a many good many person corlett hague tax rule abstract generalising the corlett hague rule yields an insight into the case for differentiated commodity taxation when the linear income tax is not optimal thus complementing earlier work by deaton

the role of brand image and product characteristics on firms entry and oem decisions we investigate the optimal market entry and original equipment manufacturer oem decisions of a firm facing a market in which firms brands can be horizontally differentiated and products can be vertically differentiated the entrant might sell under its own brand and compete with an incumbent become a supplier to the incumbent or both findings reveal that when consumers perceive the firms are horizontally and vertically differentiated the entrant profits by simultaneously entering the market and establishing an oem arrangement with the incumbent in such competitive scenarios both buyer and seller increase profits by agreeing on wholesale prices that are not too low which softens both horizontal and vertical conflict between the firms findings also show that the incumbent may prefer to pay high wholesale prices to the entrant even if the incumbent had the option to source the product independently at a lower marginal cost when firms have the capability of producing each other s product lines su

the hyperbolic consumption model calibration simulation and empirical evaluation ur preferences for the long run tend to conflict with our short run behavior when planning for the long run we intend to meet our deadlines exercise regularly and eat healthfully but in the short run we have little interest in revising manuscripts jogging on the stairmaster and skipping the chocolate souffleala mode delay of gratification is a nice long term goal but instant gratification is disconcertingly tempting this gap between long run intentions and short run actions is apparent across a wide range of behaviors including saving choices a 1997 survey found that 76 percent of respondents believe they should be saving more for retirement looking only at respondents who believed they were at an age where you should be seriously saving already the survey found that 55 percent reported being behind in their savings and only 6 percent reported being ahead farkas and johnson 1997 the report on the survey concluded t he gaps between people s atti tudes intentions and behavior are troubling and threaten increased insecurity and dissatisfaction for people when they retire americans are simply not doing what logic and their own reasoning suggests they should be doing a 1993 luntz webber merrill lynch survey found similar answers when baby boomers were asked what percentage of your annual household income do you think you should save for retirement and what percentage of your annual

does consumer sentiment forecast household spending if so why in the three months following the iraqi invasion of kuwait the university of michigan s index of consumer sentiment ics fell an unprecedented 24 3 index points to its lowest level since the 1981 1982 recession this collapse in household confidence became the focus of a great deal of economic commentary and indeed frequently was cited as an important if not the leading cause of the economic slowdown that ensued concern was fueled by the well known contemporaneous correlation between the ics and the growth of household spending figure 1 shows quarterly averages of the index 1978 1993 together with the quarterly growth in real personal consumption expenditures as measured in the national income accounts bureau of economic analysis the correlation is impressive of course it is not surprising that sentiment and the growth of spending are positively correlated this correlation may simply reflect that when economic prospects are poor households curtail their spending and also give gloomy responses to interviewers thus the contemporaneous correlation between sentiment and spending does not refute traditional life cycle or permanentincome models of consumption nor does it necessarily make the job of forecasting changes in consumption any easier from the point of view of an economic forecaster the questions of interest are first whether an index of consumer sentiment has any predictive power on its own for future changes in consumption spending and second whether it contains information about future changes in consumer spending aside from the information contained in other available indicators in section i we present evidence that the answer to the first question is a clear yes we find that lagged values of the ics taken on their own explain about 14 percent of the variation in the growth of total real personal consumption expenditures over the post1954 period further investigation shows that the answer to the second question is probably yes as well though here the margin is narrower and the evidence more murky the ics contributes about 3 percent to the r2 of a simple reduced form equation for total personal consumption expenditures in the longer of the two sample periods we examine but nothing in the shorter sample period though the latter result is heavily influenced by the observation for 1980 2 for the major subcategories of spending the contribution generally ranges between 1 percent and 8 percent overall we read the evidence as pointing toward at least some significant incremental explanatory power therefore we take as given for the remainder of the paper that sentiment forecasts spending and we turn to the issue of how that statistical relationship should be interpreted one possible interpretation is that sentiment is an independent driving factor in the economy and that changes in carroll division of research and statistics stop 80 federal reserve board washington dc 20551 fuhrer research department federal reserve bank of boston boston ma 02106 wilcox division of monetary affairs stop 71 federal reserve board washington dc 20551 we have benefited from the research assistance of stephen helwig and christopher geczy and the comments of an anonymous referee the views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and not of the federal reserve board the federal reserve bank of boston or the other members of the staff of either institution ithe conference board s consumer confidence index also plunged at the same time

the comparison between destination and origin principles under imperfect competition abstract especially but not only in the european union closer economic integration is putting increasing pressure on the destination principle under which goods entering international trade are normally taxed this has raised the possibility of switching to the origin principle which dispenses with problematic border tax adjustments this paper compares destination and origin principles under conditions of imperfect competition previous analyses which have considered only the competitive case have led to a qualified presumption in favour of the destination principle a series of results are established here for both cooperative and non cooperative tax setting which challenge that presumption under imperfect competition

the economics of development a survey i the subject our definition of the subject will be the use of economic analysis to understand the economies of poor or developing countries this includes in particular how standards of living in the population are determined and how they change over time and further how policy can or should be used in the influence of these processes the definition contains in principle much or most of analytical methods in economics insofar as they can be put to use in the examination of the issues of interest this is as it should be but it poses a problem for a survey in a journal a comprehensive treatment is infeasible so we shall follow a different route the survey will focus on what i take to be the major themes and approaches which characterise the productive aspects of the subject there is therefore no pretence at being exhaustive the purpose is rather to highlight some of the advances many of these have been of real substance there are a number of possible purposes for a survey and it is important to be clear at the outset for whom it is intended what it is and what it is not this survey is addressed to economists and students of economics who know the tools of their trade but not necessarily how they have been applied to and fashioned for the analysis of the economics of developing countries it is a description of the ways in which problems can be productively formulated and approached in terms of examples chosen for their intrinsic importance and interest the vastness of the subject means that we have to be highly selective it does not seek to provide a summary evaluation of the current view of the appropriate response to immediate policy questions it is not a history of thought nor a research manifesto nor an attempt to adjudicate or settle the major debates where they arise naturally from the major purpose some judgements on these subjects will be offered but they do not themselves constitute the primary intent of this survey there are three lines of enquiry or sets of questions which have i suggest been distinctive of the most fruitful work in development economics they will

reasons for household food waste with special attention to packaging the amount of food waste needs to be reduced in order to sustain the world s limited resources and secure enough food to all humans packaging plays an important role in reducing food waste the kn

household food waste behaviour in eu 27 countries a multilevel analysis abstract a large amount of food is lost along the entire food supply chain causing serious environmental economic and social impacts and most food is wasted during the final consumption phase especially in industrialized countries starting from the analysis of the main regulations and initiatives at various administrative levels and by introducing a two level framework for modelling complex household food waste behaviour this paper aims at investigating the behaviour of eu 27 citizens towards food waste by referring to the 2013 flash eurobarometer survey n 388 the multilevel statistical perspective enabled us to jointly consider factors at both individual and contextual levels as potential variables associated with food waste firstly by analysing territorial variability it was possible to identify groups of countries characterized by similar behaviour patterns and therefore target them according to the need and exigency of public policy interventions secondly at individual level it was observed that people living in towns and large cities tend to produce more waste thus emphasizing the need of diversifying policy interventions at local level according to the extent of urbanization moreover education level sorting practices attitudes and concern regarding food waste proved to be associated with individuals behaviour towards food waste thirdly public private partnerships as well as targeting community based interventions to address food waste should be encouraged

using subjective income expectations to test for excess sensitivity of consumption to predicted income growth abstract we test for precautionary saving and excess sensitivity of consumption to predicted income growth using a 1989 1993 panel survey of italian households that has measures of subjective income and inflation expectations these expectations provide a powerful instrument for predicting income growth the empirical specification controls for predictable changes in labor supply and allows a fairly general specification for the stochastic structure of the forecast error we find that consumption growth is positively correlated with the expected variance of income and uncorrelated with predicted income growth overall the results support the precautionary saving model

the competitive newsboy we consider a competitive version of the classical newsboy problem in which a firm must choose an inventory or production level for a perishable good with random demand and the optimal solution is a fractile of the demand distribution and investigate the impact of competition upon industry inventory a splitting rule specifies how initial industry demand is allocated among competing firms and how any excess demand is allocated among firms with remaining inventory we examine the relation between equilibrium inventory levels and the splitting rule and provide conditions under which there is a unique equilibrium our most general result is that if all excess demand is reallocated i e there is perfect substitutability then competition never leads to a decrease in industry inventory

an end use analysis of global food requirements in examining the long term prospects for global food supply and demand the balance of research has favoured the examination of global food supply and not global food demand centre for agricultural and economic development 1967 chou et al 1977 council on environmental quality 1980 crosson and anderson 1992 fao 1993 mitchell and ingco 1993 bongaarts 1994 forecasting of global food demand has been limited to an exploration of alternative assumptions about the growth of incomes prices and population in particular the analysis and forecasting of global food demand has used income and price elasticities estimated from historical data which assume a fixed link between levels of income and levels of food demand for expository purposes this discussion presumes a particular pattern of prices with changing relative prices the link between incomes and food demand is more complicated but this does not change the fundamental argument being made here

access based consumption the case of car sharing access based consumption defined as transactions that can be market mediated but where no transfer of ownership takes place is becoming increasingly popular yet it is not well theorized this study examines the nature of access as it contrasts to ownership and sharing specifically the consumer object consumer consumer and consumer marketer relationships six dimensions are identified to distinguish among the range of access based consumptionscapes temporality anonymity market mediation consumer involvement the type of accessed object and political consumerism access based consumption is examined in the context of car sharing via an interpretive study of zipcar consumers four outcomes of these dimensions in the context of car sharing are identified lack of identification varying significance of use and sign value negative reciprocity resulting in a big brother model of governance and a deterrence of brand community the implications of our findings for understanding the nature of exchange consumption and brand community are discussed

new perspectives on public finance recent achievements and future challenges abstract the advances in the economics of the public sector during the past quarter century have been as pronounced as in any field within economics public finance has become a rigorous branch of applied microeconomics incorporating the best thinking and most advanced tools of both theoretical economics and econometrics in the remarks below i will focus on a few key areas in applied and theoretical tax and expenditure policy drawing both upon the academic work of myself and others and my experiences in the policy arena both as chairman of the council of economic advisers and as chief economist of the world bank i shall address both the questions of what we have learned in the past few decades as well as the questions where further research is needed

consuming use orientated product service systems a consumer culture theory perspective abstracts research suggests that product service systems pss may usefully form part of the mix of innovations necessary to move society toward more sustainable futures however pss implementation rates are disappointingly low and an implementation gap has emerged drawing on consumer culture theory cct this paper provides insights to help resolve this issue in business to consumer markets since consumption of use orientated pss is analogous to access based consumption six dimensions of access are set out to analyse a case study of infant car seat provision five outcomes are derived from the analysis and these include partial identification with accessed product and interplay of use and symbolic value this analysis questions the view that pss do not create sufficient value to overcome a preference for ownership in western societies rather pss consumption is likely to arise when both functional and symbolic value are extracted by consumers and when pss are promoted to appropriate consumer groups such as nomads further research is needed to explore these phenomena and address the issues they raise in pss design processes

the politics of housing consumption renters as flawed consumers on a master planned estate master planned estates offer package dreams of homeownership to those wanting to live among others who share their lifestyle aspirations yet we show in this paper how divisions can arise between housing tenure types with owner occupiers constructing private rental tenants as a problem extending bauman s concept of the flawed consumer using rose s writings on ethopolitics we show how renters are viewed as failing in three domains of social life aesthetics ethics and community by undermining the aesthetic value of the neighbourhood and by failing to demonstrate an ethic of care for themselves and others as a result the homeowners in this study try to avoid living among rental properties and are disappointed to find that contrary to expectations moving to a master planned estate does not guarantee this

consumer confidence and rational expectations are agents beliefs consistent with the theory consumer confidence is found to have predictive content for a wide range of macroeconomic variables including consumption growth contrary to standard repih we find that on uk data the repih is rejected due to the predictive content of consumer confidence and not labour income we explain this finding in terms of precautionary behaviour extending the hansen and singleton consumption capm model to allow a conditional variance we find a high level of confidence is associated with both greater optimism about the level of consumption and greater uncertainty about the forecaster variance once allowance is made for time aggregation the over identifying restrictions implied by this model are accepted we estimate a small but statistically significant intertemporal elasticity of substitution

confidence and the real economy the japanese case this paper empirically analyses whether consumer confidence has an effect on the real economy in japan this paper uses vector autoregressions including variables which represent consumer confidence it is shown that in the cases of quarterly and monthly data consumer confidence has a significant effect on gdp fluctuations whereas in the case of semiannual data it has no effect in other words consumer confidence has an effect on only short term economic fluctuations

green entrepreneurship in the sharing economy utilising multiplicity of institutional logics the green potential of the sharing economy to exploit underutilised or redundant resources has generated a considerable interest and expectations on the part of government institutions investors and consumers alongside the emerging green logic more established economic and social logics appear to be critical for growth of sharing platforms applying an institutional logics approach this paper investigates how entrepreneurial teams in the sharing economy deal with this complexity of expectations of various constituents and institutions based on 30 semi structured interviews with founders and executives of uk sharing platforms we examine the strategies used by entrepreneurial teams to utilise and combine the green logic with other institutional logics present the results demonstrate that sharing platforms are able to grow via utilising the green logic together with the economic and social logics in a flexible manner applying complexity reducing and complexity absorbing strategies as well as temporal adjustments in the use of logics

interpreting consumers a hermeneutical framework for deriving marketing insights from the texts of consumers consumption stories the author describes and illustrates a hermeneutically grounded interpretive framework for deriving marketing relevant insights from the texts of consumer stories and gives an overview of the phi

choosing the joneses endogenous goals and reference standards a growing economic literature stresses the importance of relative comparisons e g for savings and consumption or happiness in this literature it is usually assumed that reference standards against which people compare themselves are exogenously given in contrast findings from social psychology suggest that people play an active role in determining their reference standards we introduce a social comparison model where people choose their reference standards to serve motives of self improvement and self enhancement the model predicts that reference standards increase in individuals abilities and that people thus tend to compare themselves to similar others the results of a questionnaire study confirm the prediction of the model

the social contingency of wants abstract economic models typically assume that individual wants are determined by forces exogenous to the economic system social psychology and consumer research in contrast support the view that the perceived benefits of goods and services are strongly affected by endogenously determined social norms we present a selective overview of the literature on the relationship between consumption and well being exploring the ways in which informal arguments from social science might be linked to formal models of economic behavior we find that the fixed preferences hypothesis leads to the systematic undervaluation of environmental services and the underprovisioning of environmental goods

on directions of commodity tax reform in the presence of a given non linear income tax schedule this paper analyzes directions of commodity tax reform in the presence of a given possibly nonlinear income tax schedule two prominent policy prescriptions are reexamined first the welfare effect of a proportional reduction of all commodity price distortions turns out to be sensitive to nonlinearity secondly the welfare implications of tax changes based on substitutability or complementarity between labor and commodities remain valid in the presence of nonlinearity within the scope of the model the authors also discuss the question raised in the classic of w j corlett and d c hague 1953 which commodity taxes should supplement the income tax

circular futures what will they look like abstract the circular economy is argued to hold great promise for achieving sustainability yet there is a dearth of research about what a circular future may look like to address this gap this paper proposes different plausible scenarios for a circular future using a 2 2 scenario matrix method developed through a thought experiment and a focus group key drivers of change in this matrix are the nature of technologies deployed high tech or low tech innovations and the configuration of the governance regime centralized or decentralized from this our paper builds four scenario narratives for the future of a circular economy planned circularity bottom up sufficiency circular modernism and peer to peer circularity it delineates the core characteristics and the upsides and downsides of each scenario it shows that a circular economy can be organized in very contrasting ways by generating insights about alternative circular futures these scenarios may provide a clearer directionality to policy makers and businesses helping them both anticipate and understand the consequences of a paradigm shift towards a circular economy and shape policies and strategies especially in the context of so called mission oriented innovation policies they may also provide a sound basis for quantitatively modelling the impacts of a circular economy

understanding collaborative consumption an extension of the theory of planned behavior with value based personal norms collaborative consumption is proposed as a potential step beyond unsustainable linear consumption patterns toward more sustainable consumption practices despite mounting interest in the topic little is known about the determinants of this consumer behavior we use an extended theory of planned behavior to examine the relative influence of consumers personal norms and the theory s basic sociopsychological variables attitudes subjective norms and perceived behavioral control on collaborative consumption moreover we use this framework to examine consumers underlying value and belief structure regarding collaborative consumption we measure these aspects for 224 consumers in a survey and then assess their self reported collaborative consumption behavior in a second survey our structural model fits the data well collaborative consumption is more strongly through intentions influenced by personal norms and attitudes than by subjective norms personal norms to consume collaboratively are determined by consumers altruistic biospheric and egoistic value orientations cost savings efficient use of resources and community with others are found to be consumers attitudinal beliefs underlying collaborative consumption we conclude that collaborative consumption can be pin pointed neither as a mere form of economic exchange nor as a primarily normative form of sharing resources instead collaborative consumption is determined by economic egoistic e g cost savings and normative e g altruistic and biospheric value orientations motives implications for collaborative consumption research the theory of planned behavior and practitioners are discussed

bricks and mortar vs clicks and mortar an equilibrium analysis abstract the internet has provided traditional retailers a new means with which to serve customers consequently many bricks and mortar retailers have transformed to clicks and mortar by incorporating internet sales examples of companies making such a transition include best buy wal mart barnes noble etc despite the increasing prevalence of this practice several fundamental questions remain 1 does it pay off to go online 2 which is the equilibrium industry structure 3 what is the implication of this business model for consumers we study these issues in an oligopoly setting and show that clicks and mortar arises as the equilibrium channel structure however we find that this equilibrium does not necessarily imply higher profits for the firms in some cases rather it emerges as a strategic necessity consumers are generally better off with clicks and mortar retailers if firms align with pure e tailers to reach the online market we show that a prisoner s dilemma type equilibrium may arise

willingness to consume and ability to consume abstract george katona 1960 introduced the distinction between ability to buy and willingness to buy ability to buy refers to the objective factors determining actual purchases whereas willingness to buy captures subjective factors such as attitudes or moods i show that katona s theory can be reconciled easily with standard models of intertemporal utility maximization if one allows for a time varying preference parameter that is exogenous to the consumer and determined by the social environment such a willingness to consume model is tested against standard alternatives using data from seven european countries the empirical evidence rejects the permanent income hypothesis and supports the willingness to consume model

the effects of business to business e commerce on transaction costs this paper studies transaction costs changes arising from the introduction of the internet in transactions between firms we divide transaction costs into coordination costs and motivation costs we classify coordination efficiencies into three categories process improvements marketplace benefits and indirect improvements for motivation costs we focus on informational asymmetries we apply this framework to internal data from an internet based firm to measure process improvements marketplace benefits and motivation costs our results suggest potentially large process improvements and marketplace benefits we find little evidence that informational asymmetries are more important in the electronic marketplace than in the existing physical ones

understanding food sharing models to tackle sustainability challenges abstract the current global scene is characterized by a huge paradox on one side there is the scourge of poverty on the other 1 3 billion tonnes of food is wasted around the world every year to address these problems alternative distribution formats aimed at reducing food waste and generating a positive social impact are emerging particularly food banks and social supermarkets recently opportunities created by digital technology and the phenomenon of the sharing economy have boosted the increasing number of web platforms and food sharing apps that are being developed by existing organizations or by new entities that work exclusively online the main aim of this research is to highlight following an overview of existing food sharing models how alternative distribution systems change in response to digitalization and how the value propositions they claim change in the online context a hierarchical cluster analysis based on a sample of 52 food sharing cases was carried out three categories of models have emerged the sharing for money model which is primarily a b2c for profit model to reduce waste and at the same time generate revenue the sharing for charity model in which food is collected and given to non profit organizations the sharing for the community model which is a p2p model where food is shared amongst consumers by way of conclusion we suggest that food bank seems to be replicated online in the same way in the online context the sharing for charity model however the model of the social supermarket does not seems to be replicated in the same way in the digital context but changes towards a more profit oriented approach the sharing for money model additionally in the digital scenario a new model emerges the sharing for the community finally the study highlights some preliminary evidences on the effects of the new forms of sharing on social inequality

a theory of the consumption function with and without liquidity constraints fifteen years ago milton friedman s 1957 treatise a theory of the consumption function seemed badly dated dynamic optimization theory had not been employed much in economics when friedman wrote and utility theory was still comparatively primitive so his statement of the permanent income hypothesis never actually specified a formal mathematical model of behavior derived explicitly from utility maximization instead friedman relied at crucial points on intuition and verbal descriptions of behavior although these descriptions sounded plausible when other economists subsequently found multiperiod maximizing models that could be solved explicitly the implications of those models differed sharply from friedman s intuitive description of his model furthermore empirical tests in the 1970s and 1980s often rejected these rigorous versions of the permanent income hypothesis in favor of an alternative hypothesis that many households simply spent all of their current income today with the benefit of a further round of mathematical and computational advances friedman s 1957 original analysis looks more prescient than primitive it turns out that when there is meaningful uncertainty in future labor income the optimal behavior of moderately impatient consumers is much better described by friedman s original statement of the permanent income hypothesis than by the later explicit maximizing versions furthermore in a remarkable irony much of the empirical evidence that rejected the permanent income hypothesis as specified in tests of the 1970s and 1980s is actually consistent both with friedman s original description of the model and with the new version with serious uncertainty there are four key differences between the explicit maximizing models

understanding the link between collaborative economy and sustainable behaviour an empirical investigation abstract the collaborative economy is growing at an exponential rate and the accommodation sector is especially affected the relevance of the phenomenon is linked with sustainable consumption that encourages resource efficiency waste reduction development of better products and surplus reutilization due to overproduction and overconsumption this paper aims at investigating the relationship between collaborative consumption and the adoption of sustainable practices from the users perspective after identifying the gaps existing in the literature different research approaches were integrated at first 4 focus groups were conducted to detect the main attributes and benefits attached to collaborative economy in tourism the personal values instrumental and terminal values relevant to p2p accommodation renting were identified through laddering technique as the propensity to put in place sustainable behaviour thereafter a structural model based on the framework of the theory of planned behaviour tpb constructs was set and tested to understand its consistency with the above values an ad hoc questionnaire was projected and administered online based on a sample of 384 respondents quantitative data were analysed through statistical and structural equation modeling software from an academic perspective the paper enhances the current knowledge in identifying the desired end states that users want to achieve by renting a p2p accommodation moreover it exploits and adapts the tpb to an emerging consumption model such as collaborative economy thus disclosing the relation between collaborative consumption and sustainable behaviour moreover the adaptation of tpb model to the newest context of collaborative economy expands the knowledge related to sustainable consumption from a managerial perspective it is necessary to emphasize the importance of defining a new business paradigm considering collaborative consumption to support environmental policy and encouraging sustainable behaviour

the sharing economy a pathway to sustainability or a nightmarish form of neoliberal capitalism the sharing economy seemingly encompasses online peer to peer economic activities as diverse as rental airbnb for profit service provision uber and gifting freecycle the silicon valley success stories of airbnb and uber have catalysed a vibrant sharing economy discourse participated in by the media incumbent industries entrepreneurs and grassroots activists within this discourse the sharing economy is framed in contradictory ways ranging from a potential pathway to sustainability to a nightmarish form of neoliberalism however these framings share a common vision of the sharing economy a niche of innovation decentralising and disrupting established socio technical and economic structures regimes here i present an analysis of the online sharing economy discourse identifying that the sharing economy is framed as 1 an economic opportunity 2 a more sustainable form of consumption 3 a pathway to a decentralised equitable and sustainable economy 4 creating unregulated marketplaces 5 reinforcing the neoliberal paradigm and 6 an incoherent field of innovation although a critique of hyper consumption was central to emergence of the sharing economy niche 2 it has been successfully reframed by regime actors as purely an economic opportunity 1 if the sharing economy follows this pathway of corporate co option it appears unlikely to drive a transition to sustainability

mail versus mall a strategic analysis of competition between direct marketers and conventional retailers consumers now purchase several offerings from direct sellers including catalog and internet marketers these direct channels exist in parallel with the conventional retail stores the availability of multiple channels has significant implications for the performance of consumer markets the literature in marketing and economics has however been dominated by a focus on the conventional retail sector this paper is an effort toward modeling competition in the multiple channel environment from a strategic viewpoint at the outset a parsimonious model that accommodates the following consumer and market characteristics is introduced first the relative attractiveness of retail shopping varies across consumers second the fit with the direct channel varies across product categories third the strength of existing retail presence in local markets moderates competition fourth in contrast with the fixed location of the retail store that anchors its localized market power the location of the direct marketer is irrelevant to the competitive outcome the model is first applied in a setting where consumers have complete knowledge of product availability and prices in all channels in the resulting equilibrium the direct marketer acts as a competitive wedge between retail stores the direct presence is so strong that each retailer competes against the remotely located direct marketer rather than against neighboring retailers this outcome has implications for the marketing mix of retailers which has traditionally been tuned to attract consumers choosing between retail stores in the context of market entry conditions under which a direct channel can access a local market in retail entry equilibrium are derived our analysis suggests that the traditional focus on retail entry equilibria may not yield informative or relevant findings when direct channels are a strong presence next the role of information in multiple channel markets is modeled this issue is particularly relevant in the context of direct marketing where the seller can typically control the level of information in the marketplace sometimes on a customer by customer basis e g by deciding on the mailing list for a catalog campaign when a certain fraction of consumers does not receive information from the direct marketer the retailers compete with each other for that fraction of the market the retailer s marketing mix has to be tuned in this case to jointly address direct and neighboring retail competition the level of information disseminated by the direct marketer is shown to have strategic implications and the use of market coverage as a lever to control competition is described even with zero information costs providing information to all consumers may not be optimal under some circumstances in particular when the product is not well adapted to the direct channel the level of market information about the direct option should ideally be lowered the only way to compete with retailers on a larger scale with a poorly adapted product is by lowering direct prices which lowers profits lowering market information levels and allowing retailers to compete more with each other facilitates a higher equilibrium retail price in turn this allows a higher direct price to be charged and improves overall direct profit on the other hand when the product is well adapted increasing direct market presence and engaging in greater competition with the retail sector yields higher returns the finding that high market coverage may depress profits raises some issues for further exploration first implementing the optimal coverage is straightforward when the seller controls the information mechanism as in the case of catalog marketing the internet in contrast is an efficient mechanism to transmit information but does not provide the sellers with such control over the level of market information a key reason is that the initiative to gather information on the internet lies largely with consumers the design and implementation of mechanisms to control aggregate information levels in electronic markets can therefore be an important theme for research and managerial interest second direct marketers have traditionally relied on the statistical analysis of customer records to decide on contact policies the analysis in this paper reveals that these policies can have significant strategic implications as well research that integrates the statistical and strategic aspects could make a valuable contribution the paper concludes with a discussion of issues for future research in multiple channel markets including avenues to model competition in settings with multiple direct marketers

effect of partial cross ownership on supply chain performance abstract partial cross ownership pco in a dyad supply chain refers to a situation where each firm holds a portion of its partner s shares we study this topic in push and pull supply chains and prove that neither the supply chain s nor any member s profit changes with the percentage of the leader s shares the follower holds however while the profits of the chain and the leader increase with the percentage of the follower s shares held by the leader the follower s profit does not necessarily increase or decrease as a result both partners can always achieve a win win by setting a proper price for transferring the follower s shares to the leader moreover the equilibrium wholesale price may be greater than the retail price in the push chain but less than the marginal production cost in the pull chain contradicting the usual results found in the literature we also derive a necessary and sufficient condition on the structure of pco allowing a pull chain to perform better than a push one this extends cachon 2004 s result that a pull chain always performs better than a push one without pco finally pco can coordinate a chain if and only if each one holds half of the other s shares

on the optimal tax base for commodity taxation taxed considerable effort has been devoted to characterizing the manner in which the optimal tax rates differ across the taxable commodities but the literature has rarely addressed the issue of which commodities should be included in the tax base in fact the standard optimal tax model cannot provide a useful answer to this question because it does not contain any of the resource costs normally associated with the collection of taxes an omission that seriously diminishes the policy relevance of the model 2

welfare effects of changing commodity tax rates toward uniformity abstract this paper presents a theory of tax reform that is applicable to a many good economy where i the initial tax structure is arbitrarily given ii no lump sum tax exists and iii the initial tax revenue must be maintained after the reform sufficient conditions are established under which tax changes definitely result in increases in welfare they indicate that in a wide class of situations the uniform tax structure can be a useful intermediate target on the way to optimum

product customization and price competition on the internet the internet provides an unprecedented capability for sellers to learn about their customers and offer custom products at special prices in addition customization is more feasible today because of advances in manufacturing technologies that have improved sellers manufacturing flexibility we first develop a model of product customization and flexible pricing to incorporate the salient roles of the internet and flexible manufacturing technologies in reducing the costs of designing and producing tailored consumer goods we show how a monopoly seller may earn the highest profits by producing both standard and custom products and can raise prices for both types of products as customization and information collection technologies improve simultaneous adoption of customization in a duopoly reduces the differentiation between their standard products but does not intensify price competition compared with a two facility monopolist the duopoly may underinvest in customization consumer surplus improves after sellers adopt customization but does not monotonically increase as customization technologies advance when firms face a fixed entry cost and adopt customization sequentially the first entrant always achieves an advantage and may be able to deter subsequent entry by choosing its customization scope strategically

when and how is the internet likely to decrease price competition conventional wisdom seems to claim that by lowering the cost of distribution and by making search easier for consumer the introduction of the internet is likely to intensify price competition this paper intends to challenge this view by asking when and how is the internet likely to decrease the level of price competition between firms to answer this question we develop an analytic model with the following characteristics on the demand side consumers need to gather information on two types of product attributes digital attributes which can be communicated on the web at very low cost and nondigital attributes for which physical inspection of the product is necessary consumers choose between two brands but are familiar with the nondigital attributes of only the brand purchased on the last purchase occasion on the supply side firms use traditional stores and the internet to inform consumers about their products attributes and to sell their products in this setup we show that the impact of the internet on competition will be radically different depending on the relative importance of parameters describing the relevant shopping and distribution context specifically we find that the introduction of the internet might lead to monopoly pricing when 1 the proportion of internet users is high enough 2 when nondigital attributes are relevant but not overwhelming 3 when consumers have a more favorable prior about the brand they currently own and 4 when the purchase situation can be characterized by destination shopping more surprising we also show that in such cases the use of the internet not only leads to higher prices but can also discourage consumers from engaging in search as such an important message of the paper is that under some conditions the internet might represent an opportunity for firms to leverage their brand loyalty and increase their profits the intuition behind our results is the following the internet allows consumers to evaluate digital attributes easily i e without visiting the stores however nondigital attributes can only be evaluated through physical presence as such for goods where both types of attributes are important the introduction of the net changes the effective cost of search for consumers without the internet the cost of search is the cost of visiting more than one store with the introduction of the net however nonsearching consumers do not have to undertake the shopping trip at all because they can order products on the net thus in the presence of the internet the cost of search is related to the cost of undertaking the entire shopping trip in the case of destination shopping i e when the fixed cost of undertaking the shopping trip is higher than the cost of visiting an additional store the presence of the internet creates higher effective search costs for consumers given this shift of paradigm in search costs due to the internet consumers may not take the risk of searching for products with better nondigital attributes but instead remain with the product they are familiar with this results in increased consumer loyalty which induces firms to increase their prices our results have important managerial implications first they provide guidelines for firms on when i e for which product categories they should consider expanding their distribution network to the internet in this respect an important additional insight of the paper is that the internet can lower price competition and lead to reduced consumer search even if it is more expensive than the traditional distribution channel this can easily be the case if distribution through the internet represents additional costs such as the costs associated with shipping and handling and return policies second the paper also provides guidelines on how to plan the firm s internet strategy interestingly the results suggest that with the general availability of the internet the role of stores might actually become more important while we do not explicitly model a dynamic market our findings together with klemperer s 1987 results suggest that stores might have a key role in consumer acquisition while the internet can help leverage the acquired customer base through demand fulfillment this might imply that for certain product categories firms should actually allocate additional resources to improve their in store environment when considering the internet as a complementary distribution channel

sharing sustainability how values and ethics matter in consumers adoption of public bicycle sharing scheme this study investigates the antecedents and mechanisms of consumers adoption of a public bicycle sharing scheme pbss as a form of shared sustainable consumption drawing on marketing ethics and sustainability literature it argues that cultural and consumption values drive or deter the adoption of pbss through the mediating mechanism of ethical evaluation this study tests its hypotheses using a sample of 755 consumers from one of the largest pbss programs in china the results confirm the significance of collectivism man nature orientation materialism and face consciousness as key determinants of the adoption of pbss interestingly these values play mixed roles in influencing pbss adoption it also finds that such values and beliefs need to be effectively translated into ethical evaluations of pbss adoption and need to be addressed in the specific social context thus ethical evaluation constitutes a cognitive strategy that allows consumers to justify and defend their adoption of sustainability practices the results suggest that a desirable sustainability program needs to not only cater to the cultural and psychological motivations of consumers but also reflect the social norms and social context in which the sustainability practices and consumers are embedded

food losses in food service institutions examples from sweden lowering food losses is a potential measure to overcome hunger and reduce the ecological side effects from the food system however few observations of food losses have been reported in the liter

alternative approaches to tax reform abstract this paper shows that a consumption neutral tax reform is a promising alternative to a revenue neutral tax reform when the distortions introduced by tax hikes are very large and when governments seek revenues in the course of tax changes

direct marketing indirect profits a strategic analysis of dual channel supply chain design the advent of e commerce has prompted many manufacturers to redesign their traditional channel structures by engaging in direct sales the model conceptualizes the impact of customer acceptance of a direct channel the degree to which customers accept a direct channel as a substitute for shopping at a traditional store on supply chain design the customer acceptance of a direct channel can be strong enough that an indepent manufacturer would open a direct channel to compete with its own retailers here direct marketing is used for strategic channel control purposes even though it is inefficient on its own and surprisingly it can profit the manufacturer even when so direct sales occur specifically we construct a price setting game between a manufacturer and its independent retailer direct marketing which indirectly increases the flow of profits through the retail channel helps the manufacturer improve overall profitability by reducing the degree of inefficient price double marginalization while operated by the manufacturer to constrain the retailer s pricing behavior the direct channel may not always be detrimental to the retailer because it will be accompanied by a wholesale price reduction this combination of manufacturer pull and push can benefit the retailer in equilibrium finally we show that the mere threat of introducing the direct channel can increase the manufacturer s negotiated share of cooperative profits even if price efficiency is obtained by using other business practices

when should a manufacturer set its direct price and wholesale price in dual channel supply chains abstract applying an observable delay game framework developed in noncooperative game theory we investigate the timing problem concerning when a manufacturer managing dual channel supply chains consisting of a retail channel and a direct channel should post its wholesale price and direct price conventionally operational research models describing dual channel supply chains examine price competition where the retailer and the manufacturer simultaneously determine the retail and direct prices respectively in contrast to this conventional setting our model demonstrates that such simultaneous price competition never arises if the manufacturer and retailer can choose not only the level of the price but also the timing of pricing if the manufacturer sets the direct price after setting the wholesale price to the retailer the retailer accelerates the timing of retail pricing prior to the direct price setting by the manufacturer our findings suggest that the manufacturer should post the direct price before or upon but not after setting the wholesale price for the retailer this upfront posting of the direct price not only constitutes the subgame perfect nash equilibrium of the noncooperative game between channel members but also maximizes the profits for a manufacturer employing multichannel sales strategies

consumer confidence and economic fluctuations if consumers become pessimistic about the state of the economy can there be a slowdown in output even if their pessimism is not based on economic fundamentals recent macroeconomic models show the answer is yes if there are strategic complementarities and multiple equilibria we investigate the link between consumer confidence and economic fluctuations using vector autoregressions in all models after controlling for economic fundamentals the hypothesis that consumer sentiment does not cause gnp in the granger sense can be rejected variance decompositions suggest that consumer sentiment accounts for between 13 and 26 percent of the innovation variance of gnp

win win indirect tax reform abstract the literature on tariffs and that on commodity taxes have established sufficient conditions under which tariff or commodity tax reform improves welfare since less developed countries need to raise certain revenue from indirect taxation we consider a policy reform within the complete indirect tax structure i e an increase in consumption taxes combined with a decrease in tariffs that improves welfare and raises government revenue we demonstrate that when uniform reductions in trade taxes accompany offsetting increases in consumption taxes so that consumer prices remain constant welfare improves and government revenue increases if the initial position provides a net subsidy to producers

a pareto improving commodity tax reform under a smooth nonlinear income tax abstract this paper analyzes the welfare effects of commodity tax reform in an economy with a nonlinear income tax and linear commodity taxes the main result is that we can find a tax reform program that improves every consumer s utility in the pareto sense unless efficiency loss in the economy is minimized under incentive compatibility the tax reform rule proposed here applies to a broad class of economies with arbitrary smooth income taxes the expenditure function approach makes our analyses clear and simple some intuition is presented on the role of commodity taxation in a mixed tax economy the relationship with previous work in optimal tax and tax reform theory is also discussed we extend our result to the case where the government spends tax revenue to provide a public good

inferring shortfall costs and integrating environmental costs into optimal production levels for an all you care to eat food service operation abstract this study examines how optimal food production policies at an all you care to eat aycte facility would change were life cycle cost estimates of embodied co2 included in the disposal costs associated with overproduction in an aim to study production planning possibilities in a situation that places increased emphasis on the environmental impacts of overproduction aycte operations exhibit a lack of revenue associated with each item served since there is no per item lost sales value incurred when demand exceeds supply accordingly the second objective of this research is to present a novel method for estimating shortfall costs in a setting with no marginal revenue per satisfied unit of demand we examine empirical data from aycte operations at the university of missouri s campus dining services cds to infer the per item shortfall costs that are implied by cds management s historical production decisions consistent with cds management s stated aversion to shortfalls we estimate shortfall values which are between 1 6 and 2 7 times larger than the procurement cost and between 30 and over 100 times larger than the disposal cost utilizing published estimates of life cycle co2 and the social cost of carbon we identify a per portion environmental cost we incorporate the environmental costs associated with wasted overproduction and the inferred shortfall cost estimates into a newsvendor model formulation to identify new optimal production levels illustrating this approach with application to a set of food items served by cds we find that optimal production levels are decreased significantly 18 25 for food items with high environmental impacts such as beef and reduced less for foods with less embodied co2

impact fees exclusionary zoning and the density of new development abstract the increasing use of impact fees represents a new trend in local fiscal policy which can have important effects on real estate markets the ramifications for economic efficiency as well as for the pattern of metropolitan area development are not well understood by real estate academics or practitioners current discussion focuses primarily on who bears the burden of the fees this paper shows that impact fees have interesting implications for a broader set of important issues the fees provide communities with added flexibility in pricing entry into their jurisdictions allowing existing residents to transfer to themselves the surplus associated with new development using impact fees can reduce the incentive for communities to engage in fiscally inspired exclusionary zoning the optimal density of new development can increase following the introduction of fees widespread use of impact fees ultimately may help alter the current centralization in core cities of relatively poorer people and other demanders of high density development

exemption versus zero rating a hidden problem of vat abstract we examine the difference between exemptions and zero rating under a consumption based vat in a numerical general equilibrium model to allow for a better understanding of the accruing efficiency effects we first develop a method to convert the nominal vat rates into effective tax rates on categories of final demand then we show how these effective tax rates can be used to perform a gradual transition from exemption to zero rating

consumer heterogeneity and strategic quality decisions though recent studies show that quality differentiation is an equilibrium outcome products of similar qualities frequently are observed in the marketplace this inconsistency may be explained by incorporating consumer heterogeneity along unobservable attributes into a model of competition in this paper consumers not only take into account the quality and price of a product but also their heterogeneous tastes along other attributes which are unobservable to firms we investigate the effect of heterogeneity along the unobservable attributes on both quality and price equilibrium in a two stage game framework we show that when consumers are sufficiently heterogeneous along the unobservable attributes the firms offer products of identical qualities in equilibrium under low levels of heterogeneity along the unobservable attributes however our results are consistent with past research which argues for quality differentiation

democratising platform governance in the sharing economy an analytical framework and initial empirical insights the growing controversy around the adverse impacts of sharing economy platforms including airbnb and uber has led to calls for more democratic models of platform governance advocates of democratic governance models claim that these could help to create a more sustainable sharing economy by ensuring that platforms promote social and environmental values alongside the instrumental values of the capitalist economy exploring this claim we bring together theories of platform governance democratic organisational governance and the enactment of values in socio technical systems offering a conceptual framework for analysing emerging democratic models of platform governance applying this framework we present a mixed methods case study focused on freegle a platform that enables people to gift unwanted consumer goods locally and one of very few platforms to have sustained a democratic governance model at scale in particular we explore the extent to which the social environmental and instrumental values of platform users and owners have been accommodated in the governance of freegle our findings are broadly supportive of the claims made by advocates of democratic platform governance although in freegle s case social and environmental values are rather better accommodated than instrumental values while we are cautiously optimistic about the potential from a sustainability perspective of democratic platform governance models we emphasise that major challenges are likely to be faced by those implementing these and that such models should be complemented by government regulation of the sharing economy

temporal aggregation the data interval bias and empirical estimation of bimonthly relations from annual data in an important study reviewing the literature on econometric studies of the relationship between advertising and sales clarke clarke darral g 1976 econometric measurement of the duration of advertising effects on sales j marketing res 13 november 345 357 concluded that the implied duration interval of the effects of advertising on sales were too long when the studies used annual data a theoretical explanation is provided here for the observation of parameter estimates which vary with the data interval employed in the analysis parameter estimates are developed on the basis of data aggregated at various levels of temporal aggregation and compared with theoretical values it is demonstrated that it is possible to recover bimonthly parameters when only annual data are available

inventory competition under dynamic consumer choice we analyze a model of inventory competition among n firms that provide competing substitutable goods each firm chooses initial inventory levels for their good in a single period newsboy like inventory model customers choose dynamically based on current availability so the inventory levels at one firm affect the demand of all competingfirms this creates a strategic interaction amongthe firms inventory decisions our work extends earlier work on variations of this problem by karjalainen 1992 lippman and mccardle 1997 and parlar 1988 specifically we model demand in a more realistic way as a stochastic sequence of heterogeneous consumers who choose dynamically from amongthe available goods or choose not to purchase based on a utility maximization criterion we also use a sample path analysis so minimal assumptions are imposed on this demand process we characterize the nash equilibrium of the resulting stocking game and prove it is unique in the symmetric case we show there is a bias toward overstocking caused by competition specifically reducing the quantity stocked at any equilibrium of the game increases total system profits and at any joint optimal set of stocking levels each firm has an individual incentive to increase its own stock for the symmetric case we show that as the number of competing firms increases the overstockingbecomes so severe that total system and individual firm profits approach zero finally we propose a stochastic gradient algorithm for computing equilibria and provide several numerical examples

pricing and rebate strategies for an e shop with a cashback website abstract a cashback website cw is a type of reward website that pays its members a rebate when they purchase goods via affiliate links the website receives a commission from an e shop when a customer makes a purchase by following a link instead of visiting the e shop directly with the rapid rise in e shops cws are becoming increasingly popular however these cws value to e shops is still somewhat unclear in both theory and practice to clarify the process we consider a system in which an e shop sells a product to consumers and a cw provides the link to the e shop based on consumers utility we develop a model to study the value of the cw to the e shop in both centralized and decentralized settings and demonstrate and compare the two parties optimal strategies and their corresponding profits in both settings our main findings are as follows 1 the cw can always bring the e shop more profits whether the setting is centralized or decentralized by playing the role of price discrimination 2 in contrast to the centralized setting the decentralized setting does not lead to a higher sales price in many cases it offers a lower sales price which is opposite of the case typically seen in traditional supply chain literature 3 compared with the decentralized setting the centralized setting does not allow all consumers to have more consumer surplus which again differs from traditional supply chain literature but rather yields more total profit to the system which implies that it is better for the e shop to have its own cw than to use a third party cw 4 the degree of decrease in utility for consumers who buy via the cw significantly influences both parties pricing strategies more interesting is that a smaller degree of decrease in utility for consumers who buy via the cw is always beneficial to the e shop but may be detrimental to the cw

welfare criteria for tax reforms efficiency aspects there are essentially two types of problems to which the normative theory of taxation addresses itself one of these problems is that of designing de novo i e from scratch a tax system which is optimal in some appropriate welfare sense the other major problem is that of finding conditions under which tax reforms i e changes in an existing tax system are welfareimproving the efficiency aspects of the latter problem are the subject of this paper there has been a considerable interest in the theory of tax reform in the last decade in the earlier part of this decade most studies of tax reforms concerned themselves primarily with the question of changing price distortions e g foster and sonnenschein 1970 bertrand and vanek 1971 kawamata 1974 1977 dixit 1975 hatta 1977 and rader 1976 a common drawback of these studies however is that the kind of tax changes analyzed by them rely on an implicit lump sum tax transfer mechanism for instance some consider the question of whether a reduction in tax rates such as a radial decrease in distortions improves welfare such a reduction will most likely decrease the tax revenues accruing to the government and hence some lump sum tax will have to be introduced therefore it is difficult to draw policy relevant conclusions from these studies more recently there have been several studies e g guesnerie 1977 diewert 1978 dixit 1979 harris 1979 and weymark 1979 which deal

the predictive power of the business and bank sentiment of firms a high dimensional granger causality approach we study the predictive power of industry specific economic sentiment indicators for future macro economic developments in addition to the sentiment of firms towards their own business situation we study their sentiment with respect to the banking sector their main credit providers the use of industry specific sentiment indicators results in a high dimensional forecasting problem to identify the most predictive industries we present a bootstrap granger causality test based on the adaptive lasso this test is more powerful than the standard wald test in such high dimensional settings forecast accuracy is improved by using only the most predictive industries rather than all industries

a policy agenda for changing our relationship with consumption in this government initiatives contribution we present policy recommendations made available to the scottish government on how to change scottish consumers relationships with material goods and so contribute to its greenhouse gas emissions targets rather than focusing on the individual actions of consumers we discuss how the underlying neoliberal political narrative must be addressed as it creates the conditions in which invidious materialism can occur we then propose an alternative conceptualization of marketing that would harness marketing tools and concepts to help build connections between people and stimulate demand for pro environmental prosocial consumption this function stands in contrast to marketing acting in a way that contributes to the fragmentation of society and degradation of our planet a series of controls on marketing are then outlined which seek to facilitate changes to current dominant consumption narratives including using material input labelling as a mechanism to restrict unethical marketing practices overall these ideas represent a more interventionist perspective but one that we deem necessary when considered against the scale of the task now facing humanity in avoiding catastrophic climate change

rivalry between strategic alliances abstract rivalry between strategic alliances is investigated in a model where each alliance member maximizes its own profit and some share of its partner s profit a complementary alliance confers a strategic advantage by allowing the partners to credibly commit to greater output owing to both within alliance complementarities and cross alliance substitutabilities although rivalry between different alliances can sometimes lead to a prisoners dilemma for firms it tends to improve economic welfare on the other hand an alliance that arises due purely to the threat of entry may reduce welfare

implications of reduced search cost and free riding in e commerce this paper examines a market where the provision of information service is costly but information service has the characteristics of a public good consumers on the other hand can use the information service to make an informed purchase decision and derive higher utility from consuming their ideal product however after receiving the information service from an information service provider consumers can easily free ride by purchasing at low price sellers who do not provide any information service the paper examines the competition where sellers compete by providing information service for horizontally differentiated products and where technology reduces consumers search cost it is found that in this market a seller needs to establish itself as an information service provider in order to make positive profits even when there is free riding a seller however cannot make positive profits by free riding all the time also with an increase in competition in the information service market sellers have reduced incentives to provide information service it is also found that in this market a decrease in search cost may increase or decrease social welfare

pareto improving indirect tax harmonisation abstract indirect tax harmonisation is central to the european commission s proposals for completion of the internal market by 1993 this paper is concerned with the possibility that such tax coordination might be justified on efficiency grounds as a response to tax induced trade distortions necessary and sufficient conditions characterising welfare improving multilateral tax reforms are given and specific forms of harmonisation are shown to be strictly pareto improving without any need for compensation if the initial situation is one in which protectionist tendencies in domestic taxation are sufficiently pronounced

piecemeal tax reforms and the compensated radial elasticities of tax bases abstract it is shown that tax inefficiency is measured by the compensated radial elasticity cre of a tax base defined as the percentage reduction in that base due to a compensated 1 percent radial increase in all tax rates the rule that efficiency can be raised by switching taxes from goods with higher elasticities to those with lower elasticities becomes rigorous if elasticities is replaced by cres use of the cre can simplify and integrate the main results in the optimal tax literature

assessment of energy intake estimates of food supply v measurement of food consumption abstract national consumption indicators are frequently compiled using food supply estimates in the absence of reliable household or individual intake data the authors examine the relationship between these three levels of information and in particular the potential losses of energy in the food system comparing data from different countries and over time they demonstrate the unreliability of supply estimates as proxy indicators of consumption and question their current usage in statements about global hunger and the links between health and food intake

welfare effects of commodity tax harmonisation abstract the european commission is currently seeking a rapid accelaration of the process of commodity tax harmonisation within the european community substantial changes in domestic tax structures are envisaged yet the welfare theoretic basis of the policy has remained obscure this note goes some way towards suggesting a welfare argument for harmonisation as a collective response to tax induced trade distortions intentional or otherwise it is shown that a programme of multilateral domestic tax reform involving convergence towards an appropriately weighted average of pre existing tax structures a kind of harmonisation is potentially pareto improving

credit cards as lifestyle facilitators credit cards are an increasingly essential technology but they carry with them the paradoxical capacity to propel consumers along lifestyle trajectories of marketplace freedom or constraint we analyze accounts provided by consumers credit counselors and participants in a credit counseling seminar in order to develop a differentiated theory of lifestyle facilitation through credit card practice the skills and tastes expressed by credit card practice help distinguish between the lifestyles of those with higher cultural capital relative to those with lower cultural capital differences in lifestyle regulation practice are posited to originate in cultural discourses related to entitlement and frugality

selling sharing and everything in between the hybrid economies of collaborative networks recent consumer research has examined contexts where market based exchange gift giving sharing and other modes of exchange occur simultaneously and obey several intersecting logics but consumer research has not conceptualized these so called hybrid economic forms nor explained how these hybrids are shaped and sustained using ethnographic and netnographic data from the collaborative network of geocaching this study explains the emergence of hybrid economies performativity theory is mobilized to demonstrate that the hybrid status of these economies is constantly under threat of destabilization by the struggle between competing performativities of market and nonmarket modes of exchange despite latent tension between competing performativities the hybrid economy is sustained through consumer producer engagements in collaborative consumption and production the creation of zones of indeterminacy and the enactment of tournaments of value that dissipate controversies around hybrid transactions implications are drawn for consumer research on the interplay between market and nonmarket economies

the food waste hierarchy as a framework for the management of food surplus and food waste the unprecedented scale of food waste in global food supply chains is attracting increasing attention due to its environmental social and economic impacts drawing on interviews with food waste specialists this study construes the boundaries between food surplus and food waste avoidable and unavoidable food waste and between waste prevention and waste management this study suggests that the first step towards a more sustainable resolution of the food waste issue is to adopt a sustainable production and consumption approach and tackle food surplus and waste throughout the global food supply chain the authors examine the factors that give rise to food waste throughout the food supply chain and propose a framework to identify and prioritize the most appropriate options for prevention and management of food waste the proposed framework interprets and applies the waste hierarchy in the context of food waste it considers the three dimensions of sustainability environmental economic and social offering a more holistic approach in addressing food waste additionally it considers the materiality and temporality of food the food waste hierarchy posits that prevention through minimization of food surplus and avoidable food waste is the most attractive option the second most attractive option involves the distribution of food surplus to groups affected by food poverty followed by the option of converting food waste to animal feed although the proposed food waste hierarchy requires a fundamental re think of the current practices and systems in place it has the potential to deliver substantial environmental social and economic benefits

world population and food supply abstract criteria for assessing the adequacy of a national average diet are proposed and the global average cereal production per capita needed to provide an adequate average diet is calculated the technical feasibility of maintaining global food production per capita up to the year 2050 is assessed the required input of nitrogen fertilizer is estimated and the water supply in relation to crop evapotranspiration is discussed it is shown that maintenance of the present global cereal production per capita would be accompanied by a moderate increase in grain consumption per capita in the less developed countries but that this will involve a major increase in the net import of grain from the more developed countries achievement of a satisfactory average diet in the less developed countries as a whole cannot be achieved until the population of this group of countries has declined to a level substantially below its future peak

on the hatta normality condition and tax reforms abstract the role of the hatta normality condition in the tax reform literature is discussed it is shown that in a one consumer economy the hatta normality condition only pertains to the directions of welfare improving tax reforms but has no role in determining the existence of such reforms in a many consumer economy the hatta normality condition is shown to affect both the existence and directions of strict pareto improving tax reforms it is also shown that the hatta normality condition can be used to indicate optimality or suboptimality of the economy s initial choice of lump sum transfers