balancing skilled with unskilled migration in an urbanizing agricultural economy summary in the early stages of economic development the migration of unskilled workers contributes to labor intensive manufacturing production in middle income countries however the migration of skilled workers becomes the more important factor in economic progress evaluating the skill content of migration patterns therefore is essential to understanding migration s economic implications for this purpose we investigate the determinants of skilled and unskilled migration decisions in vietnam rural higher education is shown to promote knowledge intensive production by encouraging skilled individuals to migrate to cities in complementary fashion commercial farm development helps alleviate urban overcrowding by encouraging unskilled individuals to remain at home

risk sharing and internal migration over the past two decades more than half the population in rural tanzania migrated within the country profoundly changing the nature of traditional institutions such as informal risk sharing mass internal migration has created geographically disperse networks on which the authors collected detailed panel data by quantifying how shocks and consumption co vary across linked households they show how migrants unilaterally insure their extended family members at home this finding contradicts risk sharing models based on reciprocity but is consistent with assistance driven by social norms migrants sacrifice 3 to 7 percent of their very substantial consumption growth to provide this insurance which seems too trivial to have any stifling effect on their growth through migration

evaluating the economic impact of international remittances on developing countries using household surveys a literature review abstract this literature review covers 50 recent empirical studies of the economic impact of international remittances on the developing world that are based on household survey data it begins by reviewing the considerable methodological problems confronting economic work on international remittances and then examines the strengths and weaknesses of various economic studies of the impact of remittances in the developing world on such outcomes as poverty and inequality health and education investment and savings labour supply and participation and economic growth it finds that while international remittances generally have a positive impact on poverty and health in the developing world remittances can have negative effects on labour supply education and economic growth

remittances and income diversification in bolivia s rural sector this article examines the role of remittances in income diversification strategies in bolivia s rural sector remittances can be consumed or invested by the recipient as an investment funds can be used for farming or to finance other nonfarm productions in this article we use a large and nationally representative survey to estimate the effect that remittances have on the probability of producing income from nonfarm activities diversification by using a bivariate probit model our evidence shows that remittances increase the probability that a rural family engages in nonfarm activities at least in some regions of bolivia we also find evidence that the sender s decision to remit and the recipient s decision to diversify may be jointly determined as such this suggests that remittances may serve as a mechanism to overcome localized failures in bolivia s capital markets

asymmetric promotion effects and brand positioning several studies have shown that promotions of national brands yield more effect than those of store brands e g allenby and rossi 1991 blattberg and wisniewski 1989 however the evolution of price quality data available from consumer reports over the last 15 years seems to reveal a reduction of the quality gap between store brands and national brands while price differences remain substantial simultaneously the share of private label brands has increased progressive grocer 1994 in this context we study whether we can maintain a view of the world where national brands may easily attract consumers from store brands through promotions whereas store brands are relatively ineffective in attracting consumers from national brands by such means we analyze consumer reactions to price discounts in a parsimonious preference model featuring loss aversion and reference dependence along dimensions of price and quality hardie johnson and fader 1993 tversky and kahneman 1991 the key result of our analysis is that given any two brands there is an asymmetric promotion effect in favor of the higher quality higher price brands if and only if the quality gap between the brands is sufficiently large in comparison with the price gap thus the direction of promotion asymmetry is not unconditional it depends uniquely on the value of the ratio of quality and price differences compared to a category specific criterion which we call if the ratio of quality and price differences is larger than this criterion the usual asymmetry prevails if such is not the case the lower quality lower price brands promote more effectively more precisely our model predicts that cross promotion effects depend on two components of brand positioning in the price quality quadrant first we define a variable termed positioning advantage that indicates whether relative to the standards achieved by another brand a given brand is underpriced positive advantage or overpriced negative advantage promotion effectiveness is increasing in this variable second cross promotion effects between two brands depend on their distance in the price quality quadrant this variable impacts promotion effectiveness negatively and symmetrically for any pair of brands positioning advantage and brand distance are orthogonal components of brand positioning irrespective of the degree of correlation between available price and quality levels in the market empirically we investigate the role of brand positioning in explaining cross promotion effects using panel data from the chilled orange juice and peanut butter categories we compute the independent positioning variables positioning advantage and brand distance from readily available data on price and quality positioning after obtaining our estimates of we next measure promotion effectiveness by estimating choice share changes in response to a price discount using a choice model that does not contain any information about quality price ratios finally we test the relation between the two positioning variables and the promotion effectiveness measures the data reveal that in the orange juice category lower quality lower price brands generally promote more effectively than higher quality higher price brands in the peanut butter data the opposite asymmetry holds in both cases inter brand promotion patterns are well explained by the positioning variables an attractive feature of our model is that in addition to the direction of promotion asymmetries it also explains the extent of those asymmetries a further interesting aspect of this approach is that we go beyond a categorization of brands into price tiers for instance lower tier brands in our data may promote more effectively than one national brand but less effectively than another consistent with our theoretical predictions the data presented here seem to confirm that such cases occur because the lower tier brand offers a favorable trade off of price and quality differences compared with one national brand and a less favorable trade off compared with the other the content of this paper is potentially relevant for brand managers or retailers concerned with predicting the impact of their promotions the paper is of particular interest to marketing scientists who study the performance of store brands versus national brands and may also appeal to those who wish to explore the marketing implications of behavioral decision theory finally our investigation does not reject blattberg and wisniewski s 1989 finding shared by allenby and rossi 1991 and hardie johnson and fader 1993 that national brands have a principle advantage in promotion effectiveness rather it formalizes when this principle advantage is overruled by positioning disadvantages of such brands

extending a lifeline or cutting losses the effects of conflict on household receipts of remittances in pakistan summary i examine the causal effects of long term exposure to conflict measured at the micro level on households receipt of remittances among households residing in areas affected by the 2010 floods in pakistan using a dataset of 7802 households representative of all flood affected areas of pakistan in 2010 i employ iv estimation to overcome the endogeneity of conflict exposure and remittance receipts and control for a range of confounding factors i find that contrary to the literature from country level case studies long term exposure to conflict reduces households likelihood of receiving any remittances at all as well as the average amounts of remittances received however for households in the lowest food consumption expenditure quintile conflict has a positive effect on the likelihood of remittance receipts which provides evidence for the existence of heterogeneous effects as well as a significant micro macro gap in understanding the causal effects of conflict on remittance receipts

north american migration returns to skill border effects and mobility costs utilizing a utility maximizing roy type discrete choice model of worker location in canadian provinces and u s states that incorporates returns to skill amenities fixed costs distance langua

family and community networks in mexico u s migration a household s decision to send migrants is based on infornation it has on the entry costs expected returns and risks of migration information and assistance flow from both family migrant networks and community migrant networks using data from a national survey of rural mexican households we show the importance of networks in both the decision to migrate and the level of migration we find that community and family networks are substitutes in assisting migration suggesting that once migration is well established in a community family networks become less important in addition the development of strong community networks erases the role of household characteristics in migration allowing those initially least favored to also participate in migration finally we show that network density at points of destination in the united states strongly affects where individuals choose to migrate

remittance and financial inclusion in refugee migrants inverse probability of treatment weighting using the propensity score abstractthis paper investigates the impact on remittances on financial inclusion of refugee migrants while financial inclusion is gaining traction in the humanitarian and development literature t

seasonal migration and agricultural production in vietnam abstract when markets are incomplete migration can have multiple effects on agricultural production i use instrumental variables techniques to explore the effects of seasonal migration on agricultural production in rural vietnam during the 1990s using network variables specific to vietnam as instruments i find that migrant households in north vietnam appear to move out of rice production and into the production of other crops inputs used by migrant households decrease relative to similar non migrant households the evidence is consistent with a shift from labor intensive into land intensive crops rather than productivity changes or the use of additional capital in production

what drives households to buy flood insurance new evidence from georgia abstract benefiting from access to detailed data on the federally run national flood insurance program for the entire state of georgia usa we analyze residential flood insurance purchasing behavior in that state over more than three decades 1978 2010 the demand for flood insurance on an extensive margin based on take up rates is found to be relatively price inelastic aligned with the behavioral economics literature recent flood events temporarily increase purchases but this effect fades after 3 years we also find that the proportion of developed area in floodplains has a significant positive impact on insurance take up rates contrary to what is often assumed we do not find evidence that insurance purchase and mitigation efforts are substitutes educated individuals individuals over the age of 45 and african americans are all else equal more likely to purchase flood insurance

labor market performance as a determinant of migration in a comparison of migrants with nonmigrants both observed and unobservable productivity factors are relevant this paper focuses more on the unobservable factors and their correlation between places of origin and destination a human capital model of migration demonstrates that more productive workers at the origin would choose to migrate only if the correlation between origin and destination factors is strongly positive longitudinal data drawn from the cote d ivoire living standards survey 1985 86 are used to examine the pattern of migration in the light of labor market performance both of wage employees and non farm self employed workers it is found that indeed the more productive workers migrate furthermore the general direction of migration is toward cities the conclusion is therefore that rural areas lose their productive workers and that urban areas may gain in productivity from the geographical shifts in population

a probabilistic choice model for market segmentation and elasticity structure marketing scholars commonly characterize market structure by studying the patterns of substitution implied by brand switching though the approach is useful it typically ignores the destabilizing

remittances and household wealth after conflict a case study on urban burundi few studies have researched the use of remittances in conflict affected contexts this study analyzes unique data from burundi testing three hypotheses relative deprivation investment and insurance derived from new economics of labor migration studies employing propensity score matching results show that remittances are common among wealthier households rejecting the relative deprivation hypothesis remittances have strong effects on non productive assets such as living conditions and food security and weak effects on productive assets such as asset ownership poorer households invest mostly in non productive assets suggesting that remittances are insurance for the poor whereas wealthier households seem largely unaffected by remittances

remittances and inequality in this paper the authors propose a framework and develop techniques for analyzing the impact of migrant remittances on the distribution of rural income by size and subsequently its impact on rural welfare household data are used to assign numerical coefficients to the impact of net remittances from both internal and international migrants on income inequality in 2 mexican villages the impact of migrant remittances on the distribution of rural income by size depends critically on the degree to which migration opportunities become diffused through the village population on the returns to human capital embodied in remittances and on the distribution of potentially remittance enhancing skills and education across village households our empirical findings demonstrate that in a village where many households contain internal migrants but few have experience migrating to the u s remittances from mexico to us migrants have an unequalizing impact on village incomes while remittances from internal migrants have a favorable effect on the village income distribution by contrast in a village with a long historyh of sending migrants to the us and hence a more ready access to us labor markets us to mexico remittances have an equalizing impact on incomes remittances from internal migrants in this village however embody a large human capital component and are highly correlated with household income hence internal migrant remittances account for a comparatively large share of inequalities in the 2nd village the overall effect of remittances on income inequality is favorable in both villages migration type migration stage and interaction terms all appear to play a role in this context the effects of small changes in remittances upon income inequality and rural welfare in the 2 villages are explored and some implications for migration and rural development policy are considered authors modified

rural urban migration household vulnerability and welfare in vietnam summary this paper investigates the interaction of migration vulnerability to poverty and welfare of rural households in three provinces in central vietnam it addresses three questions 1 to what extent do shocks motivate rural household members to move to urban areas 2 are migrants in the new urban settings better off in terms of working conditions and quality of life and 3 what is the effect of migration on rural household s welfare and vulnerability to poverty the analysis uses panel data of 2200 households from rural vietnam covering the period 2007 2010 and a tracking survey of 299 migrants from 2010 the empirical evidence from a probit model shows that migration especially migration for employment is a livelihood support strategy for households exposed to agricultural and economic shocks migration for education is more likely observed among households with higher human capital and being financially better off nevertheless the probability of migration decreases with the employment opportunity in the village migrants perceive themselves to be better off at the place of destination but income losses from shocks of their rural households may reduce their employment quality the results from difference in difference specifications with propensity score matching techniques suggest that migration has positive income growth effects and that these effects are more pronounced in provinces with fewer job opportunities these effects help not only migrant households moving out of poverty but it also improves the poverty situation in rural areas

international migration and income distribution in the philippines the author uses data on remittances from migrants to determine the effects of migration on household income and its distribution in the philippines i briefly describe the evolution of household income distribution using fies the family income and expenditure survey and the characteristics of households that receive income from migrants and those that do not i discuss the analytical framework that is used and outline the changes in incomes and inequality that emigration causes excerpt

labor market participation of chinese agricultural households empirical evidence from zhejiang province abstract this work is devoted to the analysis of the different labor market participation regimes of chinese farm households over the reform process in the 1980s and 1990s using household data over the period 1986 2002 from the province zhejiang we apply a multinomial logit model to empirically examine household farm and regional characteristics affecting the probability that farmers participate in one of four alternative labor market regimes as generally accepted off farm participation is the dominant form of farm households labor market participation but rural households show additionally a significant impact on rural employment mainly linked with non agricultural household business results suggest that labor market decisions are significantly related to several family farm and village characteristics in particular we find education to be a key determinant of participation furthermore results point to a higher probability of female household members to take up off farm work

asymmetric and neighborhood cross price effects some empirical generalizations this paper provides some empirical generalizations regarding how the relative prices of competing brands affect the cross price effects among them particular focus is on the asymmetric price effect and the neighborhood price effect the asymmetric price effect states that a price promotion by a higher priced brand affects the market share of a lower priced brand more so than the reverse the neighborhood price effect states that brands that are closer to each other in price have larger cross price effects than brands that are priced farther apart the main objective of this paper is to test if these two effects are generalizable across product categories and to assess which of these two effects is stronger while the neighborhood price effect has not been rigorously tested in past research the asymmetric price effect has been validated by several researchers however these tests of asymmetric price effect have predominantly used elasticity as the measure of cross price effect the cross price elasticity measures the percentage change in market share or sales of a brand for 1 change in price of a competing brand we show that asymmetries in cross price elasticities tend to favor the higher priced brand simply because of scaling effects due to considering percentage changes furthermore several researchers have used logit models to infer asymmetric patterns we also show that inferring asymmetries from conventional logit models is incorrect to account for potential scaling effects we consider the absolute cross price effect defined as the change in market share percentage points of a target brand when a competing brand s price changes by one percent of the product category price the advantage of this measure is that it is dimensionless hence comparable across categories and it avoids scaling effects we show that in the logit model with arbitrary heterogeneity in brand preferences and price sensitivities the absolute cross price effect is symmetric we develop an econometric model for simultaneously estimating the asymmetric and neighborhood price effects and assess their relative strengths we also estimate two alternate models that address the following questions i if i were managing the ith highest priced brand which brand do i impact the most by discounting and which brand hurts me the most through price discounts ii who hurts whom in national brand vs store brand competition based on a meta analysis of 1 060 cross price effects on 280 brands from 19 different grocery product categories we provide the following empirical generalizations 1 the asymmetric price effect holds with cross price elasticities but tends to disappear with absolute cross price effects 2 the neighborhood price effect holds with both cross price elasticities and absolute cross price effects and is significantly stronger than the asymmetric price effect on both measures of cross price effects 3 a brand is affected the most by discounts of its immediately higher priced brand followed closely by discounts of its immediately lower priced brand 4 national brands impact store brands more so than the reverse when the cross effect is measured in elasticities but the asymmetric effect does not hold with absolute effects store brands hurt and are in turn hurt the most by the lower priced national brands that are adjacent in price to the store brands 5 cross price effects are greater when there are fewer competing brands in the product category and among brands in nonfood household products than among brands in food products the implications of these findings are discussed

national wage trends and migration in a chinese village economy a micro level modeling approach based on a composite utility function china s economy is experiencing a regime shift away from a fully elastic supply of labor from a large pool of rural surplus labor and toward a situation of increasing labor scarcity and rising wage rates moreover faster wage increases in the regions of origin of many rural urban migrants are likely to affect the dynamics of inter regional migration these wage trends have implications at the local level in particular in a setting in which migration connects rural communities to the national labor market and in which migration is of high importance for the livelihoods of rural households taking a village perspective this article develops a village computable general equilibrium model to study local impacts of current wage trends in china as a central piece of the model the role of access to migration for household livelihoods is recognized access to migration is linked to household demographics and included in the model through a composite utility function that captures household preferences and disutilities associated with alternative off farm activities simulation results illustrate how households utility considerations affect migration responses to national wage changes statements about possible impacts on village level labor supply land use and agricultural production are made when migration wages and local off farm wages are simulated to increase an overall increase in household and village migration and a higher supply of labor to local off farm labor markets is accompanied by a contraction of farm production although land is reallocated between households with different migration responses total agricultural output declines

asymmetric decoy effects on lower quality versus higher quality brands meta analytic and experimental evidence prior research demonstrates that adding decoys to choice sets can increase choice shares of brands similar to decoys while reducing shares of brands dissimilar to decoys such effects have been dubbed attraction effects and violate the principles of independence of irrelevant alternatives ha and regularity we report a meta analysis that in addition to revealing heretofore unsupported range effects demonstrates an effect of brand quality decoys reduce shares of lower quality competitors more than they reduce shares of higher quality competitors moreover whereas iia is violated throughout regularity is violated only when higher quality brands are targeted decoys increase shares of higher quality brands but typically do not increase shares of lower quality brands to assess the generalizability of the meta analytic pattern we tested decoy effects on two distinct populations in a large experiment the more traditional population replicated the meta analytic pattern standard asymmetry while the more nontraditional population reversed it these findings suggest that while the standard asymmetry is replicable it may not generalize to all market segments

the asymmetric effect of discount retraction on subsequent choice this article examines the subsequent impact of a temporary price discount on brand preference after the promotion is retracted theorizing that price salience has an impact on price sensitivity we propose that the effects of retracting a discount depend on the promoted brand s regular price quality positioning in a first experiment in which we track consumer choices across a sequence of choice occasions we show that retracting a discount posted by a higher quality higher price brand is detrimental to that brand in contrast a discount posted by a lower quality lower price brand is capable of enduringly diverting consumers away from high end brands a second experiment relies on process measures to provide evidence for the underlying price salience mechanism a third experiment tests our hypotheses with real incentives and offers additional support for our price salience theory by testing its most peculiar behavioral implication

decision making under uncertainty capturing dynamic brand choice processes in turbulent consumer goods markets we construct two models of the behavior of consumers in an environment where there is uncertainty about brand attributes in our models both usage experience and advertising exposure give consumers noisy signals about brand attributes consumers use these signals to update their expectations of brand attributes in a bayesian manner the two models are 1 a dynamic model with immediate utility maximization and 2 a dynamic forward looking model in which consumers maximize the expected present value of utility over a planning horizon given this theoretical framework we derive from the bayesian learning framework how brand choice probabilities depend on past usage experience and advertising exposures we then form likelihood functions for the models and estimate them on nielsen scanner data for detergent we find that the functional forms for experience and advertising effects that we derive from the bayesian learning framework fit the data very well relative to flexible ad hoc functional forms such as exponential smoothing and also perform better at out of sample prediction another finding is that in the context of consumer learning of product attributes although the forward looking model fits the data statistically better at conventional significance levels both models produce similar parameter estimates and policy implications our estimates indicate that consumers are risk averse with respect to variation in brand attributes which discourages them from buying unfamiliar brands using the estimated behavioral models we perform various scenario evaluations to find how changes in marketing strategy affect brand choice both in the short and long run a key finding obtained from the policy experiments is that advertising intensity has only weak short run effects but a strong cumulative effect in the long run the substantive content of the paper is potentially of interest to academics in marketing economics and decision sciences as well as product managers marketing research managers and analysts interested in studying the effectiveness of marketing mix strategies our paper will be of particular interest to those interested in the long run effects of advertising note that our estimation strategy requires us to specify explicit behavioral models of consumer choice behavior derive the implied relationships among choice probabilities past purchases and marketing mix variables and then estimate the behavioral parameters of each model such an estimation strategy is referred to as structural estimation and econometric models that are based explicitly on the consumer s maximization problem and whose parameters are parameters of the consumers utility functions or of their constraints are referred to as structural models a key benefit of the structural approach is its potential usefulness for policy evaluation the parameters of structural models are invariant to policy that is they do not change due to a change in the policy in contrast the parameters of reduced form brand choice models are in general functions of marketing strategy variables e g consumer response to price may depend on pricing policy as a result the predictions of reduced form models for the outcomes of policy experiments may be unreliable because in making the prediction one must assume that the model parameters are unaffected by the policy change since the agents in our models choose among many alternative brands their choice probabilities take the form of higher order integrals we employ monte carlo methods to approximate these integrals and estimate our models using simulated maximum likelihood estimation of the dynamic forward looking model also requires that a dynamic programming problem be solved in order to form the likelihood function for this we use a new approximation method based on simulation and interpolation techniques these estimation techniques may be of interest to researchers and policy makers in many fields where dynamic choice among discrete alternatives is important such as marketing decision sciences labor and health economics and industrial organization

modeling loss aversion and reference dependence effects on brand choice based upon a recently developed multiattribute generalization of prospect theory s value function tversky and kahneman 1991 we argue that consumer choice is influenced by the position of brands relative to multiattribute reference points and that consumers weigh losses from a reference point more than equivalent sized gains loss aversion we sketch implications of this model for understanding brand choice we develop a multinomial logit formulation of a reference dependent choice model calibrating it using scanner data in addition to providing better fit in both estimation and forecast periods than a standard multinomial logit model the model s coefficients demonstrate significant loss aversion as hypothesized we also discuss the implications of a reference dependent view of consumer choice for modeling brand choice demonstrate that loss aversion can account for asymmetric responses to changes in product characteristics and examine other implications for competitive strategy

migration transfers and economic decision making among agricultural households an introduction abstract the increasing volume of remittances and public transfers in rural areas of the developing world has raised hopes that these inflows may serve as an effective mechanism for reducing poverty in the long term by facilitating investments and raising productivity particularly in agriculture where market failures are most manifest the seven papers in this special issue systematically test the relationship between transfers and productive spending amongst rural households in six different countries overall the studies embrace a less optimistic view of the role of migration and public and private transfers on agriculture with migration as facilitating a transition away from agriculture or to models of less labour intensive agriculture

a theory of urban growth in an economy experiencing endogenous economic growth and exogenous population growth we explore two main themes how urbanization affects efficiency of the growth process and how growth affects patterns of urbanization localized information spillovers promote agglomeration and human capital accumulation fosters endogenous growth individual city sizes grow with local human capital accumulation and knowledge spillovers and city numbers generally increase which we demonstrate is consistent with empirical evidence we analyze whether local governments can successfully internalize local dynamic externalities in addition we explore how growth involves real income differences across city types and how urbanization can foster income inequality most nonagricultural production in developed countries occurs in metropolitan areas the underlying reasons why economic activity agglomerates into cities localized information and knowledge spillover also make cities the engines of economic growth in an we gratefully acknowledge support of the national science foundation grants sbr 9422440 and sbr9730142 for this research the work has benefited from conversations with harl ryder on the dynamics of the model and from comments by gilles duranton and participants in seminars at brown colorado and texas austin and a presentation at an isit seminar sponsored by the centre for economic policy research and the national bureau of economic research

does migration raise agricultural investment an empirical analysis for rural mexico the effect of remittances on capital accumulation remains a contested topic this paper uses a panel data set from rural mexico to investigate the impact of remittances on agriculture and livestock investments after controlling for the endogeneity of migration through an instrumental variable estimation our empirical results show that international migration has a significantly positive effect on the accumulated agricultural assets but not on livestock capital this suggests that households use the capital obtained from international migration only to overcome liquidity constraints for subsistence production whereas migration itself seems to be the superior investment option compared to other productive activities such as livestock husbandry

the periodicity of pricing abstract retail pricing data combine multiple decisions e g regular pricing and discounting that are possibly made by multiple decision makers e g retailers and manufacturers for example temporary price reductions high frequency price changes can be used to price discriminate in the short run whereas regular price adjustments low frequency price changes might reflect changes in long term costs or demand time disaggregation cannot disentangle these factors because frequency aggregation exists even when data are analyzed at the lowest possible level of temporal aggregation because little is known about the nature of pricing interactions across various planning cycles this article develops several empirical generalizations about the role of periodicity in pricing using week store stockkeeping unit level price data in 35 grocery categories the authors find that 1 cross brand correlation in prices occurs at multiple planning horizons and the planning horizon of the predominant interacti

economic effects of migration on the left behind in cambodia abstractusing propensity score matching this study examines the effects of migration on various indicators of household wellbeing in cambodia the results indicate that migration would reduce poverty headcount rate by 3 7 percentage points and decrease the depth of poverty migration is also found to reduce by 5 10 per cent the hours worked by members left behind the impact of migration on labour participation may be however vulnerable to unobservable factors nevertheless the study suggests that important heterogeneous effects which differ from the average impact exist the analysis is conducted separately by internal and international migration

the impact of migration on rural poverty and inequality a case study in china large numbers of agricultural labor moved from the countryside to cities after the economic reforms in china migration and remittances play an important role in transforming the structure of rural household income this article examines the impact of rural to urban migration on rural poverty and inequality in a mountainous area of hubei province using the data of a 2002 household survey since migration income is a potential substitute for farm income we present counterfactual scenarios of what rural income poverty and inequality would have been in the absence of migration our results show that by providing alternatives to households with lower marginal labor productivity in agriculture migration leads to an increase in rural income in contrast to many studies that suggest that the increasing share of nonfarm income in total income widens inequality this article offers support for the hypothesis that migration tends to have egalitarian effects on rural income for three reasons 1 migration is rational self selection farmers with higher expected return in agricultural activities and or in local nonfarm activities choose to remain in the countryside while those with higher expected return in urban nonfarm sectors migrate 2 households facing binding constraints of land supply are more likely to migrate 3 poorer households benefit disproportionately from migration

shelf space allocation of national and private brands we propose a game theoretic model in which one national brand manufacturer acting as a leader maximizes her own profit and one retailer selling the national brand and her private label and acting as a follower maximizes her category profit we characterize the resulting stackelberg equilibrium in terms of the amount of shelf space allocated to these brands as well as their prices the results suggest that the allocation of the shelf space depends on the quality of the private label in our framework quality is measured by the baseline sales or brand equity the degree of brand substitution and the price positioning

network effects and the dynamics of migration and inequality theory and evidence from mexico international migration is costly and initially only the middle class of the wealth distribution may have both the means and incentives to migrate which can increase inequality in the sending community however the migration networks formed lower the costs for future migrants which can in turn lower inequality this paper shows both theoretically and empirically that wealth has a nonlinear effect on migration and then examines the empirical evidence for an inverse u shaped relationship between emigration and inequality in rural sending communities in mexico after instrumenting we find that the overall impact of migration is to reduce inequality across communities with relatively high levels of past migration we also find some suggestive evidence for an inverse u shaped relationship among communities with a wider range of migration experiences

the less extreme the more you leave radical islam and willingness to migrate summary this paper studies radical islam as a determinant of individuals willingness to migrate surprisingly despite its relevance in the political debate this topic has not been investigated empirically in the literature in order to fill this gap we develop a model of the decision to migrate focusing in particular on the role played by cultural traits more specifically we focus on radical islam as a deterrent for migration following berman 2003 we define radical islam as a set of ideologies also referred to as political islam holding that islam should guide not only personal life but also social and political life in our model more radical values imply a higher psychological cost of migrating this cost derives from the fact that connections with socio religious friends and neighbors are generally not maintained after migration thus deterring individuals from migrating mayers 2000 we then test empirically the predictions of the model using individual level data from the second 2010 11 and third 2012 14 waves of the arab barometer our results suggest that ceteris paribus more radical individuals are less willing to migrate this finding is robust to alternative specifications of the model and to the use of instrumental variables and propensity score matching aimed at addressing the potential endogeneity of radical islam the result is also qualitatively unchanged when using aggregate data on actual outflows of migrants

global talent local careers circular migration of top indian engineers and professionals despite heightened interests from policy makers in the notion of brain circulation the discussion around the issue has remained largely theoretical drawing upon unique data of the alumni of a leading indian university this study examines how migration dynamics unfold within a highly educated population whose emigration is considered as a classic example of brain drain we adopt an integrative framework bringing together macro level push and pull influences and individual level selectivity we find that disparity in economic development between countries drives migration flows in both directions while host country demand has a stronger impact on out migration than on return migration we also detect significant selection effects at the individual level top students are more likely to emigrate and less likely to return in out migration flowing out of the country appear to be the best and the brightest amongst the highly educated talent pool in return migration negative selection is manifested in multiple aspects including ability post migration human capital investment and income we also find that the influences of macro forces vary amongst individuals higher ability individuals appear to be less affected by demand changes the findings have important policy implications for both source countries and receiving countries

price induced patterns of competition this research focuses on how price changes influence the observed pattern of brand competition the paper begins with a basic utility model formulation and examines the implications of three major classes of preference distributions on the expected patterns of competition a price tier model is proposed to operationalize the theory and to allow predictive testing the price tier model is estimated on 28 brands across four product categories the results show a specific asymmetric pattern of price competition higher price higher quality brands steal share from other brands in the same price quality tier as well as from brands in the tier below however lower price lower quality brands take sales from their own tier and the tier below brands but do not steal significant share from the tiers above the results are consistent with a bimodal preference distribution with the regular price indifference point being located toward the lower quality end of the preference distribution for the categories analyzed

new products the antidote to private label growth abstract as private labels pls continue to grow in power and market share product innovation has become one of the strongest weapons in the national brand nb manufacturer s arsenal in this article the author assesses when and to what extent new products change nbs market position to address this question more than 300 nb and pl introductions are analyzed using a multibreak model that quantifies the impact of product introductions on own share rival nb and pl share and category sales drawing on empirical generalizations the author finds that products introduced by leading nbs standard pls and premium pls are more likely to increase category sales than products introduced by follower nbs or economy pls new products introduced by leader and follower nbs more often boost own share thus new products help prevent the decline of nb shares with respect to competitive impact new products affect rival shares with the exception of those launched by economy pls still nbs tend to hurt rival nbs

determinants and consequences of internal return migration in thailand and vietnam summary this paper draws a distinction between local return migrants who move back to their home village and regional return migrants who return to other places within their home provinces in thailand and vietnam using multinomial regressions we firstly analyze determinants of internal return migration and find that while local return migrants are lower educated than continuing migrants this negative human capital selection cannot be found for regional return migrants secondly after returning local return migrants often engage in agriculture while regional return migrants continue in nonfarm employment thereby diversifying the household income and consequently bringing potential for future economic development

flood risk and salience new evidence from the sunshine state a growing literature finds evidence that flood risk salience varies over time spiking directly following a flood and then falling off individuals cognitive radar in the following years in this article we provide new evidence of salience exploiting a hurricane cluster impacting florida that was preceded and followed by periods of unusual calm utilizing residential property sales across the state from 2002 through 2012 our main estimate finds a salience impact of 8 on average the salience effect persists when we base estimation only on spatial variation in prices to limit confounding from other simultaneous changes due to shifting hedonic equilibria over time these effects range from housing prices decreases of 5 4 12 3 depending on the year of sale understanding flood risk salience has important implications for flood insurance and disaster policy the benefits transfer literature and more broadly our understanding of natural disaster resilience

short term labour migration from the republic of armenia to the russian federation we explore the determinants of short term labour migration from armenia to russia based on a unique panel dataset a dynamic switching regression model with endogenous switching is applied our evidence pinpoints migration experience the expected individual income gap from migration low job opportunities in armenia and the possibility of diversifying income risks as the most important determinants family ties turn out to be insignificant the hypothetical income gap is about 280 per cent several explanations are provided for the fact that some individuals do not migrate in spite of a large income gap

moderating factors of immediate gross and net cross brand effects of price promotions this article examines cross price promotional effects in a dynamic context among other things we investigate whether previously established findings hold when consumer and competitive dynamics are taken into account five main influential effects asymmetric price effect neighborhood price effect asymmetric share effect neighborhood share effect and private label versus national brand asymmetry appear jointly in the second layer of a pooled hb vec varx model together with brand and category specific variables this study tests the relative importance of these key factors across three scenarios with no market dynamics when only consumer dynamics are considered and when competitive reactions are also taken into account the results confirm all five influential effects even if they are jointly estimated and consumer and competitive dynamics are taken into account national brand private label asymmetry has the strongest influence on the cross price promotional effects and becomes significantly stronger when consumer and competitive dynamics are taken into account dynamic consumer responses and competitive reactions both affect cross brand price elasticities and contrary to expectations competitive reactions accumulate rather than diminish cross price elasticities preemptive switching does occur i e a brand s promotion in period t hurts a competitor s sales in subsequent periods our findings are based on an extensive data set to attain generalizable results we analyze 33 categories in five stores that is 165 store category combinations

environmental stressors and migration evidence from vietnam the argument that environmental change is an important driving force of migration has experienced a strong revival in the climate change context while various studies predict large environmental migration flows due to climate change and other environmental events the ex post empirical evidence for this phenomenon is inconclusive we contribute to the extant literature by focusing on the micro level we examine whether and how individual perceptions of different types of environmental stressors induce internal migration the analysis relies on original survey data from vietnam including both migrants and non migrants the results suggest that individual perceptions of long term environmental events such as droughts significantly reduce migration while perceptions of sudden onset environmental events such as floods significantly increase the likelihood of migration controlling for other determinants of migration these findings also imply that improving the targeting of aid to environmental disaster affected areas and the financial and technical support for adaptation to environmental change could be the most productive policy options policymakers thus need to implement a wide range of developmental policies in combination with environmental ones in order to improve society s ability to effectively cope with environmental change and minimize its effect on migration

risk aversion time preferences and out migration experimental evidence from ghana and indonesia abstract it has long been hypothesized that migrants and non migrants differ in their individual risk and time preferences due to a lack of reliable data on migrants preferences empirical evidence however is scarce therefore this paper has sought to advance research on preferences and migration decisions by using original household survey data from two developing countries that are both characterized by a longstanding tradition in regional migration in coastal communities in ghana and indonesia individual risk and time preferences have not only been elicited through survey questions but also through experimental tasks with real and relatively large monetary payoffs there is evidence that out migrants from both study regions are significantly less risk averse and have a lower time preference than non migrants overall the results indicate that the considered individual preferences are as important as employment status education or networks which have mainly been the focus of migration theories

product positioning and competition the role of location in the fast food industry this paper examines optimal product positioning strategies of asymmetric firms in the context of retail outlet locations in the fast food industry the relationships between profits and product differentiation reveal that both mcdonald s and burger king are better off avoiding close competition if the market area is large enough however in small market areas mcdonald s would prefer to be located together with burger king rather than have the two outlets be only a slight distance apart in contrast burger king s profits always increase with greater differentiation offsetting these incentives is the desirability of locating centrally to appeal to the most customers the equilibrium depends on the market s size in small markets mcdonald s locates near the center of the market and burger king locates to the side of the market in larger markets mcdonald s and burger king choose locations on opposite sides of the market although mcdonald s locates closer to the optimal central location than burger king i also show that the role of price competition on product positioning is fundamentally different under asymmetric competition than under symmetric competition price competition unambiguously induces symmetric firms toward differentiation in contrast with asymmetric firms price competition shifts burger king s incentives toward locating closer to mcdonald s even while price competition increases mcdonald s desire for differentiation as a result equilibrium locations with asymmetric firms are approximately the same regardless of whether prices adjust with location

risk preferences and demand drivers of extended warranties we disentangle and study the relative importance of different risk preferences in explaining extended warranty purchases and the high premia paid for them empirical and behavioral research on insurance is at odds with whether diminishing returns curvature of the utility function or loss aversion and nonlinear probability weighting lead to observed consumer behavior this lack of consensus is primarily due to the inability of standard choice data to separate different risk preferences and the consequent need to rely on strong parametric assumptions we design two conjoint studies consistent with simultaneous and sequential decision making with choices about washing machines and extended warranties where subjects are given failure probabilities and repair costs using stated choice data from the surveys we can nonparametrically identify product and risk preferences we find that loss aversion is significantly more important than curvature and probability weights in explaining extended warranty choices importantly failure to decompose risk averse behavior into that arising from curvature loss aversion and probability weighting leads to lower washer prices and profits these findings are robust to alternate reference point assumptions we rationalize the premia paid for warranties by exploring retailer incentives to price discriminate and test the theory on complementary goods pricing finally based on counterfactual analysis forcing separate retailers to sell washers and extended warranties is not necessarily welfare enhancing as cited in the media and previous literature

the asymmetric share effect an empirical generalization on cross price effects abstract prior empirical literature states that asymmetry in cross price effect favors the high share brand that is when high share brands discount they have a greater impact on low share brands than the reverse this conclusion is based on consideration of cross price elasticities the authors point out that focusing on cross price elasticities for assessing asymmetry is inappropriate for determining the incremental profitability from price promotions instead asymmetries should be investigated in absolute cross price effects that is change in market share of a competing brand for a unit price change of the focal brand the authors theoretically and empirically demonstrate that asymmetry reverses when absolute cross price effect is considered that is the absolute cross price effect of a price reduction of a low share brand on the market share or sales of a high share brand is greater than the reverse the authors discuss the implications of the findings and future research directions

the new economics of labor migration this paper reviews selected theoretical and empirical developments in the field of labor migration economics the migration behavior of individuals differs in accordance with their perceived relative deprivation those who are relatively more deprived tend to have stronger incentive to migrate than those who are relatively less deprived moreover a reference group characterized by more income inequality is likely to generate more relative deprivation highly skilled workers are also more likely to migrate migration decisions are often made jointly by the migrant and nonmigrant with a contractual arrangement regarding the sharing of costs and returns the exchange of commitments to share income provides coinsurance of particular interest are the determinants of the speed of adoption of migration as an innovation and the characteristics associated with the delay in the adoption of innovation new econometric techniques including techniques for the analysis of qualitative dependent variables techniques that correct for sample selection bias and those for the analysis of longitudinal data have substantially benefited empirical research in this area new methods that can correct for the biased estimate of the wages particular individuals would receive at 2 or more locations at the same point in time allow researchers to test locational decsion making models estimates of these structural models of labor migration support the hypothesis that individuals respond to income incentives in making the decsion to migrate further research is needed on the pazzling observation that migrant workers earn less than native born workers with similar characteristics during the 1st few years after migration but more thereafter other topics that need further research include the macroeconomic effects of migration the microeconomic and macroeconomic relationships between aging and labor migration and the migration behavior of dual earner families

the impact of international remittances on child outcomes and household expenditures in nepal abstractnepal has one of the highest ratios of international remittances to gross domestic product in the world we examine whether the massive inflow of international remittances affects child schooling child labour and household expenses controlling extensively for a host of observed characteristics of households and migrants and using an instrumental variable approach this research finds no effect of international remittances on child education or child labour in nepal however it does find a significant increase in non food expenditures including education spending due to international remittances despite increased expenditure on child education educational outcomes are not improving because of international remittances

can natural experiments measure behavioral responses to environmental risks efforts to measure people s responses to spatially delineated risks confront the potential for correlation between these risks and other unobserved characteristics of these locations the possibility of correlation arises in part because individuals observe other locational attributes that can be expected to influence the hedonic equilibrium one response to this problem is to use events from nature to exploit both temporal and spatial variation in the behavioral responses of interest this paper evaluates the use of hurricanes as a source of new risk information to households in coastal counties potentially subject to the effects of these storms we study the extent to which housing prices before and after hurricane andrew a hurricane with unprecedented property loss reveal how floridians responded to the risk information provided by the storm two counties are selected one without and another with damage from the hurricane to evaluate the plausibility of using quasi random experiments for locations not directly affected by natural events we compare lee county s results to those of dade county where the majority of the damage occurred our findings suggest after controlling for ex post storm damage and changes in insurance markets there is a reasonably high level of consistency in a repeat sales model s ability to estimate the effects of the risk information conveyed by the storm for both counties

migration and economic mobility in tanzania evidence from a tracking survey this study explores the extent to which migration has contributed to improved living standards of individuals in tanzania using longitudinal data on individuals the authors estimate the impact of migration on consumption growth between 1991 and 2004 the analysis addresses concerns about heterogeneity and unobservable factors correlated with both income changes and the decision to migrate the findings show that migration adds 36 percentage points to consumption growth during a period of considerable growth in consumption these results are robust to numerous tests and alternative specifications unpacking the findings the analysis finds that moving out of agriculture is correlated with much higher growth than staying in agriculture although growth is always higher in any sector if one physically moves economic mobility is strongly linked to geographic mobility the puzzle is why more people do not move if returns to geographic mobility are high the evidence is consistent with models in which exit barriers are set by home communities through social and family norms that prevent migration of certain categories of people

changes in implicit flood risk premiums empirical evidence from the housing market abstract hedonic valuation models have shown that sales prices can capitalize property risk factors such as flood zone properties facing lower risk sell at a premium all else being equal previous research has indicated that price differentials reflecting risk of flooding become much larger in the wake of a storm we re examine these findings for pitt county north carolina using multiple storm events within a difference in differences framework and we compare flood zone price differentials for a more recent sample of property sales prior to hurricane fran in 1996 we detect no market risk premium for the presence in a flood zone but we find significant price differentials after major flooding events amounting to a 5 7 decrease after hurricane fran and 8 8 decrease after hurricane floyd results from a separate model that examines more recent data covering a period without significant storm related flood impacts indicate a significant risk premium ranging between 6 0 and 20 2 for homes sold in the flood zone but this effect is diminishing over time essentially disappearing about 5 or 6 years after hurricane floyd the lack of a persistent effect suggests that buyers and sellers risk perceptions may change with the prevalence of hazard events and that homebuyers are unaware of flood risks and insurance requirements when bidding on properties

quality perceptions and asymmetric switching between brands rotating indifference curves are used to induce an income effect that favors superior brands at the expense of inferior brands in a discrete choice model when calibrated on scanner panel data the model yields an objective measure of brand quality which is related to the rate of rotation the model also leads to asymmetric responses to price promotions where switching up to high quality brands is more likely than switching down the model is capable of nesting the standard logit model and is similar to a nested logit model when there exists clusters of brands of like quality the model is used to explore a product line pricing decision where profits are maximized subject to the constraint that consumer utility is maintained

the dynamics of chinese rural households participation in labor markets the work is devoted to the dynamics of labor market participation of chinese rural households based on a theoretical farm household framework the choice between four distinct labor market participation states is empirically analyzed using household data over the period 1995 2002 from the province zhejiang we apply a discrete time hazard approach to analyze households labor market participation histories in particular we investigate the movements between autarky and participation in general and more specifically the shifts between part time and full time farming estimation results suggest significant duration dependence more precisely a decreasing risk of moving from one state to another with an increasing time a household occupies one of these states further the likelihoods of starting any participation in labor markets and to start part time farming are considerably higher than to end participation or to return to full time farming in addition we find that labor market participation decisions are significantly related to several household and farm characteristics

the impact of a product harm crisis on marketing effectiveness product harm crises are among a firm s worst nightmares a firm may experience i a loss in baseline sales ii a reduced own effectiveness for its marketing instruments iii an increased cross sensitivity to rival firms marketing mix activities and iv a decreased cross impact of its marketing mix instruments on the sales of competing unaffected brands we find that this quadruple jeopardy materialized in a case study of an australian product harm crisis faced by kraft peanut butter we arrive at this conclusion by using a time varying error correction model that quantifies the consequences of this crisis on base sales and on own and cross brand short and long term effectiveness the proposed modeling approach allows managers to make more informed decisions on how to regain the brands pre crisis performance levels

asymmetric competition in choice and the leveraging of competitive disadvantages studies of grocery sales show that consumers of store brands switch to price discounted national brands more than consumers of national brands switch to discounted store brands such asymmetric price competition can be explained with numerous mechanisms proposed here and elsewhere we report a choice experiment that replicates asymmetric price competition favoring higher quality competitors and demonstrates asymmetric quality competition favoring lower quality competitors also demonstrated are multiple mechanisms contributing to competitive asymmetries where dominance involving the otherwise preferred brand is particularly potent e g when a higher quality competitor matches the price of an otherwise preferred lower quality brand the findings implicate modifications to 1 theories of decision making when extended to repeat choice 2 empirical models of secondary purchase data and 3 strategies for positioning and attacking brands whereas improving competitive disadvantages often attracts consumers from competitors more than does improving competitive advantages this benefit must be weighed against the differentiation sacrificed by improving competitive disadvantages improving competitive advantages in contrast increases differentiation

assessing the competitive interaction between private labels and national brands in this article we employ the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids and specify price reaction equations derived under the la aids specification we perform intracategory analyses using data on six individual categories as well as a pooled analysis on a sample of 125 categories and 59 geographic markets we find that consumer response to price and promotion decisions demand and firm pricing behavior supply jointly determine observed market prices and market shares further estimates of residual demand elasticities suggest that examination of partial demand elasticities alone may provide an incomplete picture of the ability of brands to raise price copyright 2000 by university of chicago press

wildfire risk salience housing demand abstract in this paper we develop a parsimonious model that links underlying changes in location specific risk perceptions to housing market dynamics given estimates of both the price and quantity effects induced by shocks to agents beliefs the model allows us to draw inferences about the underlying changes in risk perceptions that gave rise to observed housing market dynamics we apply the model s predictions to an empirical analysis of the influence of severe wildfires on housing prices and sales rates in the front range of colorado interpreted in the context of the model our empirical results suggest that natural disasters lead to significant but short lived increases in risk perceptions

forgetting the flood an analysis of the flood risk discount over time we examine whether property price differentials reflecting flood risk increase following a large flood event and whether this change is temporary or permanent we use single family residential property sales in dougherty county georgia between 1985 and 2004 in a difference in differences spatial hedonic model framework after the 1994 flood of the century prices of properties in the 100 year floodplain fell significantly this effect was however short lived in spatial hedonic models that explicitly incorporate both linear and nonlinear temporal flood zone effects we show that the flood risk discount disappeared between four and nine years after the flood depending upon the specification jel q51 q54

the discriminating consumer product proliferation and willingness to pay for quality abstract the authors propose that a crowded product space motivates consumers to better discriminate between options of different quality specifically this article reports evidence from three controlled experiments and one natural experiment that people are prepared to pay more for high quality products and less for low quality products when they are considered in the context of a dense as opposed to a sparse set of alternatives to explain this effect the authors argue that consumers uncertain about the importance of quality learn from observing market outcomes product proliferation reveals that other consumers care to discriminate among similar alternatives and in turn this inference raises the importance of quality in decision making

inter provincial migration and inequality during vietnam s transition abstract vietnam s economic boom during the transition to a market economy has centered on very rapid growth in some sectors and provinces yet poverty has diminished across the entire country with capital investments highly concentrated by province and sector geographic labor mobility may be critical in spreading the gains from growth conversely rising income inequality may be attributable in part to impediments to migration we first use census data to investigate migration patterns and determinants we then examine the role of migration as an influence on income ratios between pairs of provinces the former analysis robustly confirms economic motives for migration but also suggests the existence of poverty related labor immobility at the provincial level examination of income ratios between pairs of provinces reveals that the impact of migration on inequality can be either negative or positive a robust inequality reducing impact of migration is found for migration flows into provinces where most of vietnam s trade oriented industrial investments are located

are remittances a substitute for credit carrying the financial burden of health shocks in national and transnational households summary this paper tests for the assumption that remittances are a substitute for credit by comparing the response to health related shocks among national and transnational households using mexican household panel data while the occurrence of serious health shocks that required hospital treatment doubled the average debt burden of exposed households compared to the control group households with nuclear family members a parent child or spouse in the us did not increase their debts due to health shocks this finding is consistent with the view that remittances respond to households demand for financing emergencies and make them less reliant on debt financing

self selection and internal migration in the united states abstract within the conceptual framework of the roy model this paper provides an empirical analysis of internal migration flows using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth the theoretical approach highlights regional differences in the returns to skills regions that pay higher returns to skills attract more skilled workers than regions that pay lower returns our empirical results suggest that interstate differences in the returns to skills are a major determinant of both the size and skill composition of internal migration flows persons whose skills are most mismatched with the reward structure offered by their current state of residence are the persons most likely to leave that state and these persons tend to relocate in states which offer higher rewards for their particular skills

land retirement and nonfarm labor market participation an analysis of china s sloping land conversion program summary china s sloping land conversion program pays more than 32 million households to plant trees on highly erodible cropland and has effected major land use changes farmers retire land indefinitely but receive time limited subsidies after which they in principle enter nonfarm employment we analyze annual data we collected on over 3 000 individuals and plots from 1998 2006 which contain variation in enrollment timing and alternative measures of enrollment and conclude enrollment has a small but significant and robust positive effect on nonfarm employment it arises not from alleviating constraints as recent papers have suggested but rather from simple farm to nonfarm labor substitution

brain drain from turkey an investigation of students return intentions the emigration of skilled individuals from turkey attracted greater media attention and the interest of policymakers in turkey particularly after the experience of recurrent economic crises that have led to an increase in unemployment among the highly educated young this study estimates a model of return intentions using a data set compiled from an internet survey of turkish students residing abroad the findings of this study indicate that as expected higher salaries offered in the host country and lifestyle preferences including a more organized environment in the host country increase the probability of student nonreturn however the analysis also points to the importance of prior return intentions and the role of the family in the decision to return to turkey or stay overseas it is also found that the compulsory service requirement attached to government scholarships increases the probability of student return turkish student association membership also increases return intentions longer sta

an empirical investigation of the dynamic effect of marlboro s permanent pricing shift the strategy philip morris adopted in 1993 featured a one time permanent publicly announced price cut an event referred to as marlboro friday little is known about the impact of permanent and publicly announced price cuts on consumer brand switching behaviors for an addictive product in the context of marlboro friday we investigate 1 how consumers brand choices are affected by a permanent price cut 2 whether differential and dynamic effects of permanent price cuts occur for different types of consumers and 3 the implications of publicly announced permanent price cuts on consumer brand switching behavior in the long run we develop a dynamic structural brand choice model that allows for consumer forward looking behavior learning and addiction and investigate how consumers adjusted their brand choice behaviors before and after this permanent price cut using unique consumer panel data pertaining to cigarette purchases before and after the event we provide behavioral explanations of whether and how the drastic and permanent price cut represented an effective step to encourage brand switching for an addictive product and a necessary step for philip morris to combat the growing market share of generic brands

defying the law of gravity the political economy of international migration bilateral flows of international migrants exhibit tremendous variance both across destination countries and over time to explain this variance studies of international migration tend to focus on economic determinants such as income differentials or on social conditions such as the presence of coethnics in certain destination countries the authors argue that migration is driven not solely by economic or social determinants rather the political environment across destinations plays a substantively large role in influencing bilateral migration flows they test the importance of the political environment citizenship rights and the prominence of right wing parties using data on migration flows from 178 origin countries into 18 destination countries over the period 1980 2006 they find even after controlling for a variety of economic social policy and international variables that variation in political environments across time and destination plays a key role in observed patterns of international migration

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

fishing and nonfishing income decisions the role of human capital and family structure resource dependent households often diversify their income we model demand for remittances and supply of off resource labor as a joint decision and discuss household trade offs we extend the off farm labor supply literature to a rural fishery contrasting our results to common findings in the farm literature and providing empirical evidence of the interdependence between education and family structure in determining income diversification using a unique dataset from malaysia we find that more educated households are less likely to diversify their income with caveats depending on family composition policy implications for resource management in a remittance economy with alternative livelihoods are discussed