the carbon footprint of uk households 1990 2004 a socio economically disaggregated quasi multi regional input output model this paper presents a socio economically disaggregated framework for attributing co2 emissions to people s high level functional needs based around a quasi multi regional input output qmrio model the study in theory takes into account all co2 emissions that arise from energy used in production of goods and services to satisfy uk household demand whether the emissions occur in the uk or abroad results show that co2 emissions attributable to households were 15 above 1990 levels in 2004 and that although absolute decoupling occurred between household expenditure and co2 during the uk s switch from coal to gas in the early 1990s since then only slight relative decoupling is evident the proportion of co2 that arises outside uk borders in support of uk consumption is rising and reducing these emissions is particularly problematic in a global trading system investigation into the carbon footprint of different segments of the uk population shows wide variation the segment with the highest carbon footprint emits 64 more co2 than the segment with the lowest results show that recreation and leisure are responsible for over one quarter of co2 emissions in a typical uk household in 2004 we conclude that expanding lifestyle aspirations are significant factors in driving household co2 emissions but the study also emphasizes that attention must be paid to the infrastructures and institutions that result in considerable amounts of co2 being locked up in basic household activities through which people meet their everyday needs for subsistence protection and communication with family and friends the findings highlight the sheer scale of the challenge facing uk policy makers and suggest that policies should be targeted towards segments of society responsible for the highest carbon footprints

competitive coupon targeting with the advent of panel data on household purchase behavior and the development of statistical procedures to utilize this data firms can now target coupons to selected households with considerable accuracy and cost effectiveness in this article we develop an analytical framework to examine the effect of such targeting on firm profits prices and coupon face values we also derive comparative statics on firms optimal mix of offensive and defensive couponing the number of coupons distributed redemption rates face values and incremental sales per redemption among our findings when rival firms can target their coupon promotions at brand switchers the outcome will be a prisoner s dilemma in which the net effect of targeting is simply the cost of distribution plus the discount given to redeemers

two stage equilibrium and product choice with elastic demand abstract this paper examines a two stage model of product choice with elastic demand duopolists choose locations and then prices consumers demand is linear in price transportation cost is quadratic and is a lump sum for each pair of locations there is a price equilibrium in the second stage the first stage equilibrium locations are unique symmetric and depend upon the ratio of the reservation price and the transportation cost parameter when this ratio exceeds a certain critical value the locations are at the extreme end points of the market as the ratio decreases the locations gradually move towards the center

monitoring and competing principals a double edged sword abstract do monitoring technologies increase a principal s profits if she has to compete with others for an agent while monitoring improves the risk incentive tradeoff it also reduces the costs for a rivaling principal to offer a more attractive contract we show in a two action two outcome model that when the derivative of the agent s risk tolerance is smaller than one equilibrium profits are lower when monitoring is available if there is some competition when the derivative is larger than one equilibrium profits are higher when monitoring is available conversely the agent benefits from monitoring when the competition is intense but can be hurt when it is mild

competitive non linear pricing and bundling we examine the impact of multiproduct nonlinear pricing on profit consumer surplus and welfare in a duopoly when consumers buy all their products from one firm the one stop shopping model nonlinear pricing leads to higher profit and welfare but often lower consumer surplus than linear pricing by contrast in a unit demand model where consumers may buy one product from one firm and another product from another firm bundling generally acts to reduce profit and welfare and to boost consumer surplus in a more general model where consumers may buy from more than one firm and where consumers have elastic demands for each product nonlinear pricing has ambiguous effects compared with linear pricing nonlinear pricing tends to raise profit but harm consumer surplus when i demand is elastic ii there is substantial product differentiation iii there is substantial heterogeneity in consumer demand iv consumers face substantial shopping costs when visiting more than one firm and v a consumer s brand preference for one product is strongly correlated with her brand preference for another product nonlinear pricing is more likely to lead to welfare gains when i ii iv and v hold but iii does not

allowance trading and energy consumption under a personal carbon trading scheme a dynamic programming approach abstract in response to the challenge of climate change personal carbon trading was put forward as a policy instrument to promote low carbon behavior in the household sector to evaluate the effectiveness of this scheme it is important to gain insight into the allowance trading and energy consumption behavior in a long emission commitment period this paper proposes a dynamic programming model to investigate allowance trading and energy consumption a main feature of the model is its consideration of allowance banking and borrowing activities ten simulated scenarios with different allowance prices price volatility and carbon emission rates are discussed the findings show that consumers would trade more actively when allowance price is volatile it is also found that energy consumption and allowance trading will decrease when the carbon emission rate increases overall the analysis in this paper implies that personal carbon trading scheme would be an effective policy measure to change consumers behavior therefore it would be valuable for decision makers to consider the introduction and implementation of this scheme

strategic information disclosure the case of multi attribute products with heterogeneous consumers we examine the incentives for firms to voluntarily disclose otherwise private information about quality attributes of differentiated products in particular we focus on the case of differentiated products with multiple attributes and consumers that are heterogeneous in their preferences over these attributes we show that there exist certain configurations of consumer preferences under which a firm producing a high quality product even with zero costs of disclosure may choose not to reveal the quality of its product this failure of firms to voluntarily disclose the quality of their products will arise when providing consumers with more information results in more elastic demands for these products which in turn triggers more intensive price competition and leads to lower prices and profits for all firms as a result the equilibrium in which disclosure is voluntary may diverge from that in which disclosure is mandatory

elasticity of demand and behaviour based price discrimination behaviour based price discrimination bbpd is typically analysed in a framework characterised by perfectly inelastic demand this paper provides a first assessment of the role of demand elasticity on the profit consumer and welfare effects of bbpd we show that the demand expansion effect that is obviously overlooked by the standard framework with unit demand plays a relevant role in comparison to uniform pricing we show that firms are worse off under bbpd however as demand elasticity increases the negative impact of bbpd on profits gets smaller despite a possible slight increase in the average prices charged over the two periods in comparison to uniform pricing we show that bbpd boosts consumer surplus and that this benefit is independent of elasticity in contrast to the welfare results derived under the unit demand assumption where bbpd is always bad for welfare the paper shows that bbpd can be welfare enhancing if demand elasticity is sufficiently high

intertemporal lifestyle changes and carbon emissions evidence from a china household survey abstract this paper examines the endogenous evolution of household consumption patterns and household carbon emissions hces by integrating the analysis methods of income distribution with climate change based on a large scale household survey spanning from 2012 to 2016 in china we estimated the direct and indirect hces observed inverse u shaped carbon kuznets curves ckc and significant changes in hces over the period at the household level applying the oaxaca blinder method we decomposed factors causing the changes in hces and found that income and demographic effects contribute only 25 1 to the total increase of hces the other 74 9 remain unexplained and we define them as the effect of intertemporal lifestyle changes further analysis from multiple perspectives illustrates that the lifestyles of households across various social strata are becoming increasingly higher carbon intensive over time even though the income remains unchanged the findings indicate that existing modeling and projections of carbon emissions based on income and household characteristics may underestimate the future emissions pressure from the household sector hence we conclude that in order to reach more meaningful results the increasing effect of lifestyles should be taken into account when conducting climate change studies and formulating climate policies

why do manufacturers issue coupons an empirical analysis of breakfast cereals we explore the relationship between shelf prices and manufacturers coupons for 25 readyto eat breakfast cereals we find that shelf prices are lower during periods when coupons are available this result is inconsistent with static monopoly price discrimination under a broad range of assumptions we present evidence that is inconsistent with both dynamic theories of price discrimination and explanations of couponing based on the vertical relationship between manufacturers and retailers we find support for models of price discrimination in oligopoly settings as well as suggestions that firmwide incentives may induce managers to use coupons and price cuts simultaneously finally lagged coupons have a positive effect on current sales suggesting that coupons are used to induce repurchase

to cool a sweltering earth does energy efficiency improvement offset the climate impacts of lifestyle abstract as technical efficiency improvement in energy use remains a touchstone measure to curb greenhouse gas ghg emissions there is substantial concern about whether this approach can offset the large and expanding impacts of human actions critics contend that without adjustments to the prevailing consumptive lifestyle energy efficiency improvement will generate only token reductions in ghg emissions i address this concern by examining the extent to which technical efficiency improvement in energy use offsets the impacts of housing related lifestyle on ghg emissions i build from two perspectives the physical technical economic models that consider energy efficiency improvement as a potent strategy to curb residential energy consumption and the lifestyle and social behavioral approach which questions this view the analyses reveal consistent positive relationship between lifestyle and energy consumption the results also indicate that energy efficiency improvement has mixed effects on energy consumption in fact model based figures show that technical efficiency improvement in energy use leads to slightly higher energy consumption if it is not accompanied by adjustments to lifestyle

antidumping protection and r d competition in recent years antidumping protection has spread throughout the world evidence shows that antidumping often targets r d intensive sectors raising a con cern that it may adversely affect worldwide investments in r d we investigate this issue in a model of reciprocal dumping extended to a two stage game in which two firms first choose r d levels and then compete in prices we find that when a single government institutes antidumping law the protected firm decreases investment in r d while the constrained firm invests more when both governments engage in antidumping actions both firms invest more in r d than under free trade jel classification f12 f13

on two part tariff competition in a homogeneous product duopoly abstract we explore aspects of two part tariff competition between duopolists providing a homogeneous service when consumers differ with respect to their usage levels competition in only one price component the fee or the rate may allow both firms to enjoy positive profits if the other price component has been set at levels different enough between firms fixing one price component alters the nature of competition indirectly introducing an element of product differentiation endogenous market segmentation emerges with the heavier users choosing the lower rate firm and the lighter users choosing the lower fee firm when no price component can be negative competition becomes softer profits tend to be higher but there is also a disadvantage for the firm that starts with a higher fee than that of its rival

embedded carbon footprint of chinese urban households structure and changes reducing environmental pressure is a major concern for china but despite the improvements in energy efficiency its gross carbon dioxide co2 emissions have maintained an upward trend consistent with the jevons paradox a fundamental shift is thus needed at all levels including the household this paper explores the embedded carbon footprint ecf of chinese urban households associated with activities such as food personal transport communications education recreation health and hygiene it uses an input output model for carbon emissions and 2003 2009 urban household data the results show that the total ecf emission intensity increases when an individual s consumption is higher than 10 000 yuan structural changes are further observed with consumption expenditure above 10 000 food clothing and other survival oriented emissions intensities as well as education health and development oriented emissions intensities reduce transport recreation housing and enjoyment oriented emissions intensities increase or remain stable and the total emissions intensity increases currently per capita consumption expenditure of chinese urban residents exceeds 10 000 and as income continues to rise china will remain on a high carbon track there is a need for better policies management and behavioural change and the study provides some policy suggestions including a carbon quota system to guide individual consumption

applying quantile regression and shapley decomposition to analyzing the determinants of household embedded carbon emissions evidence from urban china abstract as co2 emissions differ in households with different characteristics mitigation policies still address the contributions of these characteristics and their effects on specific households using a representative resident survey in urban china this paper compares how household characteristics differ in their associations with household embedded carbon emissions heces at different levels by quantile regression then this paper analyzes the contributions of these characteristics by shapley decomposition the findings include the following i household income is the most important contributor to the difference of heces and its positive effect increases as heces rise ii the use of wealth has different effects on heces because household housing ownership and deposits contribute little to heces but the positive effects of household car ownership contribute 25 8 iii young people and children will emit more heces than adults the employed emit more than persons who are unemployed or retired iv education increases heces overall but mainly at the low quantiles the negative effect of the marriage increases as heces rise v income car ownership marital status size and constitution of households with high heces should be addressed to reduce the inequality of heces indeed education on the low carbon concept is another way forward

price discrimination in free entry markets using a spatial model of monopolistic competition we investigate price discrimination in free entry zero profit markets we show that when brands are heterogeneous competition does not prevent discrimination the power to earn economic profits is not necessary for a firm to maintain discriminatory prices our model treats formally the fact that consumers difer not only in the utility they derive from a good but also in how strongly they prefer one brand over all others in markets where firms are very competitive sorting consumers on the strength on brand preference produces larger price differentials between groups than sorting on the basis of consumers reservation prices for the good when firms sort customers on the basis of strength of brand preference however we find that the output and welfare effects are generally less favorable than when sorting is more closely related to consumers reservation prices

dynamic targeted pricing with strategic consumers abstract we investigate in this paper whether dynamic targeted pricing based on consumer purchase history could benefit a practicing firm even when consumers are strategic in that they actively seek to avail themselves of a low price in the future such strategic behavior on the part of consumers has been shown in the literature to render such dynamic targeted pricing unprofitable even for a monopoly firm we show that dynamic targeted pricing can benefit competing firms when they actively pursue customer recognition based on consumer purchase history this is because in order to pursue customer recognition competing firms need to price high to screen out price sensitive consumers and hence price competition is moderated as a result all competing firms can become better off with targeted pricing than without even when consumers behave strategically interestingly because of this competition moderation effect the paradoxical outcome occurs where dynamic targeted pricing may not benefit a monopolist but it may benefit competing firms we also show that dynamic targeted pricing can expand the market such that social welfare unambiguously improves

competitive price discrimination we model firms as supplying utility directly to consumers the equilibrium outcome of competition in utility space depends on the relationship u between profit and average utility per consumer public policy constraints on the deals firms may offer affect equilibrium outcomes via their effect on u f rom this perspective we examine the profit utility and welfare implications of price discrimination policies in an oligopolistic framework we also show that an equilibrium outcome of competitive nonlinear pricing when consumers have private information about their tastes is for firms to offer efficient two part tariffs

co2 emissions from household consumption in india between 1993 94 and 2006 07 a decomposition analysis abstract co 2 emission from anthropogenic activities is one of the major causes of global warming india being an agriculture dependent country global warming would mean monsoon instability and consequent food scarcity natural disasters and economic concerns however with proper policy interventions co 2 emissions can be controlled input output analysis has been used to estimate direct and indirect co 2 emissions by households for 1993 94 1998 99 2003 04 and 2006 07 complete decomposition analysis of the changes in co 2 emissions between 1993 94 and 2006 07 has been done to identify the causes into pollution energy intensity structure activity and population effects according to broad household consumption categories results indicate that activity structure and population effects are the main causes of increase in co 2 emission from household fuel consumption to identify the causes at the sectoral level a second decomposition has been done for changes between 2003 04 and 2006 07 to identify the causes in the next stage finally alternative energy policy options have been examined for each consumption category to reduce emissions combined strategies of technology upgradation fuel switching and market management in order to reduce co 2 emissions for sectors like batteries other non electrical machinery construction and electronic equipments including television for which all the effects are positive need to be adopted

let me talk to my manager haggling in a competitive environment although negotiating over prices with sellers is common in many markets such as automobiles furniture services consumer electronics etc it is not clear how a haggling price policy can help a firm gain a strategic advantage or whether it is even sustainable in a competitive market in this paper we explore the implications of haggling and fixed prices as pricing policies in a competitive market we develop a model in which two competing retailers choose between offering either a fixed price or haggling over prices with customers there are two consumer segments in our analysis one segment thehagglers has a lower opportunity cost of time and a lower haggling cost than the other segment thenonhagglers when both retailers follow the same pricing policy then a haggling policy is more profitable than a fixed price policy only when the proportion of nonhagglers is sufficiently high we find two kinds of prisoners dilemma under some conditions a more profitable haggling policy can be broken by a fixed price policy and under other conditions a fixed price policy can be broken by a haggling policy surprisingly we show that under some conditions an asymmetric outcome with one retailer haggling and the other offering a fixed price is also an equilibrium

unequal pay or unequal employment a cross country analysis of gender gaps we analyze gender wage gaps correcting for sample selection induced by nonemployment we recover wages for the nonemployed using alternative imputation techniques simply requiring assumptions on the position of imputed wages with respect to the median we obtain higher median wage gaps on imputed rather than actual wage distributions for several oecd countries however this difference is small in the united states the united kingdom and most central and northern eu countries and becomes sizable in southern eu countries where gender employment gaps are high selection correction explains nearly half of the observed negative correlation between wage and employment gaps

is perfect price discrimination really efficient an analysis of free entry we analyze models of product differentiation with perfect price discrimination and free entry with a fixed number of firms and in the absence of coordination failures perfect price discrimination provides incentives for firms to choose product characteristics in a socially optimal way however with free entry the number of firms is always excessive our results apply to a large class of models of product differentiation they also apply to models of common agency or lobbying with free entry and imply that one has excessive entry into the ranks of the principals

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

promises and pitfalls in environmentally extended input output analysis for china a survey of the literature abstract as the world s largest developing economy china plays a key role in global climate change and other environmental impacts of international concern environmentally extended input output analysis ee ioa is an important and insightful tool seeing widespread use in studying large scale environmental impacts in china calculating and analyzing greenhouse gas emissions carbon and water footprints pollution and embodied energy this paper surveys the published articles regarding ee ioa for china in peer reviewed journals and provides a comprehensive and quantitative overview of the body of literature examining the research impact environmental issues addressed and data utilized the paper further includes a discussion of the shortcomings in official chinese data and of the potential means to move beyond its inherent limitations

new methodology for the ecological footprint with an application to the new zealand economy abstract sustainable development has become a primary objective for many countries throughout the world since the late 1980s a major difficulty associated with sustainable development objectives however is the absence of reliable indicators to measure progress towards the goal of sustainability the ecological footprint provides an estimate of the land area necessary to sustain current levels of resource consumption for a given population on an aggregate basis the ecological footprint may be compared with the amount of ecologically productive land available to give an indication of whether consumption patterns are likely to be sustainable this paper proposes the use of a modified form of input output analysis to calculate the ecological footprint the input output approach provides a consistent means of calculating an ecological footprint using data collected as part of the system of national accounts in most developed countries in addition it makes explicit the link between the level of economic activity in a country and its corresponding impact on the environment an application of this methodology to new zealand indicates that it takes 3 49 has of ecologically productive land per year to sustain the average new zealander s current level of consumption

using composition of land multiplier to estimate ecological footprints associated with production activity abstract ecological footprint ef a measure of sustainability represents the areas of land and water required to produce the goods and services for satisfying the consumption of a defined human population or economy and to provide environmental assimilation capacity for keeping its environmental quality at a given level production land footprint a main component of the ef represents the lands used by production sectors for producing the goods and services for the final consumption of a given human population there have been at least two alternatives in estimating the production land footprint one is based on the estimates of apparent consumption of each type of resource along the line of the methodology proposed by wackernagel and rees wackernagel m rees w e 1996 and its later refinement the other suggested by bicknell et al 1998 is based on the monetary values of products that are delivered to domestic final demand the information recorded in an input output table the former faces the challenge of distinguishing the commodities used as intermediate input from those as final consumption although its recent development has tried to calculate the raw materials used directly in traded manufactured products wackernagel m lewan l hansson c b 1999a it is not an easy job because the indirect input requirements are also involved using input output analysis which has been widely used to consider the direct and indirect input requirements of supporting final demand may alleviate this difficulty bicknell et al 1998 adopted input output analysis to estimate the footprint of new zealand in their calculation they used land multipliers to obtain the production land areas required to produce the outputs for domestic final consumption directly and indirectly and presented the estimates under three land categories agricultural land forest land and degraded land however this presentation causes errors in the concept and calculation this is because that the area requirement of sector j s production land is obtained by multiplying sector j s land multiplier with its output for domestic final consumption the result would contain not only sector j s own production land but also those of other sectors whose outputs sector j uses as inputs thus the ensuing estimates on sectoral production lands cannot be presented by land category using the hypothetical data in the article of bicknell et al 1998 this paper explains the reasons for using the composition of land multipliers instead of land multipliers in estimating the production land footprint so that the calculated areas can be expressed by land category the revised calculation is then applied to taiwan for estimating her two footprint components production land and energy land in 1991

a theory of allocation of time in markets for labour and marriage this paper analyzes the interdependence between labor and marriage markets it is argued that market conditions concerning marriage influence the value of time in the home according to this economic view marriage involves an exchange of household labor between individual men and women wages in labor markets affect marital behavior and conditions in the markets for household labor influence labor supply single persons must decide whether to marry and if so how much work to invest and employ in the framework of marriage in monogamous societies marriage tends to occur when a man demands the amount of household labor a woman wants to supply and a woman demands the amount of labor supplied by the man however changing outside factors can disrupt this equilibrium and produce changes in income redistribution between the spouse new marital labor relations or divorce this approach diverges from the traditional theory of labor supply in the way the value of time in the home is determined awareness that the supply of labor can shift following changes in a market determined wage for household labor opens new avenues for research in labor economics and studies of female labor supply a change in sex ratio is likely to increase the proportion of women who marry and decrease the number of hours women work outside the home group differences in patterns of division of household labor further influence the elasticity of female labor supply a positive correlation between achievements in markets for labor and household labor can provide an additional explanation for the backward bending supply of labor finally the relative position of husbands and wives in their respective marriage markets has implications for their consumption patterns and fertility this theory could provide a useful framework for analyzing the consequences of public policy for production reproduction and the distribution of wealth

bertrand supertraps we study oligopoly price competition between multiproduct firms firms whose products interact in the profit function specifically we focus on the impact of intrafirm product interactions on the level of equilibrium profits this impact may be decomposed in two different ways a a direct effect keeping the competitors actions fixed plus a strategic effect i e through the competitors actions or alternatively b a competitive advantage effect change in firmi only plus an imitation effect change in all other firms we derive conditions such that a the strategic effect more than outweighs the direct effect and conditions such that b the imitation effect more than outweighs the competitive advantage effect bertrand supertraps for example an increase in the degree of economies of scope would increase profits if prices were fixed or if the change were limited to firmi s cost function however if all firms increase the degree of economies of scope then all firms receive lower profits a variety of other applications is considered including learning curves core competencies demand synergies systems competition compatibility bundling network effects switching costs durable goods long term contracts

transparency price dependent demand and product variety abstract this paper revisits the relationship between transparency on the consumer side and product variety we show that due to lower price cost margins more transparency is welfare improving this result is achieved even though product variety may be reduced

energy requirements of sydney households supporting the lifestyles of the populations of modern cities requires vast quantities of natural resources and leads to environmental stresses such as air and water pollution research into the metabolism of cities therefore aims at understanding the physical flows into within and out of cities with a view to reducing the use of resources and the environmental impacts one important physical indicator is energy use most studies on cities only consider direct or end user energy consumption since the function of cities is to serve the lives of their residents indirect energy use in cities or energy embodied in the consumption of goods and services by its residents can be regarded as being as important as direct energy use however physical models of cities are extremely complex and have difficulty in dealing with boundary issues and hence the indirect resource requirements in this paper we use input output analysis and detailed household expenditure data to yield comprehensive energy use breakdowns for the 14 statistical subdivisions of sydney multivariate regression and structural path analysis spa are used to interpret the results clear correlations can be drawn between energy use and income household size age and degree of urbanity the structural path analysis is used to demonstrate how significant differences in lifestyles between inner and outer areas of sydney leads to different energy use characteristics this final consumption based approach to analysing the energy requirements for households has important implications for measures aimed at reducing energy use which tend to only consider direct energy use d 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

price discrimination and social welfare studies the effect of price discrimination on social welfare using methods from duality theory features of the reservation model presented quasi linear utility and consumers surplus upper and lower bounds on welfare change bounds on welfare change with optimal price discrimination from ebsco

long term trends in direct and indirect household energy intensities a factor in dematerialisation abstract dematerialisation is assumed to contribute significantly to the alleviation of environmental problems one of the possible causes of dematerialisation is a change in the consumption patterns of households the aim of this article is to analyse changes consumption patterns of dutch households in the period between 1948 to 1996 in order to discover whether these changes haven influenced the energy intensity of society due to the rise in consumption the total household energy requirement per capita grew on average by 2 4 per year over a period of 48 years this figure ignores efficiency changes in the supplying sectors in the same period the total energy intensity of households fluctuated but on average changed from 5 6 to 6 3 mj nlg an increase of 0 25 per year if we exclude the direct energy consumption we find a slight decline in the indirect energy intensity namely from 3 8 to 3 6 mj nlg 0 14 per year no significant trends to a lower energy intensity are found and there is no indication of dematerialisation of the consumption patterns if governments pursue a policy of sustainable development they have to take into account the fact that dematerialisation of the consumption pattern does not seem to be an autonomous process

gdp and the value of family caretaking how much does europe care this study estimates the size and value of unpaid family caretaking activities at a european level while at a country level several studies are available a comprehensive evaluation for europe as a whole was missing so far mainly due to data limitations this article fills this gap using a method that merges the information of the european survey of income and living conditions eu silc with the harmonised european time use surveys hetus monetary values of unpaid family domestic work and unpaid family childcare work are obtained applying both the opportunity cost and the market replacement approaches for europe as a whole the total value of these activities ranges between 17 and 31 6 of the eu gross domestic product gdp depending on the applied methodology the national values of these activities are discussed and an interpretation of the country and gender differentials in family caretaking costs is given in terms of differences in culture economic development and welfare state

price discrimination with partial information does it pay off abstract this paper investigates the profit effects of price discrimination when firms have partial information about consumer preferences it shows that price discrimination can boost industry profit if firms have access to the right kind of information about consumer preferences while remaining ignorant of other relevant information

fighting collusion by permitting price discrimination we investigate the effect of a ban on third degree price discrimination on the sustainability of collusion we build a model with two firms that may be able to discriminate between two consumer groups two cases are analyzed i best response symmetries so that profits in the static nash equilibrium are higher if price discrimination is allowed ii best response asymmetries so that profits in the static nash equilibrium are lower if price discrimination is allowed in both price discrimination scenarios firms discount factor has to be higher in order to sustain collusion in grim trigger strategies than under uniform pricing

a model of search with price discrimination abstract we introduce observable heterogeneity across buyers into a model of simultaneous search buyers differences are informative about their willingness to search giving rise to price discrimination even if they all have the same willingness to pay we analyze and compare equilibrium outcomes when price discrimination is allowed and when it is not we find that the price comparison across consumers as well as the effects of banning price discrimination critically depend on the elasticity of the search cost distribution interestingly for normally distributed search costs there is an inverted u shape relationship between prices and buyers size similarly a ban on price discrimination hurts small and large buyers to the benefit of the medium size ones

the carbon footprint of greek households 1995 2012 abstract the goal of this paper is twofold i to investigate the carbon footprint of greek households throughout the period 1995 2012 in order to identify the main socio economic factors that affect ghg emissions and ii to evaluate the effectiveness of the implemented policies to tackle climate change in this a consumption based emissions inventory approach is applied the analysis is based on an environmentally extended input output model including direct co2 emissions from households indirect co2 emissions from electricity consumption and indirect co2 emissions from energy used in the production of goods and services purchased by households domestic or imported statistical analysis and appropriate regression models were developed in order to identify the main factors influencing the carbon footprint of greek households the results indicate that the observed trends during the period 1995 2008 can be attributed to the effect of high economic growth this trend is partially counterbalanced by favorable weather conditions and the implementation of greenhouse mitigation policies and measures mainly in the supply side since 2008 the shrinking household income is the dominant driver in addition the effectiveness of energy conservation policies and measures in place is rather low while the effect of imports is limited

dynamic price discrimination with asymmetric firms this paper considers variants of a dynamic duopoly model where one firm has a stronger market position than its competitor consumers past purchases may reveal their different valuations for the two firms products price discrimination based on purchase histories tends to benefit consumers if it does not cause the weaker firm to exit otherwise it can harm consumers the effect of price discrimination also depends on firms cost differences market competitiveness and consumers time horizon the stronger firm may price below cost in the presence of consumer switching costs with the purpose and effect of eliminating competition

labour supply household production and intra family welfare distribution abstract this paper demonstrates the importance in conceptual and empirical terms of incorporating household production in models of labour supply to avoid misleading results concerning the intra family distribution of income and behavioural responses to economic policy

coordinating price reductions and coupon events abstract in this article the authors use an economic model to show that it may be optimal to lower the retail price during a coupon event when marginal consumers have moderate hassle costs of coupon redemption results from the model offer predictions on the relationships among coupon redemptions shelf price and coupon face value the authors test these predictions on a large data set of hundreds of coupon events across six packaged goods categories the data show that when a small coupon face value is offered the shelf price is likely to be reduced they also find that coupon efficiency increases when there is a lower retail price the results are of interest to managers planning a promotion calendar and deciding whether to coordinate price promotions with coupon events and they contribute to economic theory when a firm moves from uniform pricing e g no coupons to second degree price discrimination e g coupons all consumers may face a lower price this finding has public policy implication

dynamic pricing when to entice brand switching and when to reward consumer loyalty this article develops a theory of dynamic pricing in which firms may offer separate prices to different consumers based on their past purchases brand preferences over two periods are described by a copula admitting various degrees of positive dependence when commitment to future prices is infeasible each firm offers lower prices to its rival s customers when firms can commit to future prices consumer loyalty is rewarded if preference dependence is low but enticing brand switching occurs if preference dependence is high our theory provides a unified treatment of the two pricing policies and sheds light on observed practices across industries

a bibliometric review energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the residential sector residential sector has been one key sector for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions due to its significant contribution to global warming researchers in different countries have studied household energy consumption patterns and greenhouse gas emissions in order to promote low carbon lifestyles however few review papers have been published in this regard leading to a lack of systematic understanding on the related research achievements hence by using a bibliometric approach this paper aims to review the existing literature and examine the evolution of such a field so that the research trends can be uncovered including popular research methods citation analysis is performed to assess the influence of most productive journals countries territories and authors network analysis is also conducted to evaluate the relationship among different countries territories authors and keywords research outcomes of this paper present a comprehensive research picture on residential energy consumption and corresponding greenhouse gas emissions ree related papers published from 1997 to 2016 the most productive journals countries territories authors are also analyzed based on citation analysis and network analysis in addition results also revealed that behavioral analysis input output analysis life cycle assessment and cost benefit analysis are the most commonly used methods in this field results obtained from this study can provide valuable information for researchers interested in the ree related field

history based price discrimination and entry in markets with switching costs a welfare analysis abstract we analyze history based price discrimination in an asymmetric industry where an incumbent protected by switching costs faces an entrant who does not have access to information about consumers purchase histories we demonstrate that consumer surplus is higher with uniform pricing than with history based price discrimination we find that the entry decision is invariant to whether the incumbent implements history based pricing or uniform pricing this implies that the potential abuse of market dominance imposed by history based price discrimination is exploitation not exclusion finally we establish that the profit gain to the incumbent from history based pricing exceeds the associated loss to consumers

third degree price discrimination in oligopoly all out competition and strategic commitment price discrimination by imperfectly competitive firms may intensify competition leading to lower prices for all consumers the tradeoff of consumer groups welfare that is characteristic of monopolistic discrimination need not arise this escalation of competition may make firms worse off and as a result firms may wish to avoid the discriminatory outcome under conditions similar to those in which unambiguous price and welfare effects may arise unilateral commitments not to price discriminate including the adoption of everyday low pricing or no haggle policies may raise firm profits by softening price competition

non discrimination clauses in the retail energy sector the british energy regulator will soon review a non discrimination licence condition which it imposed to ensure that energy retailers charge the same mark up in different regions many consumers are loyal to incumbent firms necessitating heavy discounting by entrants to attract customers which had led to regional price discrimination matching characteristics of the energy market to models of discrimination we identify the necessary conditions for the licence condition to have a positive effect for consumers and explore whether the policy has helped potentially vulnerable consumers we conclude that the most likely effect of the licence condition is to reduce competition in the mainstream energy markets and welcome the regulator s latest review of the retail market

behavior based pricing in vertically differentiated industries we study behavior based pricing bbp in a vertically differentiated model vertical differentiation is innately asymmetric because all customers prefer the higher quality product when prices are equal this asymmetry causes bbp to have different properties than symmetric horizontally differentiated models we highlight two dimensions that affect the analysis the role of quality adjusted cost differences between the firms and the role of consumer discounting relative to firm discounting in the second period consistent with the prior literature we find that there are conditions based on market shares and quality adjusted costs under which either the low quality firm or the high quality firm but not both will reward its current customers with lower prices than it charges to new customers we then consider whether these conditions can arise in a two period equilibrium we find that if consumers sufficiently discount the future periods then firms at enough of a competitive disadvantage will reward their customers i e the low quality firm will reward its current customers if the quality adjusted cost differential between the two firms is small while the high quality firm will reward its current customers if this cost differential is large conversely we find that if consumers do not discount the future very much then the firm at a competitive disadvantage i e a low quality firm competing against a low cost high quality firm or a high quality firm that has very high costs can earn greater profits with bbp than without bbp although there are cases where both firms may benefit from bbp this paper was accepted by j miguel villas boas marketing

dressing a ghost size and value of unpaid family care unpaid family care work encompasses care and assistance provided by members of a household to other members it is not considered to be a productive activity and its exclusion from national accoun

price discrimination with private and imperfect information in this paper i investigate the competitive and welfare effects of the improvements in information accuracy in markets where firms can price discriminate after observing a private and noisy signal about a consumer s brand preference i show that when firms believe that consumers have a brand preference for them then they charge more to these consumers and this price has an inverse u shaped relationship with the signal s accuracy in contrast the price charged after a disloyal signal has been observed falls as the signal s accuracy rises while industry profit and overall welfare fall monotonically when price discrimination is based on increasingly more accurate information the reverse happens to consumer surplus

price discrimination in australia s retail electricity markets an analysis of victoria southeast queensland when capital intensive monopoly industries are restructured and deregulated consumer prices commence a natural drift from regulated uniform average cost tariffs to competitive differential prices and this can raise problems for policymakers deep discounts are welcomed high standing offers are not but price discrimination is unremarkable in economics indeed in industries where fixed sunk costs represent a significant portion of total cost discriminatory pricing is usually welfare enhancing conversely theory predicts and empirical evidence confirms that regulatory efforts to cherry pick differential prices in asymmetric markets will damage consumer welfare in this article we analyse differential retail electricity offer prices in the australian states of victoria and queensland and contrast these with industry average total cost and the marginal cost of retail supply we find deregulated victoria displays high price dispersion with standing offer tariffs 10 above industry average total cost and marginal offers at break even prices i e 20 below average total cost in the semi regulated southeast queensland market where a regulated price cap exists there is lower dispersion but marginal offers include a 6 7 retail mark up efficient pricing requires the marginal unit produced to be priced at marginal cost and victoria meets this criteria but we identify an episode of inter consumer misallocation due to high standing offers we conclude policy initiatives designed to help firms shift vulnerable households from standing offer tariffs is desirable

competitive customer poaching with asymmetric firms abstract conditioning the pricing policies on purchase history is proven to generate a cutthroat price competition enhancing consumer surplus this result typically relies on a framework where competitors are assumed to be symmetric this paper demonstrates that under significant asymmetries of competing firms the strong firm trades off current market share for future market share and the weak firm does the opposite this inter temporal market sharing agreement generates unidirectional poaching and entails new and distinctive welfare implications in particular if consumers are sufficiently myopic price discrimination softens price competition in relation to uniform pricing overturning the conclusion of previous studies

market segmentation and collusive behavior abstract the recent literature on oligopolistic third degree price discrimination has been primarily concerned with rival firms incentives to acquire customer specific information and the consequences of such information on firm profitability and welfare this literature has taken mostly a static view of the interaction between competing firms in contrast in this paper we investigate the impact of customer specific information on the likelihood of tacit collusion in a dynamic game of repeated interaction this issue is very important because competitive price discrimination usually leads to a cutthroat price competition prisoners dilemma among firms firms therefore may seek ways to soften competition and sustain higher prices our main result is that collusion becomes more difficult as the firms ability to segment consumers improves

evaluation of the soft measures effects on ambient water quality improvement and household and industry economies abstract various ecological footprint calculators carbon footprint calculators and water footprint calculators have been developed in recent years the basic concepts of ecological behaviour record notebooks and of carbon dioxide emission calculators have been developed since the late 20th century the first carbon dioxide emission calculator was developed in 1991 likewise water pollutant discharge calculators have been developed to estimate the effects of soft measures introduced into households to reduce pollutant discharge since 2004 the soft measures which have been developed in japan may consist of a wider framework household sustainable consumption which has been developed in europe and can be referred to cleaner consumption in this research summarisation of the short history of ecological behaviour record notebooks and ecological footprint calculators in japan since the 1980s was conducted and the soft measures in households to reduce pollutant discharge were evaluated for their effects on ambient water quality improvement as well as household and industry economies effects of the soft measures on related industry economies were investigated using an input output table analysis and the effects of the imported goods were evaluated with an import effect matrix which was developed in this research the effects of the soft measures on household expenditures were estimated to be a decrease by 2 5 or usd 285 person 1 year 1 in 2003 2006 the results show that the soft measures positively affect the chemical fibre industry and significantly affect the detergent industry analysis of the import effect matrix proved that the six industries were tightly related through extensive amounts of imported goods the soft measures in households may lead to household sustainable consumption and thus reduce disadvantageous human impacts on water environments the effects of the measures introduced to improve the environment should be qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated to avoid redundant concerns and discord between the environment and the economy which may be worried when the relationship is not well understood

promoting sustainable consumption in china a conceptual framework and research review various theories and approaches have been introduced in the debate on how to address sustainable consumption in this study we first discuss different theoretical perspectives on sustainable consumption particularly developed in the fields of economics social psychology and environmental sociology we argue that neither an individualist nor a system or structural perspective alone is sufficient for understanding and analysing the transition towards sustainable consumption therefore we propose to apply the social practices approach spa that combines both human agency and social structures to understand sustainable consumption issues following the spa framework we review and summarize research on sustainable consumption in china in particular on three consumption fields food housing energy and mobility it is found that introducing more efficient production technology is commonly taken as the focal point in these sectors when sustainable consumption was introduced to china despite a rising interest in consumers perceptions of products sustainability in recent years research has rarely paid any attention to consumers behavioural change or to the transition dynamics towards sustainable consumption in general individualist perspectives have largely dominated chinese sustainable consumption research this paper proposes to move attention to a better understanding of chinese consumption issues by emphasizing the link between the provision of sustainable products and the diverse sustainable consumption practices also images of food energy mobility and other consumption products that are undergoing transitions need to be considered in future research as these have consequences for socio technical changes material infrastructures and for lifestyle innovations

examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 1 a technical note on combining input output and ecological footprint analysis in recent years there have been a number of attempts to develop a more comprehensive approach to the issue of measuring resource use and or pollution generation embodied in trade flows including contributions that combine input output techniques and ecological footprint analysis in this two part paper we describe how to enumerate the resource and or pollution content of inter regional and inter national trade flows part 1 and we present a literature review of recent methodological and empirical developments part 2 it is straightforward in principle to extend the basic input output approach to capture international trade flows however in practice problems of data availability and compatibility and of computability of extended input output matrices mean that simplifying assumptions are generally applied but with the implications of these assumptions often not made fully explicit what appears to be absent from previous applications is an account of the analytical method by which ecological footprints should ideally be estimated in an international input output accounting analysis this allows an explicit analysis of the problems that prevent the application of the full method and identification of the most appropriate short cut methods in a transparent way the objective of this paper is to provide such an account

behavior based pricing with experience goods we consider a two period model in which duopolists sell experience goods and practice behavior based price discrimination bbpd we give general conditions for when firms should offer a lower price to existing customers pay to stay or to new customers pay to switch we also demonstrate that unlike previous results bbpd may intensify competition in the first period but weaken it in the second

applying input output analysis to scenario analysis of ecological footprints abstract application of input output analysis to ecological footprints efs is shifting from an ex post static calculation toward an ex ante scenario analysis for enhancing the policy relevance of ef analysis this change in application prompts two issues requiring careful examination 1 what is measured by leontief inverses or extended environmental leontief inverses and 2 whether a sector s land multiplier or compositions of land multiplier can appropriately reflect the effect of delivering one unit of the sector s output to final demand on the required area s of production lands used by the sector itself and by other producing sectors whose products are contributed directly and indirectly to its production the underlying message of these two questions is whether the assumed linear marginal relationship between a sector s output and its intermediate inputs input output coefficients a critical assumption made by w leontief to transform a transactions table from an accounting framework into the input output model can be extended to assume that the marginal relationship between a sector s output and the area of production land it uses for generating output is fixed land output marginal coefficient equal to average coefficient by reviewing the literature on input output analysis and its application to environmental issues and by theoretically and empirically examining the relation between sector output and land appropriation this study advises against the use of land multipliers or their compositions in the ef scenario analysis to apply the input output model to ef scenario analysis for enhancing policy relevance with due attention to the relationship between sector output and land appropriation this study suggests a two stage ef calculation procedure in the first stage the input output application estimates only the required raw materials or generated pollutants for meeting a given consumption pattern which is the objective of environmental input output analysis in the second stage the estimated amount of raw materials or pollutants is converted into land water area and a choice of conversion methods is suggested according to the research questions and the availability of conversion methods and required data

impact of cap and trade policies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions on u s households abstract proposals being considered by the u s congress would establish a cap and trade system to cut greenhouse gas ghg emissions approximately 2 annually through 2050 past cap and trade policies for other pollutants have distributed allowances free to the regulated companies leaving consumers uncompensated for passed through costs needed to achieve the required reductions social equity concerns were not a major issue because the total costs were relatively small however americans currently spend about 1 trillion year on energy directly and indirectly via the goods and services they consume if a cap on carbon emissions results in significant increases in energy prices social equity concerns could quickly dominate the debate over climate policy this paper confirms earlier studies that a traditional cap and trade policy is regressive and would cause the cost of reducing ghg emissions to fall disproportionately on low income households this paper explores ways to ameliorate those effects using highly disaggregated data available on consumer expenditures and energy input output analyses of the u s economy emissions are estimated based on direct and embodied energy use at the household level social equity concerns are taken into account and the consequences of cap and trade policies are assessed by quantifying the extent to which the expenditure patterns of the poor are significantly more energy intensive than those of the rich

reverse price discrimination with bayesian buyers this paper studies price discrimination under the situation in which buyers prior valuations are initially observable by a seller but buyers receive further information about a product or service which remains private thereafter the buyers interpret new information via bayes rule we show that in this environment prices are not monotone in buyers prior valuations interestingly this results in the possibility that a seller intentionally offers a higher price to a low valuation buyer rather than a high valuation buyer reverse price discrimination we derive this result in both monopoly and duopoly markets

liberalizing a distribution system the european car market we quantify the competitive effects of liberalizing the selective and exclusive distribution system in the european car market based on a model of oligopoly pricing with differentiated products we consider two possible competitive effects from liberalization i the creation of international intrabrand competition cross border trade which will result in a reduction of international price discrimination and ii a possible cumulative effect arising from a strengthening of national intrabrand competition which would result in reduced double marginalization we find that the reduction in international price discrimination mainly redistributes consumer gains across countries it has a positive but modest effect on total welfare if liberalization also has the cumulative effect of reducing double marginalization the welfare effects are much higher finally we find that the effects of liberalization on the manufacturers profits are either small or positive this finding implies that international price discrimination and softening competition through a double marginalization mechanism should not be interpreted as main profit motives for the previous distribution system but only as unintended side effects hence the industry rationale for maintaining the previous distribution system should be sought in other areas jel f15 l42

a structure of models for future projections of environmental pressure due to consumption abstract a model structure for constructing consumption scenarios and determining the related energy requirement of the inhabitants of the netherlands has recently been developed at the rivm consumption is considered in the model structure to be influenced by economic growth demographic changes sociocultural developments technological enhancement and policy measures the structure includes and connects several models which also operate stand alone an important model in the system is the so called central unit which has two functions 1 dealing with the consistency between income developments and microeconomic developments on household expenditure derived from the other models in the system and 2 the broader function the construction of consumption scenarios on the basis of income elasticities these elasticities relationship between income and expenditure depend on the circumstances of a household such as its size new products and prevailing standards and values in the society these circumstances change in the course of time causing the income elasticities to change as well the central unit constructs scenarios of consumption based on the influence of these circumstances on the expenditure of households in the central unit consumer activities and underlying parameters are integrated into a matrix with domains of consumption e g food housing and holidays represented by rows and means of consumption e g products and mobility by columns developments in consumption are related to direct energy use e g petrol electricity and indirect energy embedded in goods and services

from local to global competition abstract we introduce a framework that has known models of oligopolistic competition with differentiated products the circle the logit and the ces as limit cases this integrative approach incorporates both localized and global competition as well as price sensitive individual demands it is used to explain the impact of major changes over the last two centuries reductions in transport costs increased taste for variety population growth and use of technologies with greater returns to scale we work out the properties of an extended chamberlinian model with applications both in industrial organization and economic geography

add on pricing by asymmetric firms this paper uses an analytical model to examine the consequences of add on pricing when firms are both horizontally and vertically differentiated and there is a segment of boundedly rational consumers who are unaware of the add on fees at the time of initial purchase we find that consumers who know the add on fees can be penalized and increasingly so by the existence of boundedly rational consumers our consideration of quality asymmetries on base goods and add ons plus the inclusion of boundedly rational consumers leads to several novel findings regarding firm profits when quality asymmetry is on base goods only and with boundedly rational consumers add on pricing can diminish profit for a qualitatively superior firm and increase profit for an inferior firm i e a lose win result compared to when add on pricing is prohibited or infeasible when quality asymmetries exist on both base goods and add ons and without boundedly rational consumers the opposite win lose result prevails when quality asymmetries exist on both base goods and add ons and with boundedly rational consumers the result can be win win win lose or lose win depending on the magnitude of quality differentiation on add ons this paper was accepted by j miguel villas boas marketing

targeted pricing and customer data sharing among rivals it is increasingly observable that competitors in different industries share customer data which can be used for targeted pricing we propose a modified hotelling model with two dimensional consumer heterogeneity to analyze the incentives for such sharing and its ensuing welfare effects we show that these incentives depend on the type of customer data and on consumer heterogeneity in the strength of brand preferences only data on consumer transportation cost parameters is shared the incentives to do so are stronger if consumers are relatively homogeneous customer data sharing is most likely to be detrimental to consumer surplus while the effect on social welfare can be positive

an empirical investigation of the welfare effects of banning wholesale price discrimination rand 054 rand2007 cls 1994 07 13 v1 2u standard latex document class rand rand 054 dispatch 12 7 2008 ce n a journal msp no no of pages 26 pe sharon rand journal of economics vol 40 no 1 spring 2009 pp 20 45 an empirical investigation of the welfare effects of banning wholesale price discrimination sofia berto villas boas economic theory does not provide sharp predictions on the welfare effects of banning wholesale price discrimination if downstream cost differences exist then discrimination shifts production inefficiently toward high cost retailers so a ban increases welfare if differences in price elasticity of demand across retailers exist discrimination may increase welfare if quantity sold increases so a ban reduces welfare using retail prices and quantities of coffee brands sold by german retailers i estimate a model of demand and supply and separate cost and demand differences simulating a ban on wholesale price discrimination has positive welfare effects in this market and less if downstream cost differences shrink or with less competition introduction wholesale price discrimination means that an upstream firm sets different prices for the same product for various downstream retailers wholesale price discrimination is commonly practiced in many markets examples include markets such as petroleum distribution steel heavy trucking tobacco and pharmaceuticals in several countries milk and other dairy products are sold using government administered or sanctioned discriminatory pricing schemes wholesale price discrimination practices are also used for services such as loans insurance and advertising 1 competition authorities have been concerned with wholesale price discrimination the european union treaty s article 82 c prohibits practices where a dominant firm would place trading partners at a competitive disadvantage the u s robinson patman act forbids discriminat ing in price between different purchasers where the effect may be to lessen competition unless the university of california berkeley sberto are berkeley edu i thank the editor igal hendel and two anonymous referees for many helpful comments and max auffhammer cyndi berck peter berck gal hochman silke januszewski forbes george judge kai uwe k uhn diana lazo mark muendler aviv nevo ariel pakes jeff perloff andrew sweeting miguel villas boas and participants at uc san diego university of michigan the inra idei conference in toulouse and the university of british columbia summer conference in industrial organization for their suggestions i thank daniel klapper for letting me have access to the data support from the giannini foundation and from an aes grant are gratefully appreciated see for gasoline markets texaco v hasbrouck 496 us 543 no 87 2048 1990 and the new york state motor fuel marketing practices act for steel chan hall and rust 2003 for heavy trucking volvo trucks north america inc v reeder simco gmc inc docket no 04 905 for tobacco brooke group ltd v brown and williamson tobacco corp 509 us 209 no 92 466 1993 for wholesale pharmaceuticals see http www datcp state wi us trade business unfair comp drug price jsp for dairy markets see for example gardner 1984 and for services see givens 1983 c 2009 rand copyright

dynamics of final sectoral energy demand and aggregate energy intensity this paper proposes a regional and sectoral model of global final energy demand for the main end use sectors of consumption industrial commercial and public services residential and road transportation per capita demand is expressed as an s shaped function of per capita income other variables intervene as well like energy prices temperatures and technological trends this model is applied on a panel of 101 countries and 3 aggregates covering the whole world and it explains fairly well past variations in sectoral final consumption since the beginning of the 2000s further the model is used to analyze the dynamics of final energy demand by sector and in total the main conclusion concerns the pattern of change for aggregate energy intensity the simulations performed show that there is no a priori reason for it to exhibit a bell shape as reported in the literature depending on initial conditions the weight of basic needs in total consumption and the availability of modern commercial energy resources various forms might emerge

should mobile marketers collect data other than geo location we take today s mobile marketing data landscape as a starting point and consider a duopoly model of third degree price discrimination in which firms can complement geo location information with data on consumer flexibility of varying quality we show that depending on consumer heterogeneity higher quality flexibility data affect profits according to three different patterns in equilibrium both firms tend to acquire data if the data are of high quality while only one acquires data if the data quality is low firms are likely to gain from additional data if consumers have similar preferences and or when data are precise although social welfare weakly improves consumers can be harmed

quantifying the global and distributional aspects of american household carbon footprint abstract analysis of household consumption and its environmental impact remains one of the most important topics in sustainability research nevertheless much past and recent work has focused on domestic national averages neglecting both the growing importance of international trade on household carbon footprint and the variation between households of different income levels and demographics using consumer expenditure surveys and multi country life cycle assessment techniques this paper analyzes the global and distributional aspects of american household carbon footprint we find that due to recently increased international trade 30 of total us household co 2 impact in 2004 occurred outside the us further households vary considerably in their co 2 responsibilities at least a factor of ten difference exists between low and high impact households with total household income and expenditure being the best predictors of both domestic and international portions of the total co 2 impact the global location of emissions which cannot be calculated using standard input output analysis and the variation of household impacts with income have important ramifications for polices designed to lower consumer impacts on climate change such as carbon taxes the effectiveness and fairness of such policies hinges on a proper understanding of how income distributions rebound effects and international trade affect them

welfare and output in third degree price discrimination a note abstract one main result on the welfare effects of third degree price discrimination by a monopolist is that an increase in total output is a necessary condition for welfare improvement this note provides two examples showing that this proposition does not generalize to an oligopoly with heterogenous firms in these examples price discrimination makes competition more favorable to the low cost firm this induces a cost saving that overcomes the welfare loss associated with price discrimination

the welfare effects of third degree price discrimination in a differentiated oligopoly this article examines the welfare effects of third degree price discrimination under oligopolistic competition with horizontal product differentiation we derive a necessary and sufficient condition for price discrimination to improve social welfare the degree of substitution must be sufficiently greater in the strong market where the discriminatory price is higher than the uniform price than in the weak market where it is lower it is verified however that consumer surplus is never improved social welfare improves solely owing to an increase in the firms profits in the case of linear demands jel d43 l11 l13 i introduction this article examines the welfare effects of oligopolistic third degree price discrimination explicitly considering product differentiation as a source of market power and strategic interaction product differentiation is one of the main reasons why firms can enjoy market power it enables them to sell products that are no longer perfect substitutes for example coca cola and pepsico sell similar types of soda although it is arguable that they differ in taste each firm thereby attracts some consumers over another as a form of price discrimination coca cola was once reported to be testing a vending machine that would automatically raise prices in hot weather 1 although the plan triggered nationwide controversy and coca cola had to abandon the project as a result it could have changed the regime of uniform pricing to one of price discrimination in the soda market how would the resulting change affect consumer welfare and firms profits in other words is third degree price discrimination good or bad answering this question is important because it helps us to evaluate price discrimination under oligopoly in this article we focus on horizontal product differentiation to consider substitutability as well as complementarity 2 by assuming a linear quadratic utility function of a representative consumer and focusing on the symmetric equilibrium of a pricing game we characterize the conditions relating to such demand properties as substitutability and complementarity required for price discrimination to improve social welfare more specifically we derive a necessary and sufficient condition for price discrimination to improve social welfare the degree of substitution must be sufficiently greater in the strong market where the discriminatory price is higher than the uniform price than in the weak market where it is lower it is also shown that aggregate output must increase for price discrimination to improve social welfare we verify however that consumer surplus is never improved by price discrimination welfare improvement from price discrimination is solely owing to an increase in firms profits in the example above the degree of substitution would be higher in the strong market i e when the temperature is high because consumers care less about which brand when it is hot weather our analysis below implies that social welfare might improve in this case the degree of substitution can vary across markets even if consumers in each market face exactly the same products because consumers taste depends on various market specific factors such as geographical and natural conditions if the strong market is where consumers demand a product more eagerly caring less about which brand in the above example individuals demand soda more eagerly in hot weather then our results suggest that price discrimination has large potential to improve social welfare 3 why does allowing price discrimination improve social welfare notice that there are two forces that determine equilibrium prices in price setting oligopoly a larger market size raises the price whereas a larger substitutability parameter lowers the price for price discrimination to raise social welfare it is necessary that a high degree of substitutability mitigates an increase in the discriminatory price in the larger market

analyzing the impacts of carbon regulatory mechanisms on supplier and mode selection decisions an application to a biofuel supply chain this paper analyzes the impacts of carbon regulatory mechanisms on replenishment decisions in a biofuel supply chain we employ mathematical models for operations which integrate replenishment and supplier transportation mode selection decisions these models explicitly account for carbon emissions that may result from transportation and inventory storage activities this research is motivated by observations indicating that nearly 19 of the energy consumption and 25 of the energy related carbon dioxide emissions worldwide arise from transportation because freight transportation is expected to continue to grow we consider the impacts of different carbon regulatory mechanisms on transportation and inventory replenishment decisions in a biofuel supply chain a set of extensive numerical experiments uses the biofuel supply chain context to analyze the impacts of different regulatory mechanisms including carbon cap carbon tax carbon cap and trade and carbon offset on performance we use existing methodologies to calculate emissions as a function of distance traveled load weight and transportation mode used we also use publicly available data to derive representative biomass transportation costs as a consequence our numerical results are meaningful and give a realistic representation of the relationships between emissions from different transportation modes and the resulting costs the results of our computational experiments indicate that carbon regulatory mechanisms have a non trivial impact on replenishment schedules and as a consequence costs and emissions in the supply chain

competition of firms discriminatory pricing and location1 two costlessly mobile firms are to be located in a market region a subset of the plane the firms compete by setting locations and delivered price schedules to study this competitive stiuation an appropriate extensive form game is defined along with an appropri ate noncooperative solution concept existence and general properties of the equilibrium are demonstrated among the results are each firm increases its profit by locating so as to decrease total cost to both firms of serving the market firms will never locate coinciden tally if they have identical production costs and transport cost rates or if these are different and the firms are located in a circular market region having a uniform demand distribution this paper studies competition between two profit maximizing firms in space who are costlessly mobile and may discriminate in price we will allow the firms to set locations and delivered price schedules and we will be concerned with the existence and properties of equilibria in location and price starting with hotelling 9 the spatial competition literature has focused on location on bounded linear markets by two or more firms hotelling assumed identical firms that produced a single good with constant cost of production and considered consumers to be uniformly distributed and to have inelastic demand he also assumed that the consumers pay transport cost and purchase the good from the cheapest source hotelling claimed that a nash equilibrium in locations for the two firm market existed and yielded back to back locations at the center of the market many authors most recently d aspremont gabszewicz and thisse 2 have noted that an equilbrium in prices and location does not exist for hotelling s model however if the firms employ identical exogeneously specified prices hotelling s conclusions hold subsequent work by smithies 14 hartwick and hartwick 7 and eaton 3 claimed to show that a nash equi librium in f o b prices and locations can exist in markets with a uniform distribu tion of consumers each of whom have identical elastic demand functions for the two and three firm problems the work of d aspremont et al casts doubt on these conclusions without the adoption of restrictive conditions our work contrasts with these works and related research which has dealt with linear markets with uniform distributions of customers and with identical firms our work will involve markets that are subsets of the plane having nonuniform distributions of customers our firms will be allowed to be different that is have differences in production and transport costs however the fundamental difference in our approach is that our firms will set discriminatory prices and not price f o b in many ways our work will represent the discriminatory pricing

pricing with customer recognition abstract this article studies the dynamic effects of behaviour based price discrimination and customer recognition in a duopolistic market where the distribution of consumers preferences is discrete consumers are myopic and firms are forward looking in the static and first period equilibrium firms choose prices with mixed strategies when price discrimination is allowed forward looking firms have an incentive to avoid customer recognition thus the probability that both will have positive first period sales decreases as they become more patient furthermore an asymmetric equilibrium sometimes exists yielding a 100 0 division of the first period sales as a whole price discrimination is bad for profits but good for consumer surplus and welfare

a note on the excess entry theorem in spatial models with elastic demand abstract this paper revisits the excess entry theorem in spatial models according to vickrey vickrey w s 1964 microstatics harcourt brace and world new york and salop salop s 1979 monopolistic competition with outside goods bell journal of economics 10 141 156 while relaxing the assumption of inelastic demand using a demand function with a constant demand elasticity we show that the number of firms that enter a market decreases with the degree of demand elasticity we find that the excess entry theorem does only hold when the demand elasticity is sufficiently small otherwise there is insufficient entry in the limiting case of unit elastic demand the market is monopolized we broaden our results with a more general transportation cost function