployment

on the job search in a labor market model ex ante choices and ex post outcomes abstract this paper builds a multi sector labor market model including wage dualism open unemployment underemployment on the job search and expected wage equalization the innovative feature of this model is the distinction between the ex ante allocation of the labor force among search strategies and the ex post allocation of the labor force among labor market outcomes among the findings are more efficient on the job search lowers the equilibrium unemployment rate in a rational expectations equilibrium the average rural and urban wages will not be equal modern sector enlargement may leave labor market conditions in one of the sectors unchanged even when wages and employment in that sector are fully flexible

a welfare economic analysis of labor market policies in the harris todaro model this paper presents a welfare economic analysis of the benefits of various labor market policies in the harris todaro labor market model the policies considered are a policy of modern sector job creation which i call modern sector enlargement msenl a policy of rural development which i call traditional sector enrichment tsenr and a policy of wage limitation in the urban economy which i call modern sector wage restraint mswr first i analyze the inequality effects of these policies i then perform two welfare economic analyses the first based on summary measures of labor market conditions total labor earnings unemployment inequality of labor incomes and poverty rates and the second based on dominance analysis in the labor market in both cases assuming that the costs are borne elsewhere the results of the welfare analyses are compared and it is shown that tsenr unambiguously increases welfare in the labor market using both approaches the other policies yield ambiguous results and no policy is unambiguously welfare decreasing

dynamic lot sizing models with pricing for new products while previous dynamic lot sizing dls models mainly consider mature products this study analyzes production planning decisions for new products the demand dynamics caused by new product diffusion complicate production decisions for new products we integrate dls and discrete bass models to provide optimal decisions for pricing and production planning problems moreover we study the joint influence of product diffusion and pricing parameters on the dls decisions this leads to the following insights first coordinated production pricing and dynamic pricing improve profitability second the optimal pricing strategy is affected by market conditions the penetration pricing strategy outperforms the skimming pricing strategy when consumers are less sensitive to relative price changes than to the introductory price when the product diffuses slowly or when the consumer initiative level is low otherwise the latter outperforms the former finally pricing strategies and product diffusion patterns reshape the cost structure of a firm coordinated decisions and dynamic pricing strategy substantially reduce the cost revenue ratio whereas an increase in the consumer initiative level or product diffusion speed can improve cost efficiency

search models and applied labor economics individual effects in a nonlinear model explicit treatment of heterogeneity in the empirical job search model this paper extends the empirical version of a job search model to permit heterogeneity in the location of wage offer distributions population variance in wage offers is decomposed into variance due to heterogeneity and variance facing each individual heterogeneity is found to be an important source of offer variance in the population the amount of pure wage offer dispersion facing individuals is found to contribute little to population variance

the relative effects of unemployment insurance parameters on search strategy abstract this paper theoretically examines the relative effect of two unemployment insurance parameters on search behavior the relative influence of each parameter is found to depend upon what an individual could expect to earn if he worked part time while searching

optimal bundle formation and pricing of two products with limited stock abstract in this study we consider the stochastic modeling of a retail firm that sells two types of perishable products in a single period not only as independent items but also as a bundle our emphasis is on understanding the bundling practices on the inventory and pricing decisions of the firm one of the issues we address is to decide on the number of bundles to be formed from the initial product inventory levels and the price of the bundle to maximize the expected profit product demands follow a poisson process with a price dependent rate customer reservation prices are assumed to have a joint distribution we study the impact of reservation price distributions initial inventory levels product prices demand arrival rates and cost of bundling we observe that the expected profit decreases as the correlation between the reservation prices of two products increases with negative correlation bundling cost has a significant impact on the number of bundles formed when the product prices are low the retailer sells individual products as well as the bundle mixed bundling when they are high the retailer sells only bundles pure bundling the expected profit and the number of bundles offered decrease as the variance of the reservation price distribution increases for high starting inventory levels the retailer reduces bundle price and offers more bundles the number of bundle sales decreases and the number of individual product sales increases when the arrival rate increases since the need for bundling decreases impacts of substitutability and complementarity of products are also investigated the retailer forms more bundles or charges higher prices for the bundle or both as the products become more complementary and less substitutable

search for nonwage job characteristics a test of the reservation wage hypothesis previous structural models of job search behavior have been based upon the reservation wage property this article provides estimates of a more general search model that nests models with the reservation wage property the estimates lead to rejection of the reservation wage property the model includes hours of work in the utility function but other nonwage job characteristics can be included as well an experiment based on the estimated parameters indicates that a significant proportion of job offers would be mistakenly predicted to be accepted or rejected under the restrictions implied by the reservation wage property

optimal pricing for information goods with piracy and saturation effect we analyze the pricing decision of a firm selling a product for which there is a significant and continuous saturation effect over time and that can be pirated assuming that the firm uses a skimming strategy we solve three profit maximization models given demand that is linearly decreasing in price few prices can be used over the life of the product the effects of both piracy and saturation are combined in the first model in the second model the firm can invest in technology or copyright enforcement to reduce piracy the third model describes the case in which piracy leads to increased awareness of the product and increased demand numerical sensitivity analysis and examples are used to illustrate the results the results indicate that under strong piracy and saturation effects a skimming strategy is suboptimal

skimming or penetration strategic dynamic pricing for new products current complex dynamic markets are characterized by numerous brands each with multiple products and price points and differentiated on a variety of product attributes plus a large number of new product introductions this study seeks to analyze dynamic pricing paths in a highly complex branded market consisting of 663 products under 79 brand names of digital cameras the authors develop a method to classify dynamic pricing strategies and analyze the choice and correlates of observed pricing paths in the introduction and early growth phase of this market the authors find that despite numerous recommendations in the literature for skimming or penetration pricing market pricing dominates in practice in particular the authors find five patterns skimming 20 frequency penetration 20 frequency and three variants of market pricing patterns 60 frequency where new products are launched at market prices skimming pricing launches the new product 16 above the market price and subsequently increases the price relative to the market price penetration pricing launches the new product 18 below the market price and subsequently lowers the price relative to the market price firms exhibit a mix of these pricing paths across their portfolios the specific pricing paths correlate with market firm and brand characteristics such as competitive intensity market pioneering brand reputation and experience effects the authors discuss managerial implications

do we really understand the development of china s new energy industry abstract countries all over the world have realized that the key to resolving the dilemma between accelerated energy consumption and reduction in carbon dioxide emission is to actively develop new energy industry many scholars have conducted in depth investigation into the main driving forces of the new energy industry however they often adhere to an assumption that the effect of the driving forces on new energy industry is constant across areas ignoring the spatial heterogeneity in economic phenomena geographically weighted regression gwr model and the use of local sample data to implement parameter estimation can make up for the inadequacies of existing research therefore this paper uses the gwr model to carefully investigate the new energy industry the results show that the impact of economic growth on the new energy industry in the eastern region is higher than in the central and western regions owing to the differences in economic structure and fixed asset investment the impact of foreign energy dependence continuously declines from the eastern region to the central and western regions this is attributable to the differences in natural gas and oil imports technological progress has a similar effect on account of the differences in r d funding and r d personnel investments however the impact of the agriculture industry in the central region is higher than in the eastern and western regions due to the differences in crop acreage and agricultural output this study improves our understanding of the new energy industry and would help local authorities to formulate targeted policies for promoting the growth of new energy industry