consumption effects of genetic modification what if consumers are right this paper develops a model of differentiated consumers to examine the consumption effects of genetic modification gm under alternative labelling regimes and segregation enforcement scenarios analytical results show that if consumers perceive gm products as being different than their traditional counterparts gm affects consumer welfare and thus consumption decisions when the existence of market imperfections in one or more stages of the supply chain prevents the transmission of cost savings associated with the new technology to consumers gm results in welfare losses for consumers the analysis shows that the relative welfare ranking of the no labelling and mandatory labelling regimes depends on i the level of consumer aversion to gm products ii the size of marketing and segregation costs under mandatory labelling iii the share of the gm product in total production and iv the extent to which gm products are incorrectly labelled as non gm products

inserting gm products into the food chain the market and welfare effects of different labeling and regulatory regimes the purpose of this article is to examine the system wide effects of the introduction of genetically modified gm products with and without labeling and to compare these two regimes to a third regime where gm products are not present either because they have not yet been developed or because they have been banned for each regime the decisions and welfare of consumers producers and life science companies are examined the article explicitly incorporates the consumer response to the introduction of gm technology and considers different market structures of the life science sector

competitive nonlinear tariffs abstract this paper generalizes the study of nonlinear tariffs i e those depending nonlinearly on the quantity purchased to the case of a symmetric oligopoly competitive equilibria and the corresponding tariffs are analyzed in a cournot framework various equilibria are obtained which depend both upon the number of competing suppliers and the choice of market parameters used to characterize the competitors strategies buyers are classified by type each selecting an optimal consumption level in response to the prevailing tariff the phenomena of buyer self selection found in monopoly nonlinear pricing and the scaling of equilibrium demand elasticity found in cournot models both appear in the results

commodity price risk management and fiscal policy in a sovereign default model abstract commodity prices are an important driver of fiscal policy and the business cycle in many developing and emerging market economies we analyze a dynamic stochastic small open economy model of sovereign default featuring endogenous fiscal policy and stochastic commodity revenues the model accounts for a positive correlation of commodity revenues with government expenditures and a negative correlation with tax rates we quantitatively document the extent to which the utilization of different financial hedging instruments by the government contributes to lowering the volatility of different macroeconomic variables and their correlation with commodity revenues an event analysis illustrates how financial hedging instruments moderate fiscal adjustment in response to significant falls in the price of commodities we evaluate the conditional and unconditional welfare gains for the representative household generated by financial derivatives and commodity indexed bonds

reply on comments on a quantity discount pricing model to increase vendor profits professor joglekar is to be thanked for his generally insightful comments 1988 concerning my paper monahan monahan j p 1984 a quantity discount pricing model to increase vendor points management sci 306 june 720 726 he has in my view correctly assessed the limitations of two important production assumptions i made assumptions which need to be rethought in any quantity discount pricing models of the future yet although i find myself in general agreement with joglekar s comments i wish to clarify some points concerning the model and its potential applicability

implicit understandings in channels of distribution formal agreements can be used to achieve coordination among channel members these agreements work by exerting explicit control over the members who make the agreements however implicit understandings can be used as a partial substitute for more formal agreements in this paper we show that implicit understandings can develop as channel members learn about each other s behavior we show that this learning leads to the use of the implicit influence each channel member has over the other s behavior the learning leading to an implicit understanding requires some form of experimentation or historical observation this learning results in an oscillating retail price when only one channel member learns the other s behavior both channel members obtain greater profits than when neither member learns and both channel members obtain less profits than when both members learn however the member who does not learn obtains more profits than the member who learns we also show that implicit understandings r

capacity allocation ordering and pricing decisions in a supply chain with demand and supply uncertainties abstract this paper studies coordinated decisions in a decentralized supply chain that consists of one original equipment manufacturer oem one manufacturer and one distributor and possesses uncertainties at both demand and supply sides these uncertainties emerge respectively from random demand the distributor faces and randomness of capacity with which the oem processes the manufacturer s outsourced quantity sharing supply and demand uncertainty information along the supply chain enables us to develop three models with different coordination efforts the oem and manufacturer coordination the manufacturer and distributor coordination and the oem manufacturer and distributor coordination and quantify the coordinated decisions in these three models our analysis of these coordination models suggests that coordinating with the oem improves the manufacturer s probability of meeting downstream demand and his expected profit yet coordinating with the manufacturer is not necessarily beneficial to the oem when downstream coordination is lacking

global effects of fiscal stimulus during the crisis abstract the imf s global integrated monetary and fiscal model is used to compute short run multipliers of fiscal stimulus measures and long run crowding out effects of higher debt multipliers of two year stimulus range from 0 2 to 2 2 depending on the fiscal instrument the extent of monetary accommodation and the presence of a financial accelerator mechanism a permanent 10 percentage point increase in the us debt to gdp ratio raises the us tax burden and world real interest rates in the long run thereby reducing us and rest of the world output by 0 3 0 6 percent and 0 2 0 3 percent respectively

designing supply contracts contract type and information asymmetry this paper studies the value to a supplier of obtaining better information about a buyer s cost structure and of being able to offer more general contracts we use the bilateral monopoly setting to analyze six scenarios three increasingly general contracts wholesale pricing schemes two part linear schemes and twopart nonlinear schemes each under full and incomplete information about the buyer s cost structure we allow both sides to refuse to trade by explicitly including reservation profit levels for both for the supplier this is implemented through a cutoff policy we derive the supplier s optimal contracts and profits for all six scenarios and examine the value of information and of more general contracts our key findings are as follows first the value of information is higher under two part contracts second the value of offering two part contracts is higher under full information and third the proportion of buyers the supplier will choose to exclude can be substantial

a generalized quantity discount pricing model to increase supplier s profits in this paper the joint problem of ordering and offering price discount by a supplier to his sole major buyer is analyzed the objective is to induce the buyer to alter his order schedule and size so that the supplier can benefit from lower set up ordering and inventory holding costs we generalize the quantity discount pricing model of monahan monahan j p 1984 a quantity discount pricing model to increase vendor profits management sci 30 6 720 726 to 1 explicitly incorporate constraints imposed on the amount of discount that can be offered and 2 relax the implicit assumption of a lot for lot or order for order policy adopted by the supplier an algorithm is developed to solve the supplier s joint ordering and price discount problem

commissions and sales targets under competition we consider a game between two capacity providers that compete for customers through a broker who earns commissions on sales and sells to both loyal and nonloyal customers the providers compete by selecting commission margins and sales targets above which the margins on total sales increase we study the contract form in equilibrium and the effect that sales targets have on the profit split between the providers and the broker we show that in equilibrium contracts require positive sales targets that can be best described as a mechanism for the larger provider to profit at the expense of the smaller provider the effect of sales targets is different when commission margins are exogenous and the providers compete by setting targets in this case it is the low margin provider who benefits from sales targets at the expense of the broker who in this context resists the imposition of targets this paper was accepted by yossi aviv operations management

consumer acceptance valuation of and attitudes towards genetically modified food review and implications for food policy abstract an increasing set of evidence has been reported on how consumers could potentially react to the introduction of genetically modified food studies typically contain some empirical evidence and some theoretical explanations of the data however to date limited effort has been posed on systematically reviewing the existing evidence and its implications for policy this paper contributes to the literature by bringing together the published evidence on the behavioural frameworks and evidence on the process leading to the public acceptance of genetically modified gm food and organisms gmos in doing so we employ a set of clearly defined search tools and a limited number of comprehensive key words the study attempts to gather an understanding of the published findings on the determinants of the valuation of gm food both in terms of willingness to accept and the willing to pay a premium for non gm food trust with information sources on the safety and public health and ultimate attitudes underpinning such evidence furthermore in the light of such evidence we formulate some policy strategies to deal with public uncertainly regarding to gmos and especially gm food

managing channel profits a channel of distribution consists of different channel members each having his own decision variables however each channel member s decisions do affect the other channel members profits and as a consequence actions a lack of coordination of these decisions can lead to undesirable consequences for example in the simple manufacturer retailer consumer channel uncoordinated and independent channel members decisions over margins result in a higher price paid by the consumer than if those decisions were coordinated in addition the ensuing suboptimal volume leads to lower profits for both the manufacturer and the retailer this paper explores the problems inherent in channel coordination we address the following questions what is the effect of channel coordination what causes a lack of coordination in the channel how difficult is it to achieve channel coordination what mechanisms exist which can achieve channel coordination what are the strengths and weaknesses of these mechanism what is the role of nonprice variables e g manufacturer advertising retailer shelf space in coordination does the lack of coordination affect normative implications from in store experimentation can quantity discounts be a coordination mechanism are some marketing practices actually disguised quantity discounts we review the literature and present a simple formulation illustrating the roots of the coordination problem we then derive the form of the quantity discount schedule that results in optimum channel profits this article was originally published in marketing science volume 2 issue 3 pages 239 272 in 1983

consumer welfare and gm food labeling a simulation using an adjusted kumaraswamy distribution genetically modified gm food products and their labeling have become a major policy issue with impassioned public debates we explore the impact of different labeling regimes on consumer attitudes towards gm products and consumer welfare our experimental results illustrate that these consumer attitudes do not follow the uniform distribution as has often been assumed in the literature but instead fit an adjusted kumaraswamy distribution if a uniform distribution is assumed the advantage of mandatory labeling would be exaggerated using an adjusted kumaraswamy distribution our simulation results demonstrate that voluntary labeling is superior to mandatory labeling with the higher separation cost while mandatory labeling is not necessarily better with lower separation cost therefore the governments of china and other countries with similar consumer characteristics should consider voluntary labeling for gm food while encouraging innovations that reduce the price of gm food as well as controlling the opportunistic behavior of its producers so as to enhance the advantage of voluntary labeling

integrated pricing and lot sizing decision in a two echelon supply chain with a finite production rate abstract in this paper we consider a supply chain consisting of a supplier and a retailer selling the product manufactured by the supplier in a market in which the demand for the product is decreasing in the price set by the retailer previous research on coordinating the supply chain with price sensitive demand often assumes that either the supplier purchases the product or the supplier has an infinitely large production rate we consider explicitly the supplier s finite production rate in the pricing and lot sizing decision which causes the problem much more challenging we first investigate the optimization problem in the decentralized scenario to find the optimal order quantity and selling price for the retailer as well as the optimal wholesale price and lot size multiplier for the supplier we then solve the joint optimization problem in the centralized supply chain to find the optimal order quantity the selling price and the optimal lot size multiplier we provide two sequential algorithms to solve the joint optimization problem computational experiments show that the algorithms are effective all 448 tested problems are solved optimally and efficient it only takes a few iterations to converge for each tested problem the supply chain coordination mechanism is then designed through an all unit quantity discount policy and a franchise fee

demand for beef from cattle administered growth hormones or fed genetically modified corn a comparison of consumers in france germany the united kingdom and the united states we compare consumer valuations of beef ribeye steaks from cattle produced without growth hormones or genetically modified corn in france germany the united kingdom and the united states results suggest that french consumers place a higher value on beef from cattle that have not been administered added growth hormones than u s consumers however valuations of non hormone treated beef are statistically indistinguishable across germany the united kingdom and the united states results also suggest that european consumers place a much higher value on beef from cattle that have not been fed genetically modified corn than u s consumers copyright 2003 oxford university press

effects and value of verifiable information in a controversial market evidence from lab auctions of genetically modified food food products containing genetically modified gm ingredients have entered the market over the past decade the biotech industry and environmental groups have disseminated conflicting private information about gm foods this paper develops a unique methodology for valuing independent third party information in such a setting and applies this method to consumers willingness to pay for food products that might be gm data are collected from real consumers in an auction market setting with randomized information and labeling treatments the average value of third party information per lab participant is small but the public good value across u s consumers is shown to be quite large jel c91 d12 d82

who do consumers trust for information the case of genetically modified foods to be effective groups that disseminate information need the trust of consumers when multiple groups provide conflicting information on a new product or process like gm foods consumers place different levels of trust in the various sources we present a model of the contributions of personal and social capital of a consumer and test a multinominal logit model of relative trust in five different sources of information on genetic modification using a unique data set among our findings is that an increase in consumer s education lowers the probability of trusting information from government private industry organizations consumer and environmental groups or other sources relative to information from an independent third party source and conservative religious affiliation reduces the odds of a consumer trusting private industry organization and increases the odds of trusting nobody relative to an independent third party source

regulatory actions under adjustment costs and the resolution of scientific uncertainty food system regulators often decide whether to ban existing practices or approve new technologies without conclusive scientific evidence on possible damage and knowing that resolution is likely in the future in a model with three decision points and stochastic resolution of uncertainty we study interactions between expected losses due to regulation and information availability when a regulator is deciding on an early reversible ban and on a later reversible ban adjustment costs create inertia concerning intermediate signals such that earlier decisions are not overturned and also a bias against imposing an early ban the prospect of more later stage information can increase or decrease the incentive to ban early but research decreases the incentive to ban early

an approach for developing an optimal discount pricing policy this paper addresses the problem of why and how a seller should develop a discount pricing structure even if such a pricing structure does not alter ultimate demand the situation modeled is most appropriate where the seller s product does not represent a major component of the buyer s final product where the demand for the product is derived or where the price is only one of many factors considered in making a purchase decision a model of buyer reaction to any given pricing scheme is developed to show that there exists a unified pricing policy which motivates the buyer to increase its ordering quantity per order thereby reducing the joint buyer and seller ordering and holding costs as a result the seller is able to reduce its costs while leaving the buyer no worse off and often better off the model is extended to handle variable ordering and shipping costs and situations where the seller faces numerous groups of buyers each having different ordering policies finally a case study is presented explicitly showing how the proposed pricing policy can be applied to the situation of a large seller selling to a number of different buyer groups

note comments on a quantity discount pricing model to increase vendor profits monahan monahan j p 1984 a quantity discount pricing model to increase vendor profits management sci june 720 726 adapted the quantity discount model of inventory theory to the problem of determining an optimal quantity discount schedule from a vendor s point of view and opened up an important direction of research however his one item one customer one vendor model is based on several implicit assumptions that must be judged unreasonable monahan must account for the vendor s inventory carrying charges and redefine his variable s2 it is shown that a rational vendor s manufacturing frequency would not be identical to the buyer s ordering frequency if the vendor s manufacturing setup costs are substantially larger than the buyer s ordering costs a numerical example presented in this note also questions the practical usefulness of monahan s model even after its theoretical inaccuracies axe corrected monahan s model may explain discounts that are a fraction of 1 of the price of an item but it fails to explain commonly observed magnitudes of quantity discounts such as 10 of the unit price

reassessing discretionary fiscal policy in 1992 president bush proposed legislation intended to speed up the recovery from the 1990 91 recession congress rejected this proposal for countercyclical fiscal policy stimulus in early 1993 president clinton proposed his own stimulus package but congress rejected this proposal too many reasons were given for deciding against these two discretionary fiscal policy proposals but perhaps the most common one was the large federal budget deficit in the early 1990s with the rapid disappearance of budget deficits in recent years this reason to vote against a discretionary fiscal stimulus is unlikely to be mentioned in the next economic cycle discretionary countercyclical fiscal policy again appears to be a politically feasible option but should america use it after so many years of disuse much has happened in macroeconomics since the 1960s and 1970s when discretionary countercyclical fiscal policy was last considered a serious option in the united states first monetary policy making has changed substantially over the last two decades the federal reserve s interest rate decisions have become more explicit more systematic and more reactive to changes in both inflation and output the fed has placed a greater emphasis on keeping inflation low the experience with this new policy has been very favorable inflation has been low since the early 1980s and the real economy has been more stable the 1980s and 1990s saw two lengthy expansions separated by a relatively short and mild recession in terms of the tradeoff between output variability and inflation

marketing production decisions in an industrial channel of distribution this paper presents a model that considers the interface between marketing and production decisions in a channel of distribution of industrial goods comprised of a manufacturer and a distributor the key issue investigated is the nature of the coordination within the channel in light of an unstable pattern of seasonal demand the investigation which focuses on dynamic issues considers production activities such as product delivery and inventory policy and their link to marketing strategies such as pricing policies the focus here is on the dynamic nature of the coordinational aspects of the various policies for example the following questions are addressed what is the distributor s pricing strategy throughout the season what is the nature of the contractual price in the channel under what conditions should the distributor carry no inventory throughout the seasonal period under what conditions should the manufacturer carry no inventory what is the impact of the seasonal parameters and differing h

pleasures of cockaigne quality gaps market structure and the amount of grading the article explores under what circumstances high quality producers would not voluntarily submit to grading when low quality firms would readily do so and under what conditions high quality firms would have a lesser proportion of their output graded than would their low quality counterparts it also investigates how market structure affects the decison to grade establishing that a competitive industry carries out the optimal amount of grading when some firms have finite market shares the industry engages in excessive grading

optimal fiscal and monetary policy in an economy without capital abstract this paper is concerned with the structure and time consistency of optimal fiscal and monetary policy in an economy without capital in a dynamic context optimal taxation means distributing tax distortions over time in a welfare maximizing way for a barter economy our main finding is that with debt commitments of sufficiently rich maturity structure an optimal policy if one exists is time consistent in a monetary economy the idea of optimal taxation must be broadened to include an inflation tax and we find that time consistency does not carry over an optimal inflation tax requires commitment by rules in a sense that has no counterpart in the dynamic theory of ordinary excise taxes the reason time consistency fails in a monetary economy is that nominal assets should from a welfare maximizing point of view always be taxed away via an immediate inflation in a kind of capital levy this emerges as a new possibility when money is introduced into an economy without capital

optimal simple and implementable monetary and fiscal rules welfare maximizing monetary and fiscal policy rules are studied in a model with sticky prices money and distortionary taxation the ramsey optimal policy is used as a point of comparison the main findings are the size of the inflation coefficient in the interest rate rule plays a minor role for welfare it matters only insofar as it affects the determinacy of equilibrium optimal monetary policy features a muted response to output interest rate rules that feature a positive response to output can lead to significant welfare losses the welfare gains from interest rate smoothing are negligible optimal fiscal policy is passive the optimal monetary and fiscal rule combination attains virtually the same level of welfare as the ramsey optimal policy

modeling quantity discounts under general price sensitive demand functions optimal policies and relationships this paper presents models for determining optimal all unit and incremental quantity discount policies and investigates the effect of quantity discounts on increasing demand and ensuring pareto efficient transactions under general price sensitive demand functions the paper develops optimal quantity discount policies investigates their interrelationships and their benefits to both the supplier and the buyer and gains managerial insights for the scenarios of maximizing the supplier s profit and the joint profit we develop simple and efficient solution approaches for determining the all unit and the incremental optimal decision policies for general price sensitive demand functions we have three main findings first with price sensitive demand there are two incentives in offering quantity discounts increasing demand and ensuring pareto efficient transactions in most cases increasing demand dominates in justifying the offering of quantity discounts second using a single lot size associated with all efficient transactions as with the constant demand case does not hold with the price sensitive demand case third the optimal all unit quantity discount policy is equivalent to the optimal incremental quantity discount policy in benefiting both the supplier and the buyer

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

consumer benefits of labels and bans on gm foods choice experiments with swedish consumers the european union has been relatively cautious about using biotechnology in food production a label regime combined with the right of individual member states to ban introduction of new genetically modified gm strains means that gm food products in effect are banned in many countries we show how it is possible to empirically test whether a ban can be motivated by reference to potential negative externalities this is followed up by results from a choice experiment we cannot reject the hypothesis of equal wtp for a ban and a labeling scheme

group buying on the web a comparison of price discovery mechanisms web based group buying mechanisms are being widely used for both business to business b2b and business to consumer b2c transactions we survey currently operational online group buying markets and then study this phenomenon using analytical models we build on the literatures in information economics and operations management in our analytical model of a monopolist offering web based group buying under different kinds of demand uncertainty we derive the monopolist s optimal group buying schedule under varying conditions of heterogeneity in the demand regimes and compare its profits with those that obtain under the more conventional posted price mechanism we further study the impact ofproduction postponement by endogenizing the timing of the pricing and production decisions in a two stage game between the monopolist and buyers our results have implications for firms choice of price discovery mechanisms in e markets and for the scheduling of production and pricing decisions in the presence and absence of scale economies of production

quantity discounts managerial issues and research opportunities marketing managers frequently administer pricing policies involving substantial quantity discounts however our understanding of the precise role of these discounts and their design is quite limited this paper reviews and integrates the economics and marketing literature and presents a detailed analysis of the policies of four firms in order to i specify the variety of motivations for quantity discounts ii provide guidelines to managers in designing quantity discount schedules and iii set out the most fruitful directions for future research

tax smoothing in frictional labor markets we re examine the optimality of tax smoothing from the point of view of frictional labor markets our central result is that whether or not this cornerstone optimal scal policy pre

an industry equilibrium analysis of downstream vertical integration this paper investigates the effect of product substitutability on nash equilibrium distribution structures in a duopoly where each manufacturer distributes its goods through a single exclusive retailer which may be either a franchised outlet or a factory store static linear demand and cost functions are assumed and a number of rules about players expectations of competitors behavior are examined it is found that for most specifications product substitutability does influence the equilibrium distribution structure for low degrees of substitutability each manufacturer will distribute its product through a company store for more highly competitive goods manufacturers will be more likely to use a decentralized distribution system this article was originally published in marketing science volume 2 issue 2 pages 161 191 in 1983

conditions of reverse bullwhip effect in pricing under joint decision of replenishment and pricing abstract a reverse bullwhip effect in pricing rbp occurs when an amplification of price variability takes place moving from the upstream suppliers to the downstream customers in a supply chain in this study we investigate rbp conditions for supply chains where joint replenishment and pricing decisions are made commencing with a single stage supply chain in which a retailer faces a random and price sensitive demand we extend the results to a multi stage supply chain using a leader follower game theoretical framework we discuss rbp conditions for supply chains where newsvendor and continuous review inventory policies are employed and present numerical examples for commonly used demand functions

monetary and fiscal policy interactions in a micro founded model of a monetary union abstract this paper analyzes in detail the mechanisms behind fiscal stabilization policy and the role of policy commitment in a micro founded new keynesian model of a two country monetary union which is hit by supply shocks we also explore the determinants of the gains from fiscal stabilization while monetary policy with identical union members is concerned with stabilizing the union wide economy fiscal policy aims at stabilizing inflation differences and the terms of trade besides exploring optimal policies we also consider monetary and fiscal rules we study these rules both under coordination and non coordination by the fiscal authorities

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

optimal monetary and fiscal policy in a currency union we lay out a tractable model for the analysis of optimal monetary and fiscal policy in a currency union the monetary authority sets a common interest rate for the union whereas fiscal policy is implemented at the country level through the choice of government spending in the presence of country specific shocks and nominal rigidities the policy mix that is optimal from the viewpoint of the union as a whole requires that inflation be stabilized at the union level by the common central bank whereas fiscal policy has a country specific stabilization role one beyond the efficient provision of public goods

limited asset markets participation monetary policy and inverted aggregate demand logic abstract this paper incorporates limited asset markets participation in dynamic general equilibrium and develops a simple analytical framework for monetary policy analysis aggregate dynamics and stability properties of an otherwise standard business cycle model depend nonlinearly on the degree of asset market participation while moderate participation rates strengthen the role of monetary policy low enough participation causes an inversion of results dictated by conventional wisdom the slope of the is curve changes sign the taylor principle is inverted optimal welfare maximizing discretionary monetary policy requires a passive policy rule and the effects and propagation of shocks are changed however a targeting rule implementing optimal policy under commitment delivers equilibrium determinacy regardless of the degree of asset market participation our results may justify fed s behavior during the great inflation period

a preliminary comparison of the retail level effects of genetically modified food labelling policies in canada and france abstract most developed countries have adopted labelling policies for genetically modified gm food in april 2004 canada implemented a voluntary labelling policy for gm and non gm food while france adopted the european union s new extended mandatory labelling of gm food i present the result of a qualitative survey of gm and non gm food labels in supermarkets in canada and france five months after the introduction of the new policies i find that there are almost no gm labelled products in france and non gm labelled products in canada each policy tends to crowd out the targeted label attribute however canadian consumers can choose between gm and non gm organic products whereas there are only non gm products in french supermarkets recent political developments in quebec suggest that the labelling landscape may change in canada either with an increase in the number of non gm products at the retail level or a transition towards a mandatory labelling policy like in france

joint pricing and inventory policies for make to stock products with deterministic price sensitive demand abstract in this paper we focus on a firm selling a single make to stock product to price sensitive end customers we develop an integrated operations marketing model that can help determine the relevant profit maximizing decision variable values for two pricing policies that the firm might follow price as a decision variable which is advocated by academicians and mark up pricing used by most practitioners we first consider an eoq based model with price and order quantity as independent decision variables we then develop an analogous model where price is a mark up over operating costs per unit and order quantity becomes the sole decision variable we are able to ascertain the optimal decision variable values for each model for log linear and linear demand functions we prove that for such profit maximizing models the optimal batch size is not necessarily monotone increasing in set up cost interestingly our numerical analytical evidence suggests that from a profit perspective it is better for managers to be aggressive on price rather than reducing price too much especially for highly price sensitive and non linear demand moreover we establish that in general the profit penalty for not including inventory costs in determining the optimal batch size or ignoring the batch size optimization issue in a mark up price model is not significant only when the set up cost is quite high and or the firm faces non linear demand from highly price sensitive end consumers does it become crucial for managers to determine the exact optimal batch size and base the mark up price on the entire unit operating cost not only the unit variable production cost

a cooperative game theory model of quantity discounts quantity discounts offered by a monopolist are considered in the context of a bargaining problem in which the buyer and the seller negotiate over the order quantity and the average unit price all units and incremental quantity discounts that permit transaction at a negotiated outcome are described the effects of risk sensitivity and bargaining power on quantity discounts are discussed for alternative bargaining models

optimal price setting and inflation inertia in a rational expectations model abstract this paper presents and estimates a new keynesian monetary model for the us economy it proposes possible solutions to two problems in this model class the lack of inflation inertia and persistence in versions of these models that insist on rigorous microfoundations and rational expectations and the small contribution of technology shocks to business cycles price setting takes the form of optimal two part pricing policies formulated under conditions of upward sloping firm specific marginal cost curves furthermore this form of price setting applies not only to prices and wages but also to user costs of capital in this setting past inflation becomes a key determinant of current inflation even though price setting is entirely forward looking technology is modeled as a random walk with technology growth shocks that follow a highly persistent process the model is estimated by bayesian methods and performs significantly better than a bayesian var it generates inertial and persistent inflation and technology shocks account for a large share of business cycle variation

monetary rules for small open emerging economies abstract this paper develops a variant of the imf s global economic model suitable to analyze macroeconomic dynamics in open economies and uses it to assess the effectiveness of taylor rules and inflation forecast based ifb rules in stabilizing variability in output and inflation our findings suggest that a simple ifb rule that does not rely upon any direct estimates of the equilibrium real interest rate and places a relatively high weight on the inflation forecast may perform better in small open economies than conventional taylor rules

consumer welfare effects of introducing and labeling genetically modified food abstract non hypothetical valuations obtained from experimental auctions in three united states and two european locations were used to calculate welfare effects of introducing and labeling of genetically modified food under certain assumptions we find that introduction of genetically modified food has been welfare enhancing on average for united states consumers but not so for europeans and while mandatory labeling has been beneficial for european consumers such a policy would be detrimental in the united states

price markdown scheme in a multi echelon supply chain in a high tech industry this paper studies the price markdown scheme in a supply chain that consists of a supplier a contract manufacturer cm and a buyer retailer the buyer subcontracts the production of the final product to the cm the cm buys the components from the supplier and charges the buyer a service fee for the final product produced the price markdown is made possible by the supplier with the development of new manufacturing technologies that reduce the production cost for the sourced component consequently the buyer adjusts the retail price in order to possibly stimulate stronger demand that may benefit both the supplier and the buyer under this scenario we identify the optimal discount pricing strategies capacity reservation and the stocking policies for the supplier and the buyer we also investigate the optimal inventory decision for the cm to cope with the price discount by considering both demand and delivery uncertainties our results suggest that higher production cost accelerates the effects of higher price sensitivity on lowering the optimal capacity and stocking policies in the supply chain the effect of mean demand error on the optimal prices is relatively marginal compared with that from price sensitivity we also found that increasing the standard deviation of the random demand does not necessarily increase the stocking level as one would predict the results show that delivery uncertainty plays an important role in the inventory carried beyond the price break we discuss potential extensions for future research

a game theory approach in seller buyer supply chain in this paper several seller buyer supply chain models are proposed which incorporate both cost factors as well as elements of competition and cooperation between seller and buyer we assume that unit marketing expenditure and unit price charged by the buyer influence the demand of the product being sold the relationships between seller and buyer will be modeled by non cooperative and cooperative games respectively the non cooperative game is based on the stackelberg strategy solution concept where we consider separately the case when the seller is the leader seller stackelberg and also when the buyer is the leader buyer stackelberg pareto efficient solutions will be provided for the cooperative game model numerical examples presented in this paper including sensitivity analysis of some key parameters will compare the results between different models considered

reply to managing channel profits comment we welcome moorthy s comment moorthy k s 1987 managing channel profits comment marketing sci 6 fall 375 379 it provides an opportunity to clarify several issues raised in our 1983 paper that paper was motivated by one concern channel coordination we believed that channel members benefit from coordination and that many institutional arrangements such as quantity discounts are actually coordinating mechanisms we developed a simple model to demonstrate our belief for historical accuracy mcguire and staelin cited by moorthy had already independently developed a useful model of duopolistic channel competition being unaware of their working paper our model not surprisingly differed from theirs both papers provide important but different insights into channel management

analysis of supply chains with quantity based fixed incentives abstract this paper examines the use of quantity based fixed incentives to coordinate inventory decisions in a decentralized supply chain we consider a two stage supply chain of autonomous supplier and distributor and prove that the optimal ordering policy for the newsvendor distributor under fixed incentives is an s s type policy we further show that external and internal quantity based incentives can restore channel coordination in single period and channel members can benefit through arbitrary splitting of the resulting additional chain profit the single period results are extended to multiple periods and the impact of fixed incentives on the distributor s optimal stocking policy and channel efficiency are examined under three different multi period supplier strategies numerical examples are used to compare the multi period strategies and to provide additional managerial insights the results show that contrary to common belief incentive plans developed and maintained based only on current inventory data perform poorly in long term and that such incentive plans must be periodically updated to enhance their efficiency furthermore we show that high level of incentives designed to push too much inventory downstream of the supply chain can actually reduce the chain s efficiency

do voluntary biotechnology labels matter to the consumer evidence from the fluid milk market this article examines the effects on the demand of voluntary labeling for the use of genetically modified growth hormone for retail fluid milk using supermarket scanner data retail fluid milk tracks one of the first biotechnology products approved is fairly standardized and ubiquitous and allows for cross sectional differentiation between labeled and unlabeled products and between conventional and organic brands the results indicate that voluntary labeling increases the demand for recombinant bovine growth hormone free milk in addition the estimated effects of labeling appear to have increased over time innovations through biotechnology enable agricultural producers to reduce production costs and or enhance product quality for many livestock and crop commodities at the same time however these innovations may affect the demand for the products that utilize those commodities many individuals for example are concerned about potential risks to human health although by no means all consumers have such concerns burton metcalfe and smith heiman just and zilberman the use of the recombinant bovine growth hormone rbgh in milk production has been a particular concern for some consumers as approximately one third of the united states dairy herd about 3 million dairy cows currently receive rbgh supplements monsanto product labeling particularly with respect to the provision of health and environmental information is increasingly being used to provide information about product characteristics such as biotechnology content that

simple fiscal policy rules for small open economies abstract this paper analyzes the scope for rules based countercyclical fiscal policy in small open economies where a subset of households is liquidity constrained relative to balanced budget rules structural surplus rules significantly improve welfare but they minimize fiscal instrument volatility rather than business cycle volatility more aggressively countercyclical tax revenue gap rules strong automatic stabilizers increase welfare gains by around 50 with only modest increases in fiscal instrument volatility if liquidity constrained households labor income is independent of raw materials prices the government should save excess raw materials revenue on their behalf the best fiscal instruments are transfers consumption and labor taxes

channel coordination using product returns for a supply chain with stochastic salvage capacity abstract we examine returns policy in a newsboy framework unlike the prior literature however we assume that both supplier and retailer have limited and stochastic salvage capacities we first analyze the case of integrated supply chain in which the agents decisions are fully coordinated for the joint profits the result prescribes a partial returns policy in which the retailer returns a part of the leftovers to the supplier and liquidates the remainder through its clearance sale in a decentralized system the supplier should motivate the retailer to duplicate the outcome of the integrated system in choosing order and returns quantities we propose three coordination contracts of which each uses two benefit transfer schemes as an incentive to the retailer instead of using a single benefit scheme as in the prior literature all three effectively coordinate the supply chain the supplier as a stakelberg leader chooses the most profitable one since each contract yields the different shares of the agents profits

what labelling policy for consumer choice the case of genetically modified food in canada and europe faced with divergent opinions among consumers on the use of genetically modified gm foods canada has adopted a voluntary labelling approach for non gm foods whereas the european union has a mandatory labelling policy for gm foods interestingly both labelling systems have resulted in very little if any additional consumer choice using an analytical model we show that the coexistence of gm and non gm products at the retail level depends on the labelling policy consumer perceptions and the type of product although voluntary labelling tends to favour the use of gm products it is more likely to provide consumer choice confrontes a des opinions publiques divergentes sur l usage des aliments genetiquement modifies gm le canada a adopte une politique d etiquetage volontaire pour les aliments non gm alors que l union europeenne a mis en place une politique d etiquetage obligatoire des aliments gm curieusement ces deux systemes d etiquetage n ont pas reellement permis de faciliter le choix des consommateurs a l aide d un modele analytique nous demontrons que la coexistence des produits gm et non gm au niveau du commerce de detail depend de la politique d etiquetage de la perception des consommateurs et du type de produit bien que l etiquetage volontaire ait tendance a favoriser l usage des produits gm cette approche est plus a meme de faciliter le choix du consommateur que l etiquetage obligatoire

green markets eco certification and equilibrium fraud abstract consumers voluntarily pay significant price premiums to acquire unobservable environmental attributes in green markets this paper considers the performance of eco certification policy under circumstances where consumers cannot discern environmental attributes in goods but are able to form rational expectations regarding the extent of illicit activities in the green market the main results are i fraud is less prevalent in green markets when entry barriers limit the number of firms ii conventional environmental policies on polluting techniques increase the incidence of fraud and can even preclude the use of non polluting techniques which would otherwise emerge in green markets iii voluntary eco certification policies can decrease fraud increase output and raise profits per firm and iv in cases where the socially optimal resource allocation can be supported the optimal policy involves negative unit certification fees positive fixed certification fees and is revenue generating for the certifying agent

consumer willingness to pay for genetically modified food in kenya genetically modified gm crops are popular in many regions of the world but their deployment in africa is hindered by safety concerns and regulatory issues although the continent is in dire need of boosting its food production although consumers acceptance of gm food has been analyzed in many continents no such studies have been conducted in africa therefore a survey of 604 consumers was conducted in nairobi kenya in 2003 to gauge consumers awareness of gm crops their willingness to pay wtp for gm food and the factors that influence their wtp consumers knowledge of gm crops was limited and only 38 of the 604 respondents were aware of gm crops people in higher education and income groups were more aware than others regardless people were generally appreciative of the technology and a large majority 68 would be willing to buy gm maize meal at the same price as their favorite brand consumers were however concerned about possible side effects especially on the environment and biodiversity wtp was estimated using a double bounded dichotomous choice model and the mean wtp was found to be 13 8 higher than the average price of non gm maize meal perceptions of health risk and ethical and equity concerns had a negative influence on the likelihood of purchasing gm maize meal whereas trust in government to ensure food quality had a positive influence on wtp people with at least some secondary education and those in the high income category were more likely to purchase gm maize meal at the same price the study concludes that because awareness is still low appropriate communications are needed to involve the consumer in the debate consumers acceptance in this study was high but the research needs to be expanded to rural areas where most consumers live and other survey methods need to be explored

channel coordination and quantity discounts this paper presents a model for analyzing the impact of joint decision policies on channel coordination in a system consisting of a supplier and a group of homogeneous buyers the joint decision policy characterized by the unit selling price and the order quantity is coordinated through quantity discounts and franchise fees both the annual demand rate and the operating cost including the purchase ordering and inventory holding costs depend on the joint decision policy employed this paper contributes by integrating work addressing quantity discounts on inventory and ordering policies and work focusing on the control mechanism provided by quantity discounts in channel coordination it is shown that the optimal all unit quantity discount policy is equivalent to the optimal incremental quantity discount policy in achieving channel coordination furthermore it is shown that quantity discounts alone are not sufficient to guarantee joint profit maximization the analyses of the general models are illustrated by specific analytical results obtained for a given demand function