product and price competition in a duopoly this paper examines the role of consumer preferences costs and price competition in determining the competitive product strategy of a firm in the model studied here there are two identical firms competing on product quality and price they face consumers who prefer a higher quality product to a lower quality product but differ in how much they are willing to pay for quality the consumers can also choose a substitute if they don t like the product price offerings of the two firms for the firms a higher quality product costs more to produce than a lower quality product the paper shows that the equilibrium strategy for each firm should be to differentiate its product from its competitor with the firm choosing the higher quality choosing the higher margin as well this differentiation however is not efficient that is it is possible to choose two other products and offer them at prices that cover their marginal cost and still satisfy consumers needs better in the aggregate a monopolist by contrast would differentiate his product line efficiently this suggests that cannibalization has different effects on product strategy than competition the paper also shows that if one firm enters the market first then it can defend itself from later entrants and gain a first mover advantage by preempting the most desirable product position

workforce reorganization and the worker in this article we study the joint decision process of changing the structure of jobs and laying off individual workers in a firm that downsizes its workforce a hierarchical decision model is proposed and estimated using personnel data from a firm in demise comparing the characteristics of the individual workers and the structure of the firm s labour force before and after its reorganization our results show that workers in jobs in the top levels of each skill group s hierarchy are better protected against downsizing due to larger productivity shocks and larger firing costs

a model of stochastic variety seeking in this paper we propose and test a stochastic model of consumer choice that incorporates attribute based variety seeking our stochastic variety seeking model svs has nested within it a fixed variety seeking model a zero order model of choice and a first order pure variety model we compare the svs model to alternative models under stochastic variety seeking we examine the nature of the variety sought and provide a test of the satiation hypothesis unlike fixed variety seeking models our model allows variety seeking to vary in intensity and consistency over individuals as well as over purchase occasions we show that the model is equivalent to a random utility model with the features that the attributes of brands relative to those of the brand previously bought influence choice and the extent of variety seeking is random over choice occasions for a given individual the model permits a closed form solution to the conditional switching probabilities parameterized by variety seeking parameters and dependent on brand attributes we apply our model to individual choice data obtained from a field study specifically designed for the purpose at hand

middle management downsizing an empirical investigation of the impact of information technology nearly all fortune 1000 firms claim to have downsized since the early eighties and it is argued that information technology it is responsible for this massive downsizing however earlier research has indicated that it increases middle management even though the impact of it on the middle management workforce has been studied for the last thirty years research has failed to clearly explain this phenomenon quite the opposite research has fueled controversy and has provided inconsistent findings this article addresses the state of inconsistent findings across multiple studies by examining the impact of information technology on the number of middle managers using two additional variables the degree of centralization of organizational decision authority and the degree of centralization of computing decision authority one hundred and fifty five city governments were surveyed information technology was found to be both positively and negatively associated with the size of the middle management workforce the impact of information technology was fundamentally determined by who controlled computing decisions and what interests were being served and by the roles of middle managers information technology was associated with a decrease in the size of the middle management workforce in organizations with centralized decision authority and with an increase in the number of middle managers in organizations where decision authority was decentralized

energy justice and the contested petroleum politics of stranded assets policy insights from the yasuni itt initiative in ecuador abstract ecuador s progressive yasuni itt initiative operational 2007 to 2013 would have left almost one billion barrels of crude oil locked in perpetuity beneath one of the most intact and diverse nature reserves on the planet the project attempted to strand these oil assets in order to protect biodiversity respect the territory of indigenous peoples combat climate change and encourage more sustainable economic development the yasuni itt proposal would have had the international community pay ecuador 3 6 billion roughly half the value of the oil found there in exchange for not developing the ishpingo tambococha tiputini itt oilfields funds would have been placed into social and environmental development programs and the promotion of domestic renewable energy instead the project collected only 13 million and succumbed to a series of challenges including limited financing intense political pressure a national commitment to oil and carbon leakage this article summarizes the history benefits and insurmountable obstacles facing the yasuni itt initiative and presents six broader lessons and implications for climate and energy analysts practitioners and policymakers it questions the political viability of and serves as a stark warning against those promoting and advocating policies centered on carbon budgets stranded assets negative emissions and carbon revenue streams

the effect of information technology on it facilitated coordination it facilitated autonomy and decision makings at the individual level abstractthe effect of information technology it has been a central concern to economics of it ever since it has been viewed as an important resource to improve firm productivity although significant research progress has been made on the impacts of it use at the individual level the mechanism of how it use increases individual performance at work has not been fully explored in an attempt to examine the it effects on performance we focus on individual work productivity gained from it use following the discussion of previous works we develop a research model describing that the ubiquitous it transforms the way individual employers work in organizations and facilitates working processes and practices that may affect the decision making of individual performance as a result of testing the research model we found not only that it use does have a direct effect on the quality of decision making in organizations but that this effect is partially mediated by the extent of it facilitated autonomy and o

variety seeking through brand switching a concept of variety seeking behavior is modeled as a stochastic brand choice model the model yields a measure of variety seeking for each individual consumer panel data for 28 products are analyzed for each household and the possibility of market segmentation by variety seeking behavior is explored

the status of conventional world oil reserves hype or cause for concern the status of world oil reserves is a contentious issue polarised between advocates of peak oil who believe production will soon decline and major oil companies that say there is enough oil to last for decades in reality much of the disagreement can be resolved through clear definition of the grade type and reporting framework used to estimate oil reserve volumes while there is certainly vast amounts of fossil fuel resources left in the ground the volume of oil that can be commercially exploited at prices the global economy has become accustomed to is limited and will soon decline the result is that oil may soon shift from a demand led market to a supply constrained market the capacity to meet the services provided by future liquid fuel demand is contingent upon the rapid and immediate diversification of the liquid fuel mix the transition to alternative energy carriers where appropriate and demand side measures such as behavioural change and adaptation the successful transition to a poly fuel economy will also be judged on the adequate mitigation of environmental and social costs

behavior based pricing production efficiency and quality differentiation in a two period vertical duopoly we examine how behavior based price discrimination bpd affects the firms endogenous quality differentiation and profits the firms relative production efficiency defined as the ratio between their unit cost difference and quality difference plays a crucial role with exogenous product qualities bpd always decreases the profits of the more efficient firm but increases those of the sufficiently less efficient firm anticipating its period 2 disadvantage in price discrimination the less efficient firm competes more vigorously and also gains more in period 1 than its competitor for the sufficiently less efficient firm its period 1 gain dominates its period 2 loss and its total profits increase with endogenous quality choices bpd does not alter the low end quality at the lower bound of the quality space but increases the high end quality enlarging quality differentiation this is because under bpd each firm s profit gain decreases or its profit loss increas

the economics of degrowth economic degrowth is ecologically desirable and possibly inevitable but under what conditions can it become socially sustainable how can we have full employment and economic stability without growth what will happen to public spending and to public debt how would production be organised in a degrowing economy and under what plausible socio political conditions could such grand changes happen standard economic theories and models ignore these questions for them economic growth is an axiomatic necessity this article reviews recent contributions in the economics of degrowth and identifies research avenues for ecological economists

positioning and pricing in a variety seeking market we study competitive positioning and pricing strategies in markets where consumers seek variety variety seeking behavior is modeled as a decrease in the willingness to pay for the product purchased on the previous purchase occasion using a three stage hotelling type model we show that the presence of variety seeking consumers reduces product differentiation offered in equilibrium thereby explaining some otherwise counterintuitive findings in empirical research we find that firms charge higher prices in period 1 and lower prices in period 2 the lower price in period 2 represents the price incentive that firms need to offer to prevent the variety seeking consumers from switching furthermore we find that the observed switching in a market may not fully capture the true magnitude of the underlying variety seeking tendencies among consumers finally we show that the presence of variety seeking consumers leads to lower firm profits and a higher consumer surplus surplus increases for variety seeking consumers as well as regular consumers therefore the presence of variety seeking consumers benefits everyone in the market

the bright side of loss aversion in dynamic and competitive markets a well established phenomenon of consumer buying behavior is that consumers evaluate prices relative to a reference point and exhibit loss aversion i e their propensity to buy is more negatively affected by prices above the reference point than it is positively affected by prices below the reference point the objective of this paper is to analytically examine how the competitive strategy and profitability of firms are affected by the presence of consumer loss aversion in the price dimension although we assume that consumer loss aversion increases consumer propensity to search for lower prices we find that it does not necessarily lead to lower prices or profits when firms compete over multiple periods and when the consumer reference price in subsequent periods is affected by current prices specifically consumer loss aversion could lead to higher prices and profits when consumer valuation is sufficiently high relative to search costs and the proportion of consumers with positive search costs is in an intermediate range we also show that when forward looking firms incorporate the negative effect of price promotions on future profits the equilibrium range of price promotions may actually increase

resistance to mining a review abstract this academic review of more than 200 articles books and reports sheds light to why and how do communities resist mining and how do their forms of resistance change over time the literature reveals that local communities react not only to perceived environmental impacts but also to their lack of representation and participation in decisions concerning their development path lack of monetary compensation and distrust with the mining company and the state several authors explore the objectives and discourses of these movements that range from compensation and market embedded demands to the articulation of post material values and the emergence of socio ecological alternatives cross scalar alliances have emerged as a crucial factor in the formation of discourses and strategies local narratives and alternatives are being combined with global discourses on rights to clean water to take decisions indigenous rights and environmental justice cross scalar alliances have also allowed local groups to increase their knowledge about the projects give them visibility and comprehend and act against their weak position in the global commodity chain these alliances have also contributed to the emergence or consolidation of a diverse set of resistance strategies such as legal court cases activist scientist collaborations and local referendums or consultas at community level to reject mining projects this review also explores the response of the state and the mining companies to these conflicts exploring responses such as regulatory changes or corporate social responsibility programs

ecuador s energy policy mix development versus conservation and nationalism with chinese loans abstract ecuador s energy policy faces a complex variety of political and economic objectives that are difficult to reconcile in a consistent manner ecuador is a small oil producer and exporter with significant renewable mainly hydropower resources hosting some of the richest biodiversity areas in the world part of which are inhabited by so far indigenous un contacted people being a developing country tensions arise between conservation aims and development imperatives as well as between resource nationalism and much needed foreign financing however the really limiting factor for the country s energy development seems to be its constraints in financing the government s development and redistributive policies resorting to chinese loans for oil may be part of the solution in the short term but it does not substitute for a more consistent energy policy ecuador s case illustrates the dilemmas of energy policy in natural resource rich developing countries when confronted with diverging political economy social environmental and macro financial goals

leaving oil underground in ecuador the yasuni itt initiative from a multi criteria perspective abstract the ecuadorian proposal to keep 846 million barrels of crude oil in the yasuni national park underground for the purposes of avoiding co2 emissions and to protect both the biological diversity and the indigenous peoples in isolation who inhabit this area of the amazon is evaluated from a multi criteria analysis the main purpose of the paper is to compare this policy option with other alternatives across different values an analytical framework is used that recognises the inherent complexity of a problem of this nature in which the financial values are indeed relevant for policy but other values are also relevant the economic in a broad sense social environmental cultural and political the results confirm that from a financial standpoint extracting the oil is preferable but by incorporating the non monetary values into the multi criteria decision process one can plausibly defend the yasuni itt initiative as the most desirable policy option indeed the social and environmental benefits or criteria signalling an economic transition towards a model based on renewable sources of energy along with the protection of critical environmental and social capital make up for the financial gap

weak comparability of values as a foundation for ecological economics the main argument of this paper is that weak comparability of values should be seen as one characteristic feature of ecological economics the formal properties of the concepts of strong comparability implying strong or weak commensurability and weak comparability implying incommensurability will be clarified multicriteria evaluation offers the methodological and mathematical tools to operationalize the concept of incommensurability at both macro and micro levels of analysis the concept of incommensurability of values already has a long tradition in economics moreover we will show that analytic philosophy theories of complexity post normal science and the recent theories of rationality lead with different trajectories to a non algorithmic approach which in our view could be implemented by some forms of multicriteria evaluation 1998 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

signaling low margin through assortment oftentimes close competitors carry partially overlapping assortments in seeming contradiction to the principle of maximum differentiation one of the justifications of such practice is that an overlapping assortment with competitive prices on the common products may prevent further consumer search and therefore could be useful even when profits from the overlapping products do not justify the costs of carrying them in this paper we examine the validity of this intuition and show that such strategy may indeed be optimal when consumers are uncertain about prices they might find elsewhere and face shopping costs for discovery of all prices specifically we show that the larger assortment with product overlap may signal a competitive price of the relatively unique product and prevent further consumer search for a lower price on it an implication of this finding is that a consumer may rationally behave as if she likes a larger assortment even if the assortment is enlarged by adding products the consum

differentiation with user generated content this paper studies competition between firms whose products content are generated by their customers users video sharing sites social networks online games etc all rely heavily on user generated content and have been growing significantly in the last decade we model a hotelling style market in which consumers have heterogeneous tastes along a circular city in a first step we consider two ex ante identical firms whose offerings entirely depend on user generated content consumers contribute content to the firm they join and benefit from the content provided by the others their valuation being higher the closer the content contributor is to the content consumer i e there are local network effects in such a setting we show that ex ante identical firms can acquire differentiated market positions that spontaneously emerge from user generated content moreover such differentiation may take interesting patterns wherein a firm simultaneously attracts multiple distinct consumer segments that are isolated from each other greater segregation measured by the number of disjoint segments in each platform reduces consumer valuation for content but interestingly it intensifies firm competition we show that this insight can help us refine the set of possible equilibria in a second step we consider firms that explicitly differentiate their offerings by generating some content on their own we show that user generated content may strengthen or defeat firms intended positioning i e firms attract consumers located opposite to their chosen positions and consumer surplus may be higher in the latter case finally we allow multihoming by consumers and show that the previous equilibrium patterns remain valid but in most equilibria a subset of consumers located between rival firms core clienteles are multihomers more multihoming consumers imply reduced differentiation and higher degree of platform competition we relate these findings to anecdotal evidence and explore their strategic implications for competing firms relying on user generated content this paper was accepted by j miguel villas boas marketing

buen vivir vs development ii the limits of neo extractivism like the entire andean region ecuador has an economic structure that is dependent on primary exports during the last boom in commodity prices the neo extractivist development strategy generated economic growth and simultaneously reduced inequality however this bonanza was not used to advance in economic diversification or for transition towards buen vivir sumak kawsay good living as postulated in the constitution and the national development plans we establish that neo extractivism is not compatible with buen vivir analysing three concrete aspects to this end the failure to fulfill the rights of nature and ecological sustainability the lack of advances in transforming the productive matrix insufficient results in matters of redistributive social policies

vertical differentiation with variety seeking consumers we analyze price and quality competition in a vertically differentiated duopoly in which consumers have a preference for variety the preference for variety is a consequence of diminishing marginal utility for repeated experiences with the same product we find consumer variety seeking can either soften or intensify price competition depending on the difference in firm qualities and the strength of consumer preference for variety when the qualities are similar or the consumer preference for variety is strong prices and profits are higher than would be obtained in the absence of variety seeking on the other hand if qualities differ enough or the preference for variety is weak stronger preferences for variety are associated with more intense price competition and lower profits when firms set their qualities before competing on price and the range of feasible qualities is restricted such that variety seeking softens competition competing firms choose to minimally differentiate themselves from each other the preference for variety can drive the firms to offer multiunit discounts and the greater price flexibility from these discounts does not necessarily reduce profits relative to simple unit pricing this paper was accepted by j miguel villas boas marketing

ecuador s yasuni itt initiative the old and new values of petroleum abstract this article examines the financial mechanism currently known as the yasuni itt initiative by which ecuador would be compensated for not exploiting the reserves of heavy crude lying underneath the yasuni national park a biosphere reserve for humanity located in the amazon region an analysis of the ways in which the proposal is being debated is offered to illustrate the unique problems posed by the incorporation of natural capital in economic decisions a focus on the creative measurements and calculations offered by a range of social actors highlights the relevance of morally framed evaluations in defining the future economic use of the park i show how an anthropological perspective may complement ecological economics and various political and economic approaches to development policy and enrich our understanding of the specific challenges posed by the design of economic instruments for the protection of ecological wealth in latin american countries poor in financial capital but rich in biological diversity

consumer learning brand loyalty and competition in several markets consumers can gain further information regarding how well a product fits their preferences only by experiencing it after purchase this could then generate loyalty for the products tried first this paper considers a model in which consumers learn in the first period about the product they buy and then make choices in the second period about the competing products given what they learned in the first period the paper finds that if the distribution of valuations for each product is negatively positively skewed a firm benefits is hurt in the future from having a greater market share today the brand loyalty characteristic with negative skewness two effects are identified on one hand marginal forward looking consumers are less price sensitive than myopic consumers and this is a force toward higher prices on the other hand forward looking firms realize that they gain in the future from having a higher market share in the current period and compete more aggressively in prices for similar discount factors for consumers and firms the latter effect dominates the paper also characterizes the importance of consumer learning effects on the market outcome

payments for ecosystem services from local to global abstract payment for ecosystem services pes is becoming increasingly popular as a way to manage ecosystems using economic incentives the environmental economics approach to pes tries to force ecosystem services into the market model with an emphasis on efficiency the ecological economics approach in contrast seeks to adapt economic institutions to the physical characteristics of ecosystem services prioritizing ecological sustainability and just distribution and requiring a transdisciplinary approach this paper summarizes the results of a participatory atelier workshop held in costa rica we developed a set of principles the heredia declaration for pes systems and report on evolving initiatives in several countries we discuss how the distinction between ecosystem goods which are stock flow resources and ecosystem services which are fund service resources and the physical characteristics of the fund services affect the appropriate institutional form for pes we conclude that pes systems represent an important way to effectively manage fund service resources as public goods and that this represents a significant departure from conventional market institutions

the environmentalism of the poor revisited territory and place in disconnected glocal struggles abstract in 2002 the year it was published the environmentalism of the poor was one of the first books examining in a multidisciplinary perspective three parallel environmental movements around the world eleven years later we re examine these movements the cult of wilderness the gospel of eco efficiency and the mantra of environmental justice focusing on the increased visibility of struggles representing environmental justice and the environmentalism of the poor even if they are often disconnected from an organizational standpoint glocal manifestations of resistance have emerged since the 1990s today environmental movements assert common values related to place identity and culture activists concepts such as ecological debt environmental justice environmental liabilities land grabbing environmental gentrification corporate accountability climate justice food sovereignty or economic degrowth are the keywords of the networks of the global environmental justice movement at the same time such concepts support the rural and urban movements that remake place for marginalized groups re assert traditional practices and protect territory from contamination land appropriation and real estate speculation some possibilities exist for cooperation between environmental justice and the other varieties of environmentalism here comparative research can help unravel the use of valuation languages different from green economic growth or sustainable development

intellectual mercantilism and franchise equity a critical study of the ecological political economy of international payments for ecosystem services abstract this text addresses the ecological political economy of international payment for ecosystem services ipes taking the united nations collaborative programme on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries redd as a case in point it asks in what ways may ipes schemes impinge upon the political and economic autonomy of local and indigenous peoples in tropical countries it is argued that pes schemes like redd should be assessed not only with respect to questions of distributional equity does everyone have enough pie but also with respect to franchise equity does everyone want pie and that failure to take questions of franchise equity into account in ipes schemes reflects a form or intellectual mercantilism where wealth transfers from new economies to old ones are achieved by redefining existing locally available resources as internationally tradable speculative commodities this proposition is considered through exploration of two illustrative cases the redd social and environmental standards redd ses and the yasuni itt initiative and through normative political theory recommendations building on dryzek and stevenson s discussion of deliberative systems regarding how it might be possible to ensure franchise equity within redd in particular and within global environmental governance more generally

price competition in markets with consumer variety seeking we investigate price competition between firms in markets characterized by consumer variety seeking while previous research has addressed the effect of consumer inertia on prices there exists no research on the effects of variety seeking on price competition our study fills this gap in the literature using a two period duopoly framework as in klemperer s analysis of inertial markets we show that the noncooperative pricing equilibrium in a market with consumer variety seeking may be the same as the collusive outcome in an otherwise identical market without variety seeking specifically our variety seeking model implies tacit collusion between firms in both periods unlike the inertia model of klemperer that implies tacit collusion between firms only in the second period but implies fierce price competition in the first period when consumers are assumed to have rational expectations about future prices the implied first period prices increase further which is consistent with what klemperer finds in an inertial market to summarize while our variety seeking analyses support two key results pertaining to second period prices and rational expectations previously derived for inertial markets by klemperer they depart from one key result pertaining to first period prices