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

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

sps and tbt agreements and international agricultural trade retaliation or cooperation in this article we investigate whether the brazilian notifications to the tbt and sps agreements are characterized as retaliation or as cooperation in international agricultural trade in the period 1996 2008 a generalized method of moments gmm model is used to estimate game models of bilateral trade between brazil and its major partners united states european union and japan from the viewpoint of strategic games the results suggest that the brazilian notifications are forms of retaliation against the united states and regarding the european union the best result for brazil was conciliation on the other hand if the results are interpreted as equilibria of bargaining games they suggest that brazil has great bargaining power in trade with the united states and that cooperation characterized agricultural trade between brazil and the european union in the period analyzed in the case of agricultural trade between brazil and japan only japan has characteristics of a country with significant bargaining power

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

a multi objective supplier selection model under stochastic demand conditions abstract supplier selection is a typical multi criteria decision problem attracting great attention recently cost quality delivery and flexibility are generally involved in the supplier selection decision making in this paper a measurement of supplier flexibility is extended to consider demand quantity and timing uncertainties comprehensively a multi objective supplier selection model is developed under stochastic demand conditions stochastic supplier selection is determined with simultaneous consideration of the total cost the quality rejection rate the late delivery rate and the flexibility rate involving constraints of demand satisfaction and capacity using a problem specific genetic algorithm computational results are presented

import penetration and the politics of trade protection abstract in this paper we reconsider a key empirical prediction generated by an important class of political economy models of trade policy namely that trade protection should be higher in sectors characterized by lower import penetration we call this the standard prediction the existing empirical evidence offers little support for this prediction in this paper we argue that the standard prediction depends critically on the assumptions that trade taxes are the only policy instruments and that the government has access to non distortionary taxation we analyze a model in which the government can use quotas and vers in addition to trade taxes and raising public funds may be costly under a simple sufficient condition our model predicts that the protection level increases with import penetration both in sectors that are protected with tariffs and in sectors that are protected with quantitative restrictions

is protection for sale evidence on the grossman helpman theory of endogenous protection grossman and helpman 1994 present a theory of endogenous protection by explicitly modeling government industry interactions for which mere black box models previously existed they obtain a ramsey pricing type solution to the provision of protection which emphasizes the role of inverse import penetration ratios and import elasticities on the lobbying side the model makes predictions about lobbying competition and lobbying spending according to deadweight costs from protection the model not only makes for richer theory in terms of rigor and elegance but its predictions are directly testable whether the grossman helman model stands up to real world data is investigated in this paper predictions from both the protection side and lobbying side are tested using cross sectional u s nontariff barrier data we also compare the second generation grossman helpman model with a more traditional specification our results call for serious consideration of this model in the political economy literature

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

the political economy of international factor mobility we model the endogenous determination of policy towards international factor mobility in a common agency setting domestic interest groups bid for protection from the government and the incumbent politicians maximize a welfare function that depends both on domestic voters welfare and contributions collected we characterize equilibrium policies in the price space and show how the degree of complementarity among inputs determines the outcome we establish a similar result for quotas allowing for partial rent capturing for the strategic environment under consideration we also establish a general equivalence result between tariffs and quotas if capturing is complete d 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

trade liberalization antidumping and safeguards evidence from india s tariff reform abstract this paper is the first to use product level data to examine empirically whether countries use antidumping and safeguard exceptions to unwind commitments to lower tariffs in the face of domestic political economic pressure we focus on the case of india a country that underwent a major exogenous tariff reform program in the early 1990s and subsequently initiated substantial use of safeguard and antidumping import restrictions we first estimate structural determinants of india s import protection using the grossman and helpman 1994 model and provide evidence from its pre reform tariff data of 1990 that is consistent with the theory we then re estimate the model on the indian tariff data after the trade liberalization is complete and find that the model no longer fits a result consistent with theory and evidence provided in other settings that india s 1991 1992 imf arrangement can be interpreted as resulting in an exogenous shock to india s tariff policy however when we re estimate the model on data from 2000 2002 that more completely reflects india s cross product variation in import protection by including both its post reform tariffs and its additional non tariff barriers of antidumping and safeguard import protection the significance of the grossman and helpman model determinant estimates is restored we interpret these combined results as evidence that india unwound its commitment to reduce tariffs through use of antidumping and safeguard protection in the face of political economic pressure the estimates are also economically important and provide one explanation for separate results in the literature that the magnitude of import reduction associated with india s use of antidumping is similar to the initial import expansion associated with its tariff reform finally we interpret the implications of our results for the burgeoning research literature examining the effects of liberalization on india s micro level development

trade policy of a free trade agreement in the presence of foreign lobbying abstract this paper studies the effect of foreign lobbies on trade policy of a country which is a member of a free trade agreement fta it uses a monopolistically competitive political economy model in which the government determines external tariffs endogenously the effect of foreign lobbying under the fta is examined empirically using canadian industry level trade data that allow differentiating of lobby groups by the country of origin the analysis suggests that the presence of foreign lobbying has a significant effect on the domestic trade policy the heterogeneity of foreign lobbies is also important the presence of an organized lobbying group in an fta partner country tends to raise trade barriers while an organized lobbying group of exporters from outside of the fta is associated with less protection

academic earmarks and the returns to lobbying abstract in this paper we estimate the returns to lobbying by universities to motivate our empirical work we develop a simple theoretical model of university lobbying for academic earmarks our statistical analysis shows that universities represented by a house appropriations committee hac or senate appropriations committee sac member spend less money on lobbying than those that are not represented in addition using instrumental variables estimations we show that universities without hac or sac representation may receive some benefit to lobbying for earmarks although in many estimations this benefit is not statistically different from zero however for universities with hac or sac representation a 10 percent increase in lobbying yields an additional 2 8 percent or 3 5 percent increase in earmarks respectively this suggests that there are large returns to lobbying for academic earmarks if a university is represented by a member of one the hac or sac but little or no return if not

endogenous trade policy through majority voting an empirical investigation abstract the median voter approach to trade policy determination within a heckscher ohlin framework as in mayer am econ rev 74 5 1984 970 predicts that an increase in inequality holding constant the economy s overall relative endowments raises trade barriers in capital abundant economies and lowers them in capital scarce economies we find support for this prediction using cross country data on inequality capital abundance and diverse measures of protection we perform certain robustness checks that include controlling for the effects of political rights and schooling as well as using alternative datasets on factor endowments

environmentalism democracy and pollution control this paper makes two empirical contributions to the literature based on predictions generated by a lobby group model first we investigate how environmental lobby groups affect the determination of environmental policy in rich and developing countries second we explore the interaction between democratic participation and political electoral competition the empirical findings suggest that environmental lobby groups tend to positively affect the stringency of environmental policy moreover political competition tends to raise policy stringency in particular where citizens participation in the democratic process is widespread

the clash of liberalizations preferential versus multilateral trade liberalization in the european union there has been an explosion in the number of preferential trade agreements in the past decade preferential trade agreements are characterized by liberalization with respect to only a few partners and thus they can potentially clash with and retard multilateral trade liberalization despite this important concern with preferential trade agreements there is almost no systematic evidence on whether they actually affect multilateral trade liberalization the authors model the effect of preferential trade agreements on multilateral trade liberalization and show that preferential trade agreements slow down multilateral trade liberalization unless they have a common external tariff and allow for internal transfers next they use detailed data on product level tariffs negotiated by the european union in the past two multilateral trade rounds to structurally estimate their model the authors confirm the main prediction the european union s preferential trade agreements have clashed with its multilateral trade liberalization and find that the effect is quantitatively significant moreover they also confirm several auxiliary predictions of the model and provide new evidence on the political economy determinants of multilateral liberalization in the european union

protection for sale the case of oligopolistic competition and interdependent sectors in grossman helpman s 1994 canonical protection for sale pfs model political competition among industry lobbies is driven purely by their interests as consumers this paper introduces demand linkages and oligopolistic competition into the pfs framework to address the rivalry among lobbies stemming from product substitutability it shows that increased substitutability weakens the interest groups incentives to lobby and reduces tariff distortions this may explain why empirical tests of pfs find surprisingly little impact of lobbies on the government s trade policy decision the paper also analyzes endogenous lobby formation suggesting that demand linkages may adversely affect the industry decision to organize resume proteger les ventes le cas de la concurrence oligopolistique et des secteurs interdependants dans le modele canonique de grossman helpman 1994 protection for sale pfs la concurrence politique entre lobbyistes est purement alimentee par leurs interets en tant que consommateurs ce texte presente dans ce cadre d analyse les enchainements de la demande et la concurrence oligopolistique pour prendre en compte la rivalite entre lobbyistes qui derive de la substituabilite des produits on montre qu une substituabilite accrue reduit l incitation des groupes d interets a faire du lobbying et reduit les distorsions tarifaires cela peut expliquer pourquoi les tests empiriques du modele pfs ont decouvert un impact etonnamment faible des lobbies sur les decisions des gouvernements dans le monde des politiques commerciales le texte analyse aussi la formation endogene des lobbies suggerant que les enchainements de la demande peuvent affecter negativement la decision de s organiser

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

rain agriculture and tariffs this paper examines whether and how rainfall shocks affect tariff setting in the agricultural sector in a model of strategic trade policy the authors show that the impact of a negative rainfall shock on optimal import tariffs is generally ambiguous depending on the weight placed by the domestic policy maker on tariff revenue profits and the consumer surplus the more weight placed on domestic profits the more likely it is that the policy maker will respond to a rainfall shortage by reducing import tariffs these findings are robust to alternative assumptions about market structure and the timing of the game using detailed panel data on applied tariffs and rainfall for 70 nations the authors find robust evidence that rainfall shortages generally induce policy makers to set lower tariffs on agricultural imports

preferential versus multilateral trade liberalization and the role of political economy abstract in this paper we analyze the effect of the freedom to pursue preferential trade liberalization permitted by article xxiv of the gatt on country s incentives to participate in multilateral negotiations and on feasibility of global free trade we present a model in which countries choose whether to participate in preferential or multilateral trade agreements under political pressures from domestic special interest groups we show that heterogeneity in political preferences across countries plays an important role in determining the relative merits of preferential and multilateral approaches to trade liberalization on one hand the opportunity to liberalize preferentially may be necessary to induce countries with strong political motivations to participate in multilateral free trade negotiations on the other hand when countries share similar political preferences multilateral free trade that would have been politically supported otherwise becomes unattainable if countries can pursue preferential liberalization

auctions or grandfathering the political economy of tradable emission permits despite the prevalence of grandfathered permits we still observe that a hybrid policy in which a fraction of initial emission permits is distributed through auctions is adopted in some cases we also observe that some polluting industries support auctioned permits and that most environmental groups support grandfathered permits this paper attempts to explain these phenomena from the perspective of political economy and investigates the conditions under which grandfathering auctions or a hybrid instrument will be the equilibrium policy by constructing a two stage lobbying game in which the type of policy instrument auction grandfathering or a hybrid instrument is determined in the first stage and then the number of permits is decided in the second stage we highlight the strategic interaction of the lobbying activities between the two stages in explaining the behavior of the lobbying groups

protection for sale an empirical investigation comment do contributions levels matter for endogenous protection or is the existence of a lobby sufficient are lobbies net benefits from protection identical to their contribution levels or does the level of protection simply reflect contribution levels of supporters and opponents we estimate the influence driven grossman and helpman 1994 and the tariff function findlay and wellisz 1982 models within a unified theoretical framework to examine the contrasting implications derived from these two prominent tariff formation models we find strong evidence that protection is indeed for sale the important new result is however that not only the existence of lobbies matters but also the relative size of the sectoral pro and anti protection contributions using j tests to compare the power of the models directly we cannot reject the null of correct specification of the influence driven model and find evidence of some misspecification in the tariff function model

are global trade negotiations behind a fragmented world of gated globalization abstract we show that global trade negotiations can prevent global free trade in a simple model where global tariff negotiations precede sequential free trade agreements ftas we show fta formation can expand all the way to global free trade in the absence of global tariff negotiations but global free trade never emerges when global tariff negotiations precede fta formation this result arises precisely because global tariff negotiations successfully elicit concessions from negotiating countries moreover global tariff negotiations can produce a fragmented world of gated globalization where some countries form ftas that eliminate tariff barriers among themselves while outsiders continue facing higher tariffs

do interest groups affect us immigration policy while anecdotal evidence suggests that interest groups play a key role in shaping immigration policy there is no systematic empirical analysis of this issue in this paper we construct an industry level dataset for the united states by combining information on the number of temporary work visas with data on lobbying activity associated with immigration we find robust evidence that both pro and anti immigration interest groups play a statistically significant and economically relevant role in shaping migration policy across sectors barriers to migration are lower in sectors in which business interest groups incur larger lobbying expenditures and higher in sectors where labor unions are more important

policy influence and private returns from lobbying in the energy sector in this article i quantify the extent to which lobbying expenditures by firms affect policy enactment to achieve this end i construct a novel dataset containing all federal energy legislation and lobbying activities by the energy sector during the 110th congress i then develop and estimate a game theoretic model where heterogeneous players choose lobbying expenditures to affect the probability that a policy is enacted i find that the effect of lobbying expenditures on a policy s equilibrium enactment probability to be statistically significant but very small nonetheless the average returns from lobbying expenditures are estimated to be over 130

union membership in the united states 1973 1981 this paper reports estimates of union membership gathered from may current population surveys from 1973 to 1981 the authors present data by occupation industry selected states and smsas race gender and educational attainment the paper both extends and differs from that by freeman and medoff which presents unionism estimates for the private sector for 1968 75 to facilitate longitudinal analysis this paper reports three year moving averages of occupational and industry data and annual estimates of demographic classifications the data include public sector as well as private sector workers and they exclude workers not covered by the national labor relations act also the authors provide only union membership estimates not estimates on workers covered by union contracts this paper suggests that the percentage of all workers that are unionized in the united states remained fairly constant over the 1973 81 period

integrated fuzzy multi criteria decision making method and multi objective programming approach for supplier selection and order allocation in a green supply chain abstract an organization s environmental performance is affected by its suppliers environmental performance and selecting green suppliers is a strategic decision in order to be more competitive in today s global market the supplier selection problem involves several quantitative and qualitative criteria in the supplier selection process if suppliers have limited capacity or other constraints it is necessary to determine the best supplier and order quantity of each supplier in this paper we present an integrated approach of fuzzy multi attribute utility theory and multi objective programming for rating and selecting the best green suppliers according to economic and environmental criteria and then allocating the optimum order quantities among them at first the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process and fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution is applied in order to analyze the importance of multiple criteria by incorporating experts opinion and to determine the best green suppliers next multi objective linear programming is used to consider and to formulate various constraints such as quality control capacity and other objectives the objective of the mathematical model is simultaneously to maximize the total value of purchasing and to minimize the total cost of purchasing to handle the subjectivity of decision makers preferences fuzzy logic has been applied the efficiency and application of the proposed approach has been illustrated with a case study in an automobile manufacturing company the obtained results help firms establish a systematic approach for tackling green supplier selection and order allocation problems in a realistic situation finally managerial implications conclusions and directions for additional research are introduced

import protection business cycles and exchange rates evidence from the great recession this research estimates the impact of macroeconomic fluctuations on import protection policies over 1988 q1 2010 q4 for five industrialized economies the united states european union australia canada and south korea there is evidence of a strong countercyclical trade policy response in the pre great recession period of 1988 q1 2008 q3 during which increases in domestic unemployment rates real appreciations in bilateral exchange rates and declines in the gdp growth rates of bilateral trading partners led to substantial increases in new temporary trade barriers it then applies this pre great recession empirical model to realized macroeconomic data from 2008 q4 2010 q4 and find it predicts a surge of new import protection during the great recession e g for the us and eu the model predicts new trade barriers would cover an additional 15 percentage points of nonoil imports well above the baseline level of 2 3 percent of import coverage immediately preceding the crisis finally the research examines why the realized trade policy response differed from model predictions while exchange rate movements played an important role in limiting new import protection during the great recession there is also evidence of one particularly important change in trade policy responsiveness i e in this period governments refrained from imposing new temporary trade barriers against foreign trading partners experiencing their own weak or negative economic growth

reconsidering the empirical evidence on the grossman helpman model of endogenous protection the emergence of the grossman and helpman 1994 model of endogenous protection as the preeminent model in the political economy of trade literature has been significantly advanced by the finding that its predictions about the cross industry pattern of protection are broadly consistent with the data however in their empirical implementation of the grossman helpman model researchers have assumed the presence of multiple policy instruments and extraneous political factors we argue that incorporating these assumptions into the theory significantly changes its predictions about the cross industry pattern of protection jel classification f1 l emergence du modele de protection endogene de grossman helpman en tant que modele le plus important dans la litterature sur l economie politique du commerce international a ete confirmee de maniere significative quand on a decouvert que ses predictions quant au pattern de protection a travers les industries se trouvaient generalement confirmees par les donnees cependant dans leur verification empirique du modele de grossman helpman les chercheurs ont postule la presence de multiples instruments de politique publique et de certains facteurs politiques on suggere que l ajout de ces postulats change de maniere significative les predictions du modele quant au pattern de protection dans les divers secteurs

lobbying and international cooperation in tariff setting abstract this paper develops a theory of tariff protection that incorporates cooperative behavior and lobbying governments use import tariffs or subsidies to maximize a weighted sum of lobbying contributions and general welfare governments do not use export taxes or subsidies and thus balance the interests of export and import competing lobbies in setting tariff levels in a symmetric model cooperation between governments is sustained by threats of punishment in future periods unless governments place too much weight on the future the result is a cooperative tariff otherwise the result is a reciprocal import subsidy

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

modeling synergies in multi criteria supplier selection and order allocation an application to commodity trading abstract we propose a novel meta approach to support collaborative multi objective supplier selection and order allocation ssoa decisions by integrating multi criteria decision analysis and linear programming lp the proposed model accounts for suppliers performance synergy effects within a hierarchical decision structure it incorporates both heterogeneous objective data and subjective judgments of the decision makers dms representing various groups with different voting powers vps we maximize the total value of purchasing tvp by optimizing order quantity assignment to suppliers and taking into consideration their synergies encountered in different time horizons we apply the proposed model to a contractor selection and order quantity assignment problem in an agricultural commodity trading act company we maximize the strategic effectiveness of both the customers and the suppliers minimize risks increase the degree of cooperation between trading partners on all levels of supply chain integration enhance transparent knowledge sharing and aggregation and support collaborative decision making

the role of importers and exporters in the determination of the u s tariff preferences granted to latin america abstract this paper investigates the role played by domestic importers and foreign exporters in improving preferential access to the domestic market to this end the framework used in this paper extends the protection for sale analysis to explicitly model the role of domestic importers and foreign exporters in the determination of preferential trade treatment the predictions of the model are tested using data on preferential trade between the united states and latin american countries the results suggest that latin american exporters and us importers lobbying efforts have a significant and important role in determining the extent of preferential access granted by the united states more interestingly these findings also show that u s importers capture a very substantial share of the rents generated by tariff preferences these results therefore shed a pessimistic view on preferential trade schemes as a reliable source of gains for developing countries

competition for foreign direct investments abstract this paper models international competition for foreign direct investment as a common agency problem using the theory of menu auctions developed by bernheim and whinston in the model national governments act as principals and a multinational corporation as the single agent governments are assumed to maximize the net wage income generated by the corporation s investment it is shown that in the equilibrium of this game a high wage country may be able to attract investment even though all countries use subsidies furthermore it is shown that a country may choose to pay the highest subsidies even if it attracts less investment than in the unsubsidized regime our framework can also be used to study interregional subsidy competition within a country

us non tariff barriers as privately provided public goods abstract the endogenous theory of protection is empirically investigated in a different light rather than emphasizing the determinants of the supply of protection the present study emperically investigates the micro level demand side behavior of firms predictions from bergstrom et al journal of public economics 1986 2 25 49 about the private provision of public goods provide a theoretical foundation for such a demand side econometric investigation if rational lobbies are observed to behave in a manner consistent with the theory of the private provision of public goods then it must be the case that they are able to influence trade policy the econometric specification is also consistent with the special interest models of olson the logic of collective action public goods and the theory of groups harvard university press 1965 stigler bell journal of economics and management science 1971 2 137 146 baron quarterly journal of economics 1989 1 45 72 and grossman and helpman american economic review 1994 84 833 850 hence evidence presented in this study from the demand side behavior of firms has the deeper implication that it validates the theory of endogenous protection an issue that is still controversial among trade theorists

supplier selection order allocation a two stage multiple criteria dynamic programming approach this paper proposes a two stage multiple criteria dynamic programming approach for two of the most critical tasks in supply chain management namely supplier selection and order allocation in the first stage to address multiple decision criteria in supplier ranking the analytic hierarchy process ahp is employed in the second stage supplier ranks are fed into an order allocation model that aims at maximizing a utility function for the firm as well as minimizing the total supply chain costs subject to constraints on demand capacity and inventory levels a dynamic programming approach is crafted to solve the proposed bi objective model

revenue sharing coordination in reverse logistics a reverse supply chain as a post consumption activity aims at extracting value from products at the end of their life cycle it could be comprised of reusing refurbishing remanufacturing and recycling activities in this paper we revisit the issue of revenue sharing in reverse supply chains to formulate the decision problems of coordinating parties manufacturer and retailer the coordination is formed in a dynamic setting where a feedback relationship exists between the return incentive policy of the retailer and the revenue sharing incentive strategy of the manufacturer to model this process we have adopted the use of a system dynamics sd approach sd is well suited for studying the behavior of complex systems over time and where internal feedbacks and delays exist we first identify pareto optimal solutions for individual players and from environmental perspectives of landfill diversion and carbon offset we then focus on revenue sharing as a widely practiced coordination scheme in reverse supply chains it resembles a leader follower stackelberg strategic decision making game with an equilibrium solution that yields lower performance for environmental criteria in this context we investigate if how a revenue sharing mechanism can be coordinated to achieve a higher environmental performance

selection of contract suppliers under price and demand uncertainty in a dynamic market in this paper we consider a supply contracting problem in which the buyer firm faces non stationary stochastic price and demand first we derive analytical results to compare two pure strategies i periodically purchasing from the spot market and ii signing a long term contract with a single supplier the results from the pure strategies show that the selection of suppliers can be complicated by many parameters and is particularly affected by price uncertainty we then develop a stochastic dynamic programming model to incorporate mixed strategies purchasing commitments and contract cancellations computational results show that increases in price demand uncertainty favor long term short term suppliers by examining the two way interactions of contract factors price demand purchasing bounds learning and technology effect salvage values and contract cancellation both intuitive and non intuitive managerial insights in outsourcing strategies are derived

trade wars and trade talks when governments meet in the international arena their actions reflect the political situations at home previous studies of trade relations have focused on governments that are immune from political pressures and that act as benevolent servants of the public interest here we introduce domestic politics into the analysis of international economic relations we study the interactions between national leaders who are concerned both with providing a high standard of living to the general electorate and collecting campaign contributions from special interest groups our analysis sheds light on the determinants of the structure of protection in non cooperative and cooperative policy equilibria

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

the total cost of logistics in supplier selection under conditions of multiple sourcing multiple criteria and capacity constraint abstract little attention is given in the literature to decisions on the appropriate selection of suppliers and on assigning order quantities to these suppliers in the case of multiple sourcing with multiple criteria and with suppliers capacity constraints only a few mathematical programming models to analyse such decisions have been published to date and these have tended to consider only net price as the cost of purchasing although the costs of transportation ordering and storage may be significantly important to the decision in this paper a mixed integer non linear programming model is presented to solve the multiple sourcing problem which takes into account the total cost of logistics including net price storage transportation and ordering costs buyer limitations on budget quality service etc can also be considered in the model an algorithm is proposed to solve the model and the model is illustrated using a numerical example

role of multiple stakeholders and the critical success factor theory for the sustainable supplier selection process abstract the concept of sustainability has become an essential theme for many industries and organisations due to a heightened sensitivity towards environmental protection and social responsibility at the same time firms still need to achieve economic viability and retain their competitive advantage because suppliers are the first entity and the initial source of any supply chain organisations should select their suppliers by a careful evaluation of their critical success factors csf achieving a successful sustainable supply chain management sscm strategy requires a firm to consider its stakeholders views based on the csf theory and by considering the multi stakeholders view in a sustainability perspective this work provides a decision support system for the sustainable supplier selection sss problem in a real world textile industry located in the emerging economy of india through a three phase methodology this study examines indian suppliers by considering the sustainability views of various stakeholders including employees customers researchers shareholders and a government environmental officer the csf priorities show that the first four influential csfs are categorized as social concerns i e maintaining long term relationships and alliances stakeholder empowerment equity labour sources and individual human rights the fifth factor is an environmental issue i e production of polluting agents among the five suppliers being evaluated in this work supplier 4 receives the top ranking specifically the results show that the supplier rankings are highly influenced by csf s social dimensions hence to validate the influence of csf s social dimensions in relation to the sss process a sensitivity analysis has been done by varying the respective weights the study concludes with the relevant managerial implications and limitations

economic reform voting and local political intervention evidence from india abstract this paper uses the indian tariff reforms of the early nineties to estimate how voters hurt by economic reforms respond regions more hurt by the tariff reform increased their support for both the party that initiated their suffering and parties with similar preferences in favor of poverty centric policies this response is surprisingly sophisticated where voters did not simply punish incumbents for negative income shocks and correctly discounted initial anti reform stances by opposition parties that later turned out to be false furthermore the strength of this voting response varied with both geography and local political incentives suggesting that the economic effects of reforms might vary substantially in large and decentralized democracies

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

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

politicians decision making with re election concerns abstract we study the impact of elected officials re election concerns on their decisions on whether to undertake new projects the value of a project to a jurisdiction depends in part on its elected official s uncertain ability at providing some public goods our main result is that the elected official s willingness to pay for the project differs from voters willingness to pay if the incumbent official expects to lose win the election then she is willing to pay more less than the project s total value to voters we show how our analysis can be applied to bidding wars among jurisdictions for firms

factor movements and commodity trade as complements abstract several models are presented in which factor mobility leads to an increase in the volume of world trade the models share the common characteristic that the basis for trade is something other than differences in relative factor endowments these alternative bases for trade include returns to scale imperfect competition production and factor taxes and differences in production technology taken together the models suggest a more general idea the widely held notion that trade in goods and factors are substitutes is in fact a rather special result which is a general characteristic only of factor proportions models

the economics of special interest politics the case of the tariff this paper investigates the interaction of politicians and special interest lobbies the goal is to model the equilibrium levels of redistributive policies such as taxes subsidies tariffs and regulatory decisions the model is applied throughout to the setting of tariffs by contributing to political campaigns special interest lobbies generate economic returns higher tariffs generate revenue for import competing industries through higher product prices higher milk support prices raise dairy farm income and so forth the lobby invests to maximize these net economic returns in evaluating their chances of election politicians weigh the favorable effects of special interest money against the unfavorable association with the lobby and the social cost of the redistributive policy section i explores the lobby s problem it describes a formalization of mancur olson s discussion of the voluntary provision of public goods and optimal contributions by lobbies to political campaigns section ii describes determination of the equilibrium tariff positions of each politician in a political campaign

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

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

substitutability and protectionism latin america s trade policy and imports from china and india this article examines the trade policy response of latin american governments to the rapid growth of chinese and indian exports in world markets to explain more protection in sectors where a large share of imports originates in china and india the protection for sale model is extended to allow for region specific degrees of substitutability between domestic and imported varieties of a good the results suggest that more protection toward chinese and indian goods can be explained by the higher substitutability of chinese and indian goods with domestic varieties the data support the model which performs better than the original protection for sale framework in explaining latin america s structure of protection

the sufficiency of the lens condition for factor price equalization in the case of two factors factor price equalization fpe is a central theme in trade theory for which dixit a k norman v 1980 theory of international trade cambridge university press london establish the necessary and sufficient condition the dixit norman condition deardorff a v 1994 the possibility of factor price equalization revisited journal of international economics 36 167 175 provides a more intuitive condition the lens condition and establishes its necessity in general as well as its sufficiency for the case of two countries in this paper i prove that the lens condition is sufficient for fpe in the case of two factors this theorem has implications for empirical work 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

on the political economy of immigration the authors study how immigration policies that impose capital and skill requirements would be determined under majority voting when native agents differ in their wealth holdings and vote to maximize their income the results of the model calculations indicate that the native population will be polarized between those who would like an immigration policy to maximize the domestic capital labor ratio and those who would like an immigration policy that would minimize it

environmentally responsible inventory models non classical models for a non classical era abstract mathematical models of inventory typically include the three inventory associated costs of surplus shortage and ordering these classic inventory models are then analysed so as to choose inventory parameters that usually minimise the total cost of operating the inventory system being investigated unfortunately classic inventory models do not provide a meaningful basis for analysing many real and increasingly important practical inventory problems and situations it is therefore not surprising that over recent years several authors have discussed these issues in broad terms and suggested that a new paradigm needs to be developed this paper develops some specific aspects of this discussion in particular the paper identifies a range of inventory problems that are not covered appropriately by traditional inventory analysis one of these is to design responsible inventory systems i e systems that reflect the needs of the environment the paper then examines the importance of inventory planning to the environment in greater detail for example packaging is important not only because of its costs and the protection that it provides to the inventory items but also because of its eventual effects on the environment in terms of the use of resources and potential landfill for similar reasons waste which can result from poor inventory management is highly important the location of stores is important because location affects transport costs thus the influence of the secondary aspects of most inventory models packaging waste and location are important but even more important are the inter relations with the total system in particular the location of the manufacturing plants and the effect that inventory planning has on the logistics chain potentially have considerable environmental implications inventory is part of a wider system however until the cost charged for an activity reflects the true environmental cost of that activity it is likely that decisions will be made on the basis of erroneous data in that situation we are faced with either determining the environmental cost of specific actions or to use environmental costs that are somewhat contrived in which case it may be more sensible to use very different performance measures and models the paper discusses these ideas and ways in which inventory policies may reassure us with our environmental concerns

protection for sale or surge protection this paper asks whether the results obtained from using the standard approach to testing the influential grossman and helpman protection for sale pfs model of political economy might arise from a simpler setting a model of imports and quotas with protection occuring in response to import surges but only for organized industries is simulated and shown to provide parameter estimates consistent with the protection for sale framework this suggests that the standard approach may be less of a test than previously thought

can we obtain realistic parameter estimates for the protection for sale model in the grossman and helpman 1994 model of endogenous trade protection sectoral lobbies try to influence an incumbent government that maximizes a weighted sum of political contributions and aggregate welfare we empirically investigate this model using u s and turkish data our specification is more tightly tied to theory than those in existing studies additionally we assume all specific factor owners to be organized into different lobbies these changes validated by hypothesis tests yield more realistic parameter estimates of the government s concern for aggregate welfare and of the fraction of population organized into lobbies peut on obtenir des calibrations realistes des parametres du modele de protection en vue d augmenter les ventes dans le modele de protection commerciale endogene de grossman helpman 1994 des lobbys sectoriels tentent d influencer un gouvernement en place qui maximise une somme ponderee des contributions politiques et du bien etre collectif les auteurs utilisent ce modele pour analyser les donnees pour les etats unis et la turquie on specifie le modele d une maniere qui serre de plus pres la theorie que ce qui a ete le cas dans les etudes anterieures de plus on assume que tous les proprietaires de facteurs de production specifiques sont organises en lobbys differents ces changements valides par des tests d hypotheses engendrent des estimations plus realistes des parametres de la fonction d interet du gouvernement pour le bien etre collectif et pour la fraction de la population organisee en lobbys

the political economy of non tariff measures over the last decades non tari measures ntms have seen an important upsurge how ever little research has focused on the political economy of non tariff protection and the existing studies are mainly based on a single country or a specific type of measures this paper seeks to fill the gap by empirically evaluating the determinants of ntms in several countries both developed and developing overall results show certain protectionist purposes behind the adoption of ntms this conclusion is reinforced for restrictive measures i e subject to trade concerns but does not hold for non restrictive measures suggesting the legitimate goal of several ntms furthermore transnational lobbying defined as the influence exerted by national business groups during the ministerial conferences the highest authority of the world trade organization wto increases the probability of adopting ntms in both developed and developing countries

migration and pension with international capital mobility abstract being relatively low earners migrants are net beneficiaries of the welfare state therefore in a static set up migration may be resisted by the entire native born population however it is shown that in a dynamic set up with a pension system which is an important pillar of any welfare state migration is beneficial to all income high and low and all age old and young groups

modeling of biomass to energy supply chain operations applications challenges and research directions reducing dependency on fossil fuels and mitigating their environmental impacts are among the most promising aspects of utilizing renewable energy sources the availability of various biomass resources has made it an appealing source of renewable energy given the variability of supply and sources of biomass supply chains play an important role in the efficient provisioning of biomass resources for energy production this paper provides a comprehensive review and classification of the excising literature in modeling of biomass supply chain operations while linking them to the wider strategic challenges and issues with the design planning and management of biomass supply chains on that basis we will present an analysis of the existing gaps and the potential future directions for research in modeling of biomass supply chain operations

who is against a common market this paper develops a theory of the endogenous formation of a common market in a three country two factor political economy model in the status quo home and foreign implement nondiscriminatory policies toward international factor flows in order to maximize the domestic median voter s welfare then the two countries simultaneously hold referenda on a common market initiative leading to the removal of the pre existing policies for factor flows between the member countries while no coordination is imposed on policies vis a vis the rest of the world several interesting results emerge in a common market the returns on factors moving between the members are more likely to increase the larger is the import demand of one country relative to the factor supply of the exporting partner factors that do not relocate are more likely to see their returns decrease when flows are large and import demands are inelastic importantly for the common market to emerge as an equilibrium some factors must continue to experience enhanced protection when the integration process is completed this result highlights the potential tension between social desirability and the political feasibility of the integration process jel f1 f2 p16

endogenous lobby formation and endogenous protection a long run model of trade policy determination this paper provides a theory of lobby formation within a framework in which trade policy is determined through political contributions under certain conditions free trade turns out to be an equilibrium outcome either when the government has a high affinity for political contributions or when it cares a great deal about social welfare moreover greater inequality in asset distribution results in a greater number of lobbies and in most cases more protection for each of these lobbies furthermore industries with higher levels of capital stock fewer capitalists more inelastic demand and smaller geographical dispersion are the ones that get organized

trade policy reform endogenous lobby group formation and environmental policy abstract this paper explores the effects of trade liberalization on environmental policy outcomes when collective action is endogenous the polluting industry s ability to undertake lobbying is shown to depend on the degree of competition in the product market establishing a new link between trade and environmental policies if trade liberalization causes industry collective action to become harder to sustain the stringency of the environmental policy is likely to rise these results highlight the role of trade liberalization on product market competition and its consequent impact on the incentive to lobby for less stringent environmental policies

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

the political economy of international trade and factor mobility abstract free trade in goods and factors is efficient when we move away from economic theory and consider the policies actually followed by governments we observe distortions being implemented both on goods and factors trades it is natural then to question the relative merits of the two types of intervention and the normative literature has provided only partial answers we ask then why is the international flow of goods and factors not free and the political economy literature has looked at the two issues only separately in studying the determination of trade policy a theoretical paradigm has emerged focusing on the role of influence driven contributions this approach has also found strong empirical support the literature on the political economy of factor mobility on the other hand is fragmented distortions in labor and capital flows are typically the subject of different studies and only recently a unified framework has been proposed more work has to be done in this area as well as in integrating the political economy of trade and factor movements

dynamic version of the economic lot size model this article originally appeared in management science october 1958 volume 5 number 1 pp 89 96 published by the institute of management sciences a forward algorithm for a solution to the following dynamic version of the economic lot size model is given allowing the possibility of demands for a single item inventory holding charges and setup costs to vary over n periods we desire a minimum total cost inventory management scheme which satisfies known demand in every period disjoint planning horizons are shown to be possible which eliminate the necessity of having data for the full n periods

china trade policy review a political economy approach chinese trade policy has experienced great reversal in the year of 2008 a series of constraining measures taken previously have been loosened eventually we investigate this situation using a political economy approach unlike in democratic countries where interest groups play a crucial role in trade policy change in china given the political reality leaders will and trade partners pressure are the determinant factors we call this top down and outside in trade policy actually the idea of harmonious society and scientific development emphasised by top leaders in october 2006 paved the road for the following trade policy adjustment i e reducing tax rebate limiting processing trade compressing the catalogue for foreign investment etc however with the shock of a global financial tsunami these measures get coastal areas relying on foreign trade heavily into trouble the economic downturn in pearl river delta even astonished the decision making body calling on a quick reversal in foreign trade policy if interest groups had been allowed to express their demand formally and adequately from the very start the cycle of taking up first but giving up last in policy design would have not taken place in other words the bottom up and inside out trade policy should be more stable although flexibility is necessary in the face of uncertainty frequent and discretionary trade policy change usually produces effects of pro government not pro market this is unfavourable for the transformation in china the constraining trade policy in mid 2007 to mid 2008 has been a part of the government s desire to seek healthier development however with the inside and outside surroundings getting worse the structural adjustment long run objective has had to concede to the economic growth short run objective

do countries free ride on mfn abstract the most favored nation mfn clause has long been suspected of creating a free rider problem in multilateral trade negotiations to address this issue we model multilateral negotiations as a mechanism design problem with voluntary participation we show that an optimal mechanism induces only the largest exporters to participate in negotiations over any product thus providing a rationalization for the principal supplier rule we also show that through this channel equilibrium tariffs vary according to the herfindahl hirschman index of export shares higher concentration in a sector reduces free riding and thus causes a lower tariff estimation of our model using sector level tariff data for the u s provides strong support for this relationship

protectionism versus risk in screening for invasive species abstract i examine the extent to which enforcement of a biosecurity import restriction us border inspections for foreign pests and diseases is used as a protectionist trade barrier the parameters of a structural model of border inspection are estimated using a detailed dataset documenting the outcome of us agricultural border inspections i find that inspections are conducted in a manner that places an implied welfare weight on domestic producers relative to consumers ranging from 1 to 1 63 i also find evidence that the inspection agency takes terms of trade into account when inspecting agricultural imports these results suggest that border inspections are used as a protectionist non tariff barrier

an exogeneity test for a simultaneous equation tobit model with an application to labor supply a test of weak exogeneity in the simultaneous equation tobit model is proposed and illustrated using a female labour supply model estimated using cross section data the test statistic can be simply output from any standard tobit maximum likelihood package and is asymptotically efficient the procedure provides consistent estimators for the simultaneous tobit model whose asymptotic covariance matrix is a simple extension of the usual tobit formula we also provide the lagrange multiplier test of weak exogeneity this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

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

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