bidding behavior in descending and ascending auctions this research examines how individual differences and institutional practices influence consumer bidding in auctions bidders may be motivated by different goals e g thrill of winning the item with minimal attention to what they pay for it versus prudence winning the item at a price at or below its perceived value also innate or auctioneer induced differences may exist in the precision and salience of bidder cognitions about the item s value we report two studies on how these motivational and cognitive factors influence bids in descending and ascending auctions respectively each study also manipulated a situational variable wait time at each price step the two auctions realized different average prices for the same item set average bids were higher in the descending versus ascending auction in several study conditions in both auction formats bidders primed with thrill versus prudence bid higher but more precise and or salient values attenuated this goal effect among other results in the descending auction longer wait times elicited higher bids from bidders primed with thrill but not prudence in the ascending auction longer wait times produced lower bids for bidders primed with prudence but not thrill these findings on consumer bidding behavior have practical implications for auction design

estimating the extent of potential competition in the korean mobile telecommunications market switching costs and number portability abstract number portability service in the mobile communications market is believed to play an important role in lowering the switching costs which can increase the level of competition among providers the aim of this study was to estimate the switching costs and consumers valuation of the number portability service in the korean mobile communications market using conjoint analysis and the stated preference approach the analysis showed that the switching costs have been lowered considerably since number portability has been in force however a significant level of switching costs still remains despite number portability finally this paper provides some implications for the competition strategy in the mobile communications market

an incentive aligned mechanism for conjoint analysis abstract this article specifies analyzes and validates a rigorous and practical truth telling mechanism game for conjoint applications the mechanism requires only one real product variation and has truth telling in conjoint as its bayesian nash equilibrium thus making it possible to incentive align participants in most conjoint applications using the ipod package as the context the author shows empirically that the mechanism substantially improves purchase prediction compared with a standard conjoint procedure

the determinants of female recruitment each year the net effect of transitions between jobs and between employment and non employment is that there has been a steady rise in the proportion of women and part timers in employment in britain the determinants of one particular transition namely recruitment are analysed using 1983 data in the light of existing theories about female employment the conclusions are that recruitment of women and part timers is promoted by the expansion of those occupations in which women are traditionally more concentrated by their low pay and conditions in relation to men and by the greater availability of married women for recruitment the buffer mechanism wherein firms are hypothesized to hire more female labour when unemployment is low and to hoard male labour in recessions finds no empirical support

should reference alternatives in pivot design sc surveys be treated differently analysts are increasingly making use of pivot style stated choice sc data in the estimation of choice models these datasets often contain a reference alternative whose attributes remain invariant across replications for the same respondent this paper presents evidence to suggest that respondents react differently to the attributes of these reference alternatives and those of purely hypothetical alternatives while some such evidence has been reported in the existing literature this paper goes further and details a number of different departures from a common treatment of the two types of alternatives relating both to the observed part of utility and the error term

steam as a general purpose technology a growth accounting perspective the contribution of steam to british economic growth in the nineteenth century is estimated using growth accounting methods similar to those recently employed to examine the role of ict the results indicate that steam contributed little to growth before 1830 and had its peak impact about a hundred years after watt s famous invention only with the advent of highpressure steam after 1850 did the technology realise its potential compared with ict steam s impact on the annual rate of growth was modest it is unlikely that these conclusions are vulnerable to quantification of hitherto unmeasured tfp spillovers

preference uncertainty in stated preference studies facts and artefacts the ordinal scale and polychotomous choice methods are two widely used techniques for estimating preference uncertainty in stated preference studies this article presents the results of two experiments that apply these estimation techniques the first experiment was designed to compare and contrast the scores of the ordinal scale and polychotomous choice method the second experiment was conducted to test a scale that combines verbal expressions with numerical and graphical interpretations a composite scale the results of the study can be summarized in three key findings first the polychotomous choice method generates a higher proportion of yes responses than the conventional dichotomous choice elicitation format second the composite scale generates a significantly higher proportion of certain responses finally the ordinal scale performs poorly on the ground of construct validity

assessing the role of steam power in the first industrial revolution the early work of nick von tunzelmann this article considers the historiographical and theoretical significance of nicholas von tunzelmann s first book steam power and british industrialization to 1860 von tunzelmann assessed the quantitative impact of the watt steam engine and its pirate copies on the british economy using the social savings method pioneered by r w fogel showing that the impact was smaller and later than many historians had supposed these results are of more than quantitative significance because they call into question a dominant line in the history of industrialization that focuses on the steam engine as a key determinant of the dynamics of industrial growth in britain from the late eighteenth century this article discusses the origin of this line in the work of arnold toynbee and outlines its long term influence on economic history including contemporary debates on the question of why europe outpaced china and india from the seventeenth century these issues are important also for innovation studies which often describes the relation between innovation and growth in terms of such critical technologies as steam power these accounts are subject to the same weaknesses as technicist histories of industrialization von tunzelmann s early work is therefore of continuing theoretical and empirical significance as we seek an adequate theory of the links between innovation and growth

impacts of long range increases in the fuel economy cafe standard i introduction and background in 1975 the u s government enacted legislation regulating the fuel efficiency of new motor vehicles the apparent objective of this law is to reduce american dependence on foreign oil after large increases in the price of petroleum in the late 1990s and with continued conflict in the middle east corporate average fuel economy cafe standards once again became a topic of interest a number of proposals for changing the cafe standards were discussed in congress in early 2002 culminating in a defeat in the senate of an amendment that would have required a 50 increase in the relevant cafe standards in place of that increase the senate voted to require the executive branch to examine the impact of further increases in the cafe standard this work evaluates the long term economic implications of raising the standard by 3 0 miles per gallon mpg above current levels in industry parlance this approach is sometimes referred to as technology forcing i choose 3 0 mpg because it reflects the focus of a may 2001 report by the vice president s task force on energy policy and because it reflects several legislative proposals in congress 1 the long term refers to a length of time such that manufacturers can adjust vehicle technologies and powertrain designs to reduce the amount of fuel required to move a given amount of mass or to achieve a given amount of performance or acceleration per gallon of fuel consumed previous work on cafe standards such as kleit 1990 and thorpe 1997 focused on short term responses to higher cafe standards where technology forcing was not an option for manufacturers the analysis is conducted under two different scenarios the first scenario is that cafe standards are not binding in the current marketplace the second scenario takes account of the current impact of cafe standards and then analyzes the costs and benefits of increasing the standards the costs of cafe standards are broken down into two areas the changes in consumer and producer surplus and the increase in externalities caused by the increased driving that higher cafe standards induce the plan of this article is as follows section ii reviews the history of cafe standards and briefly discusses the rationale for the regulation section iii develops a model in which the current cafe standard is assumed to be nonbinding section iv provides estimates of the impacts for a long term 3 0 mpg cafe increase under the assumption that the current standard is not binding section v then revises the model to take into account the arguably more realistic assumption that the existing cafe standard was in fact binding it then reports estimates for a long term 3 0 mpg increase section vi provides a brief cost benefit analysis of cafe increases and section vii provides a summary and conclusion ii background on automobile fuel economy standards a brief history of the cafe program the cafe program as enacted in 1975 called for all manufacturers selling more than 10 000 autos per year in the united states to reach the mandated cafe levels cafe levels rose from 19 0 mpg in 1978 to 27 5 mpg in 1985 and later years a manufacturer s domestic and foreign cars are placed in separate cafe categories based on the domestic context of the vehicle if a car has over 75 american context it is considered domestic and placed in the domestic pool otherwise it is placed in the foreign car pool see kleit 1990 for a discussion light trucks pickup trucks sport utility vehicles suvs and minivans were placed in a different cafe pool than cars when cafe standards were originally passed these vehicles represented a small fraction of the relevant market by 2001 however such vehicles made up approximately one half of the sales of personal vehicles in 2001 light trucks were required to reach 20 7 mpg there is no domestic and foreign division in the cafe regulation for light trucks

stated preferences over job characteristics a panel study when making choices over jobs with different characteristics what trade offs are decision makers willing to make such a question is difficult to address using typical household surveys that provide a limited amount of information on the attributes of the jobs to address this question a small but growing number of studies have turned to the use of stated preference experiments but the extent to which stated choices by respondents reflect systematic trade offs across job characteristics remains an open question we use two popular types of experiments profile case best worst scaling and multi profile case best worst scaling to elicit job preferences of nursing students and junior nurses in australia each person participated in both types of experiments twice within a span of about 15 months using a novel joint likelihood approach that links a decision maker s preferences across the two types of experiments and over time we find that the decision makers make similar trade offs across job characteristics in both types of experiments and in both time periods except for the trade off between salary and other attributes the valuation of salary falls significantly over time relative to other job attributes for both types of experiments also within each period salary is less valued in the profile case compared to the more traditional multi profile case

broadband adoption and firm productivity evaluating the benefits of general purpose technology we examine the relationship between the deployment of broadband which we classify as a general purpose technology and the productivity of the deploying firms using panel data that comprises information on all the major local exchange carriers in the united states telecommunications industry from 1995 to 2000 this relationship is an important indicator of the economic impact of new technology adoption we provide a comprehensive analysis of the literature on general purpose technologies as well as on the economic consequences of information and communications technology diffusion and develop a framework to empirically assess the impact of broadband deployment on the productivity our results find a positive relationship between broadband deployment and the carriers productivity and suggest that encouraging the deployment of broadband technologies in addition to the benefits to consumers and firms at the receiving end of the new technology create the potential for better technological efficiencies and increased productivity for the deploying firms the benefits can be enhanced as the firms studied operate in two sided markets where the network effects brought about by the multitude of interconnections can be substantial because of possible second order spillovers of productivity copyright 2010 the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

measuring consumer preferences using conjoint poker we develop and test an incentive compatible conjoint poker cp game the preference data collected in the context of this game are comparable to incentive compatible choice based conjoint cbc analysis data we develop a statistical efficiency measure and an algorithm to construct efficient cp designs we compare incentive compatible cp to incentive compatible cbc in a series of three experiments one online study and two eye tracking studies our results suggest that cp induces respondents to consider more of the profile related information presented to them compared with cbc

consumer preference for a no choice option the traditional focus in the decision making literature has been on understanding how consumers choose among a given set of alternatives the notion that preference uncertainty may lead to choice deferral when no single alternative has a decisive advantage is tested in seven studies building on recent research the article shows that the decision to defer choice is influenced by the absolute difference in attractiveness among the alternatives provided and is not consistent with trade off difficulty or the theory of search these findings are then extended to show that choice deferral can also be modified for the same alternatives by manipulations that make them appear more similar in attractiveness or that decrease the need to differentiate among them the results are consistent with the notion that preference uncertainty results in a hesitation to commit to any single action since small differences in attractiveness among the alternatives are potentially reversible consistent with this premise the effect of attractiveness difference on choice deferral decreased significantly when subjects were first allowed to practice making monetary trade offs among the available alternatives

online content pricing purchase and rental markets digitization of content is changing how consumers and firms use purchase and rental markets low transaction costs make accessing content easier for consumers digital technology enables firms to create nondurable rental versions of their content and to restrict content to the purchasing consumer effectively shutting down resale markets to empirically analyze the interaction of purchase and rental markets i design a preference measurement tool to recover consumers intertemporal preferences through current period choices alone i then use these preferences to solve for a dynamic equilibrium between consumers and the firm in the context of the online home video market i find that when the firm is able to commit to holding prices fixed forever providing content through the purchase market alone is sufficient however when the firm is unable to commit it should serve both purchase and rental markets canonical theory models would predict exclusive rentals but the purchase option enables indirect price discrimination in practice i also find that when consumers place a premium on accessing new content they are less likely to intertemporally substitute thereby increasing the firm s pricing power consistent with theory commitment to future prices increases profits considerably this finding supports the rigid pricing structure of such retailers as apple despite studios push toward more pricing flexibility

intertemporal market effect on gender earnings differentials lawyers in canada 1970 80 the conventional methodology for decomposition of cross sectional earnings differentials is extended to include a market effect on intertemporal changes in earnings and to analyse the changes in gender differentials over time the integrated cross sectional and intertemporal methodology is illustrated by a decomposition of the change in the earnings differential that occurred during the 1970s between male and female lawyers in canada an unprecedented rate of growth in the supply of lawyers during the 1970s in canada was associated with changes in the gender earnings differential in the legal profession this rapid supply growth had an almost negligible net impact on female earnings but a negative impact of 15 on the male earnings this explains the narrowing of the earnings differential by almost 30 over the decade although three fifths of the gender differential in 1970 and half of the differential in 1980 were attributable to the differences in the characteristics of the two groups these chang

when more is less and less is more the role of ideal point availability and assortment in consumer choice contrary to the common wisdom that more choice is always better selections made from large assortments can lead to weaker preferences building on the extant literature this research identifies ideal point availability as a key factor moderating the impact of assortment on choice it is proposed that in the case of large assortments ideal point availability can simplify choice leading to a stronger preference for the selected alternative in contrast for choices made from smaller assortments ideal point availability is proposed to have the opposite effect leading to weaker preferences data obtained from four experiments lend support for the theory and the empirical predictions advanced in this article

incentive aligned conjoint analysis abstract because most conjoint studies are conducted in hypothetical situations with no consumption consequences for the participants the extent to which the studies are able to uncover true consumer preference structures is questionable experimental economics literature with its emphasis on incentive alignment and hypothetical bias suggests that more realistic incentive aligned studies result in stronger out of sample predictive performance of actual purchase behaviors and provide better estimates of consumer preference structures than do hypothetical studies to test this hypothesis the authors design an experiment with conventional hypothetical conditions and parallel incentive aligned counterparts using chinese dinner specials as the context the authors conduct a field experiment in a chinese restaurant during dinnertime the results provide strong evidence in favor of incentive aligned choice conjoint analysis in that incentive aligned choice conjoint outperforms hypothetical choice conjo

rational inattention competitive supply and psychometrics we introduce a simple method of recovering attention costs from choice data our method rests on a precise analogy with production theory costs of attention determine consumer demand and consumer welfare just as a competitive firm s technology determines its supply curve and profits we implement our recovery method experimentally outline applications and link our work to the broader literature on inattention and mistaken decisions

how should consumers willingness to pay be measured an empirical comparison of state of the art approaches abstract this study compares the performance of four commonly used approaches to measure consumers willingness to pay with real purchase data real the open ended oe question format choice based conjoint cbc analysis becker degroot and marschak s bdm incentive compatible mechanism and incentive aligned choice based conjoint icbc analysis with this five in one approach the authors test the relative strengths of the four measurement methods using real as the benchmark on the basis of statistical criteria and decision relevant metrics the results indicate that the bdm and icbc approaches can pass statistical and decision oriented tests the authors find that respondents are more price sensitive in incentive aligned settings than in non incentive aligned settings and the real setting furthermore they find a large number of none choices under icbc than under hypothetical conjoint analysis this study uncovers an intriguing possibility even when the oe format and cbc analysis generate

are choice experiments incentive compatible a test with quality differentiated beef steaks this study compares hypothetical and nonhypothetical responses to choice experiment questions we test for hypothetical bias in a choice experiment involving beef ribeye steaks with differing quality attributes in general hypothetical responses predicted higher probabilities of purchasing beef steaks than nonhypothetical responses thus hypothetical choices overestimate total willingness to pay for beef steaks however marginal willingness to pay for a change in steak quality is in general not statistically different across hypothetical and actual payment settings

the first industrial revolution resolving the slow growth rapid industrialization paradox the paper reviews recent attempts to quantify the british industrial revolution it concludes that the episode was one of rapid industrialization but modest growth to a considerable extent this is explained by the early adoption of capitalist farming and the weak impact of steam on productivity growth however this should not detract from a marked acceleration in the rate of technological change by the second quarter of the 19th century this may be explicable in an endogenous innovation framework in terms of a reduced cost of accessing useful knowledge models of long run growth should take this enhanced technological capability seriously jel n23

testing commitment cost theory in choice experiments in choice experiments it is commonly assumed that individuals make choices in static and certainty decision making conditions real world choices however are usually made in a dynamic setting committing a purchase decision under conditions of uncertainty might have a commitment cost cc in this study we test cc theory using a nonhypothetical choice experiment specifically we test whether choice behavior and willingness to pay estimates differ when individuals have the option to gain present or delayed information or reverse the transaction our results suggest that the construction of a dynamic decision context can be relevant in the design of choice experiments

concentration trends and profitability in us manufacturing a comment 1991 concentration trends and profitability in us manufacturing a comment applied economics vol 23 no 4 pp 717 720

work history patterns and the occupational attainment of women one of the main differences between the labour market behaviour of men and women lies in the discontinuity of labour force attachment exhibited by most women over their lifetime largely but not exclusively for the purpose of raising a family these interruptions to their labour market experience constitute an important influence on the labour market position of women and provide a potentially important factor in the explanation of their labour market disadvantate skills are obtained to a considerable extent through labour market experience and may be blunted in periods of absence from the labour force in addition absence from the labour force removes an individual labour market and may thereby reduce the probability of gaining extry to the better jobs on re entry the objectives of this paper are firstly to describe the various work history patterns exhibited by u k women and secondly to quantify the effect of these life cycle factors on the occupational attainment occupational progress and earnings of women the data source is the national training survey nts which provides a unique retrospective longitudinal data set on the work histories of over 50 000 individuals for details see manpower services commission 1976 this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

in store spending dynamics how budgets invert relative spending patterns the authors conduct four controlled lab experiments and one field study in a brick and mortar grocery store to demonstrate that relative spending the price of the purchased item relative to the mean price of the product category evolves nonlinearly and distinctly for budget and nonbudget shoppers while the relative spending of budget shoppers evolves in a concave manner the relative spending of nonbudget shoppers evolves inversely in a convex manner thus budget nonbudget shoppers spend relatively more less in the middle than at the beginning and toward the end of their shopping trip mediation analyses confirm that the pain of paying experienced while shopping drives price salience which then drives relative spending moreover manipulating shoppers pain of paying by altering the opportunity costs associated with their spending or drawing shoppers attention to their spending via real time spending feedback is shown to influence these spending patterns the research offers theoretical contributions to the in store decision making budgeting and pain of paying literature and has important implications for marketing and promotion strategies in retail and mobile technology environments as it suggests when a shopper may be more sensitive to price related factors

embracing model uncertainty strategies for response pooling and model averaging econometricians modeling stated preference sp data and most other types of data are confronted with the uncomfortable reality that our knowledge of the true model is limited with only certain variables suggested by the application at hand and general classes of functional forms and error structures suggested by the literature accepting our limited knowledge we pursue strategies for analyzing sp data that are more robust to uncertainties in our knowledge of the true model these include non parametric and parametric likelihood based tests of pooling responses from different elicitation formats and a frequentist based model averaging approach for estimating willingness to pay functions we argue that these strategies lead to increased econometric integrity and empower the ultimate users of models such as policy decision makers and even juries to better assess the robustness of the results we apply these approaches to an sp survey of saltwater angling in alaska which utilized split sample rankings and ratings elicitation methods while an important goal of our paper is to develop practicable modeling strategies that will ultimately lead to more robust conclusions and more confidence by the users of sp results an equally important goal is to engender a critical discussion of how we can make the analysis of sp data more robust

part time work and returning to work after the birth of the first child 1990 part time work and returning to work after the birth of the first child applied economics vol 22 no 9 pp 1137 1148

alternative approaches for incorporating respondent uncertainty when estimating willingness to pay the case of the mexican spotted owl abstract this paper explores the sources and patterns of respondents uncertainty regarding their willingness to pay wtp and presents alternative approaches for incorporating this uncertainty into estimation of the logit model recently proposed approaches are compared to methods proposed in this paper which allows for incorporation of uncertainty regarding both yes and no responses these approaches are evaluated by comparing the goodness of fit and variability of mean wtp extreme recoding of uncertain yes responses as no responses reduces the logit goodness of fit and the precision of the wtp estimate incorporating the degree of uncertainty of yes responses results in the highest goodness of fit and the smallest variability of mean wtp among the various models addressing uncertainty a regression model is used to determine the significant determinants of respondent uncertainty

the myth of the biotech revolution an assessment of technological clinical and organisational change abstract this paper argues that despite being widely promoted by academics and consultants the empirical evidence does not support the existence of a biotech revolution nor does the data support the widely held expectations that biotechnology is having a revolutionary impact on healthcare or economic development the revolutionary model is therefore a misleading basis for policy making as it over estimates the speed and extent of any changes in productivity or the quality of therapeutics instead the evidence suggests biotechnology is following a well established incremental pattern of technological change and creative accumulation that builds upon rather than disrupts previous drug development heuristics

inducement prizes and innovation we examine the effect of prizes on innovation using data on awards for technological development offered by the royal agricultural society of england at annual competitions between 1839 and 1939 we find large effects of the prizes on competitive entry and we also detect an impact on patents especially when prize categories were set by a strict rotation scheme thereby mitigating the potentially confounding effect that they targeted only hot technology sectors prizes encouraged competition and medals were more important than monetary awards the boost to innovation we observe cannot be explained by the re direction of existing inventive activity

the influence of wages and house prices on british interregional migration decisions this paper considers the paradox of a consistent net outflow of people from areas of high job creation and wages over the past 20 years and suggests the explanation that different individuals have different motivations for moving the labour force survey indicates that workers moving for job reasons have migrated to areas of low unemployment and high nominal wages however the inflow into such areas has been more than compensated for by an outflow of people moving for non job reasons a logit analysis of destination choice indicates that job movers are attracted to areas with high wages but are not affected by high house prices in such areas in contrast active non job movers are deterred from areas of high house prices regional house price differences do not influence the destination choice of homemakers or the terminally sick but they do influence the destination choice of retirees all groups prefer to travel the least distance when moving

how closely do hypothetical surveys and laboratory experiments predict field behavior we compare the ability of three preference elicitation methods hypothetical choices nonhypothetical choices and nonhypothetical rankings and three discrete choice econometric models the multinomial logit mnl the independent availability logit ial and the random parameter logit rpl to predict actual retail shopping behavior in three different product categories ground beef wheat flour and dishwashing liquid overall we find a high level of external validity our specific results suggest that the nonhypothetical elicitation approaches especially the nonhypothetical ranking method outperformed the hypothetical choice experiment in predicting retail sales we also find that the rpl can have superior predictive performance but that the mnl predicts equally well in some circumstances experiment

did science cause the industrial revolution the role of science and technology in the first industrial revolution is still contested some scholars focusing on the textiles sector argue that skilled and talented artisans with no scientific training were mainly responsible for the key inventions others with steam power in mind hold that the links between science and the crucial inventions of the period were fundamental margaret jacob has been a leading contributor to the debate for nearly four decades the publication of her the first knowledge economy offers an opportunity to review the issues

would you choose your preferred option comparing choice and recoded ranking experiments previous research has shown that results from a choice experiment are statistically different from those obtained from a ranking experiment that is recoded and treated as a choice experiment using only the first rank by avoiding some of the shortcomings of previous comparisons we obtain the opposite results using data from the valuation of a cork oak reforestation program in the south of spain structural models and welfare estimations are statistically indistinguishable irrespective of the use of parametric or bootstrapping tests further we employ follow up questions and subsample analysis to test whether divergences appear when potential effects are isolated copyright 2008 oxford university press

willingness to accept compensation for the environmental risks of oil transport on the amazon a choice modeling experiment abstract this paper looks at the question of whether subsistence level indigenous people place a value on the preservation of ecosystems independent of direct impacts of environmental change such as impacts on their production activities the economics literature generally suggests that non use values don t exist among the poor and in the informal sector of the economy we examine this issue through a choice modeling experiment a survey was conducted of rainforest communities who live on the banks of the amazon river rio solimoes in the vicinity of proposed oil and gas pipelines the data were analyzed in the choice modeling framework revealing relatively high amounts of compensation that were necessary in order to accept the potential ecosystem damages associated with oil transport even if the people were completely compensated for direct damages such as loss of access to productive resources these results suggest that environmental quality is important for its own sake a result that is very different from the implicit assumption among many economists

ict and productivity growth in the united kingdom this paper develops new estimates of investment in and output of information and communication technology ict these new estimates imply that gdp growth has been significantly understated particularly since 1994 a growth accounting approach is employed to measure the contribution of ict to the growth of both aggregate output and aggregate input on both counts the contribution of ict has been rising over time from 1989 to 1998 ict output contributed a fifth of overall gdp growth since 1989 55 per cent of capital deepening the growth of capital per hour worked has been contributed by ict capital since 1994 this proportion has risen to 90 per cent ict capital deepening accounts for 25 per cent of the growth of labour productivity over 1989 98 and 48 per cent over 1994 8 but even when output growth is adjusted for the new ict estimates both labour productivity and tfp growth are still found to slow down after 1994

are results from non hypothetical choice based conjoint analyses and non hypothetical recoded ranking conjoint analyses similar conflicting findings have been found in previous research that compared choice based conjoint analysis and ranking conjoint analysis in a public good setting the present paper revisits this issue for a private good in a non hypothetical context using small and large choice sets our results suggest that in a small choice set setting participants preferences and willingness to pay are similar across the two conjoint analysis formats however in large choice sets a divergence between the two conjoint analysis formats emerges hence the two conjoint analysis formats can only be used interchangeably in small choice sets not in large choice sets

the impact of deal proneness on wtp estimates in incentive aligned value elicitation methods even after controlling for hypothetical biases some incentive aligned value elicitation methods still produce different willingness to pay wtp estimates in this study we compare wtp estimates from three incentive aligned value elicitation methods real choice experiment rce real double bounded dichotomous contingent valuation rcvm and becker degroot marschak auction bdm we find that participants aggressiveness in obtaining low prices i e deal proneness influences wtp estimates in the bdm auction but not those elicited from the rce and rcvm the participants with higher levels of deal proneness tend to submit lower bids in the bdm auction the discrepancies in wtp estimates between different incentive aligned procedures are narrower for participants with lower levels of deal proneness our results indicate that the bids in bdm auctions may be understated and the auction mechanism may induce the gambling behavior of people who are deal prone that is whether the bdm auction is truly incentive aligned is again called into question we also discuss the practical implications for food retailers

an incentive compatible conjoint ranking mechanism a simple method for making ranking based conjoint analysis incentive compatible is proposed the incentive compatible mechanism involves people purchasing a product profile with a probability proportional to its assigned rank in an empirical application related to consumer preferences for beef attributes we find that the forecasted market share for a new pasture raised steak obtained using incentive compatible rankings was significantly greater than that implied from traditional hypothetical conjoint rankings people s rankings of ground beef products were not affected by the mechanism or by information about pasture raised beef copyright 2008 oxford university press

using conjoint analysis to quantify public preferences over the environmental impacts of wind farms an example from spain this paper focuses on the effect on people s utility of the potential environmental impacts of wind farm developments we report on research designed to provide insight into their preferences and we show how two alternative choice modelling techniques can be used to estimate them our results show that significant social costs in the form of environmental impacts can be associated with wind farm developments as relative environmental values are revealed by these methods it would be possible to develop wind farms in such a way that minimises the total social costs of the investment and which maximises its net benefits

understanding consumer dynamic decision making under competing loyalty programs the authors develop an incentive aligned experimental paradigm to study how consumer purchase dynamics are affected by the interplay between competing firms loyalty programs and their pricing and

using choice experiments to value the environment this paper we outline the choice experiment approach to environmental valuation this approach has its roots in lancaster s characteristics theory of value in random utility theory and in experimental design we show how marginal values for the attributes of environmental assets such as forests and rivers can be estimated from pair wise choices as well as the value of the environmental asset as a whole these choice pairs are designed so as to allow efficient statistical estimation of the underlying utility function and to minimise required sample size choice experiments have important advantages over other environmental valuation methods such as contingent valuation and travel cost type models although many design issues remain unresolved applications to environmental issues have so far been relatively limited we illustrate the use of choice experiments with reference to a recent uk study on public preferences for alternative forest landscapes this study allows us to perform a convergent validity test on the choice experiment estimates of willingness to pay

choice modelling approaches a superior alternative for environmental valuation in this paper we examine some popular choice modelling approaches to environmental valuation which can be considered as alternatives to more familiar valuation techniques based on stated preferences such as the contingent valuation method a number of choice modelling methods are consistent with consumer theory and its focus on an attribute based theory of value permits a superior representation of many environmental management contexts however choice modelling surveys can place a severe cognitive burden upon respondents and induce satisficing rather than maximising behavioural patterns in this framework we seek to identify the best available choice modelling alternative and investigate its potential to solve some of the major biases associated with standard contingent valuation we then discuss its use in the light of policy appraisal needs within the eu an application to the demand for rock climbing in scotland is provided as an illustration

on consumer preferences and the willingness to pay for term life insurance abstract we run a choice based conjoint cbc analysis for term life insurance on a sample of 2017 german consumers using data from web based experiments individual level part worth profiles are estimated by means of a hierarchical bayes model drawing on the elicited preference structures we then compute relative attribute importances and different willingness to pay measures in addition we present comprehensive simulation results for a realistic competitive setting that allows us to assess product switching as well as market expansion effects on average brand critical illness cover and underwriting procedure turn out to be the most important nonprice product attributes hence if a policy comprises their favored specifications customers accept substantial markups in the monthly premium furthermore preferences vary considerably across the sample while some individuals are prepared to pay relatively high monthly premiums a large fraction exhibits no willingness to pay for term life insurance at all presumably due to the absence of a need for mortality risk coverage we also illustrate that utility driven product optimization is well suited to gain market shares avoid competitive price pressure and access additional profit potential finally based on estimated demand sensitivities and a set of cost assumptions it is shown that insurers require an in depth understanding of preferences to identify the profit maximizing price

debt and communications technology diffusion retrospective evidence this study has evaluated the relationship between debt in the capital structure of firms and the dynamics of broadband and digital technology adoption in the united states based on a large dataset on local exchange carriers in the united states over a contemporary historical fourteen year period from 1988 to 2001 using treatment effects modeling the impact of debt in impacting the levels of firms broadband deployment has been found to be negative and significant the primary source of debt in the sector has been in the form of arm s length corporate bonds and the assumptions of the monitoring hypothesis associated with such debt that lenders in the face of information and collective actions problems might not be able to control managers and hence invest less in highly technology intensive situations are supported by the data additionally the data set has been split into separate sets for two periods one between 1988 and 1995 for the period before the telecommunications act of 1996 came into force and the other set between 1996 and 2001 and the results have stayed consistent a test of the coefficients between the two periods has shown that the negative impact of leverage on broadband deployment has become stronger after the introduction of competition in the sector and this has suggested that the change in the institutional logics between the two periods has been of material impact in influencing lenders perceptions

measuring consumers willingness to pay at the point of purchase abstract economists psychologists and marketing researchers rely on measures of consumers willingness to pay wtp in estimating demand for private and public goods and in designing optimal price schedules existing market research techniques for measuring wtp differ in whether they provide an incentive to consumers to reveal their true wtp and in whether they simulate actual point of purchase contexts the authors present an empirical comparison of several procedures for eliciting wtp that are applicable directly at the point of purchase in particular the authors test the applicability of becker degroot and marschak s 1964 well known incentive compatible procedure for assessing the utility of lotteries to measuring consumers wtp in three studies the authors explore the reliability validity and feasibility of the procedure and show that it yields lower wtp estimates than do non incentive compatible methods such as open ended and double bounded contingent valuation they show experimentally t

a low carbon industrial revolution insights and challenges from past technological and economic transformations recent efforts to promote a transition to a low carbon economy have been influenced by suggestions that a low carbon transition offers challenges and might yield economic benefits comparable to those of the previous industrial revolutions this paper examines these arguments and the challenges facing a low carbon transition by drawing on recent thinking on the technological economic and institutional factors that enabled and sustained the first british industrial revolution and the role of general purpose technologies in stimulating and sustaining this and subsequent industrial transformation processes that have contributed to significant macroeconomic gains these revolutions involved profound long drawn out changes in economy technology and society and although their energy transitions led to long run economic benefits they took many decades to develop to reap significant long run economic benefits from a low carbon transition sooner rather than later would require systemic efforts and incentives for low carbon innovation and substitution of high carbon technologies we conclude that while achieving a low carbon transition may require societal changes on a scale comparable with those of previous industrial revolutions this transition does not yet resemble previous industrial revolutions a successful low carbon transition would however amount to a different kind of industrial revolution

strong steam weak patents or the myth of watt s innovation blocking monopoly exploded abstractjames watt s 1769 patent is widely supposed to have stood in the way of the development of high pressure steam technology until it finally expired in 1800 we dispute this popular claim we show that although it is true that high pressure steam technology developed only after the expiration of watt s patent the delay was due to factors other than that patent itself including the widely held opinion that the use of high pressure engines were excessively risky indeed watt s monopoly rights may actually have hastened the development of the high pressure steam engine by inspiring richard trevithick to revive a supposedly obsolete technology so as to invent around them

using conjoint analysis to derive estimates of compensating variation abstract we use several approaches to derive estimates of hicksian compensating variation from conjoint ratings data the different estimation approaches produced mixed results with respect to consistency with utility theory statistical significance of key variables magnitude of welfare estimates and confidence bounds on welfare estimates these findings suggest conjoint analyses are not a panacea for the problems being debated regarding contingent valuation and travel cost methodologies and conjoint questions appear to share many of the advantages and disadvantages associated with dichotomous choice contingent valuation questions

the climacteric in late victorian britain and france a reappraisal of the evidence the paper investigates the question of whether the trend rate of growth of gdp slowed down in britain or france in the nineteenth century we establish that real gdp belongs to the trend stationary process class of time series in each case rather than the difference stationary process and using kalman filter techniques analyse trends in a model incorporating time varying parameters without specifying breakpoints in advance we find contrary to the literature that neither country experienced a climacteric our results suggest that economic historians have been prone to exaggerated views of variations in trend economic growth

part time versus full time work and child care costs evidence for married mothers this paper contributes to the analysis of female labour supply by accounting for both child care costs and differences in part time and full time work an ordered probit model is used to examine the impact of child care costs on the work status of married mothers data are drawn from the canadian national child care survey and the labour market activity survey the results from this paper show the degree to which child care subsidies may have differential impacts on part time and full time work decisions by mothers the child care cost elasticities for part time and full time employment are reported to be 0 21 and 0 71 respectively

dyadic compromise effect existing research on the compromise effect has focused exclusively on the individual this paper investigates compromise effects in a setting that involves multiple individuals making a choice we study whether the dyadic compromise effect dce exists the association between dyadic and individual compromise effects and strategies to mitigate the dce we build a statistical model of dyadic choice that formally incorporates dce we conduct two studies to test our proposed models empirically in study 1 we begin with an investigation of the dce with student subjects in study 2 we test for the presence of dce among married couples when making retirement investment choices in both studies model free and model based evidence provides strong support for the presence of dce a model that incorporates dce provides a better fit than models that do not evidence in support of dce is shown to be robust to alternative compromise effect model specifications and utility aggregation methods we find that the indi

empirical generalizations and marketing science a personal view marketing has matured to the point where it seems desirable to take stock of where we are what we have learned and fruitful directions for extending the knowledge base that has developed science is a process involving the interaction between empirical generalizations and theory an empirical generalization is a pattern or regularity that repeats over different circumstances and that can be described simply by mathematical graphic or symbolic methods one of the purposes of the empirical generalizations conference held at wharton on february 16 18 1994 was to develop a list of examples of such empirical generalizations in marketing empirical generalization can precede a theory to explain it or it can be predicted by a theory science is the process of interaction between theory and data that leads to higher level theories examples are provided here of empirical generalizations in marketing and their theoretical counterparts one example is provided of a higher level theory

an experimental approach to climate finance the impact of auction design and policy uncertainty on renewable energy equity costs in europe abstract this paper aims at shedding some lights on how policy induced uncertainty affects the cost of capital of renewable energy power plants to this end the paper focuses on renewable energy auctions and on the ongoing brexit negotiations first the paper reviews auction frameworks across europe and discusses the impact of the different designs on project risk then a stated preference approach is leveraged to investigate how policy design and the uncertainty regarding the future arrangements between the uk and the eu contribute to determine the cost of equity for renewable energy the results show that improved auction design can help to lower the equity cost between 0 5 and 1 5 the evidence on brexit is rather weak and if anything suggests only a higher relevance of these negotiations for english based investors than for those based in eu27

is cultural heritage really important for tourists a contingent rating study in this article we present the results of a contingent rating study carried out on a sample of tourisits visiting scicli a sicilian town known for its baroque heritage in particular we focus on different attributes of tourism products namely season accommodation and cultural heritage to study how much each of these attributes weights in tourists preferences we also study how the socio demographic characteristics of people affect their evaluation of the different attributes of tourism products the heritage endowment appears to be far from being the most important factor this result is consistent across different socio demographic subgroups of interviewed persons

technical change and the demand for skills during the second industrial revolution evidence from the merchant marine 1891 1912 abstract using a large individual level wage data set we examine the impact of a major technological innovation the steam engine on the demand for skills in the merchant shipping industry we find that the technical change created a new demand for engineers a skilled occupation it had a deskilling effect on production work moderately skilled able bodied seamen were replaced by unskilled engine room operatives on the other hand able bodied seamen carpenters and mates employed on steam vessels earned a premium relative to their counterparts on sail vessels and this appears partly related to skill

variety vice and virtue how assortment size influences option choice assortment size has been shown to influence whether consumers make a choice but could it also influence what they choose five studies demonstrate that because choosing from larger assortments is often more difficult it leads people to select options that are easier to justify virtues and utilitarian necessities are generally easier to justify than indulgences consequently choosing from larger assortments often shifts choice from vices to virtues and from hedonic to utilitarian options these effects reverse however when situational factors provide accessible reasons to indulge underscoring the role of justification implications for choice difficulty and justification processes are discussed

modeling choice interdependence in a social network this paper investigates how individuals product choices are influenced by the product choices of their connected others and how the influence mechanism may differ for fashion versus technology related products we conduct a novel field experiment to induce and observe choice interdependence in a closed social network in our experiment we conceptualize individuals choices to be driven by multiattribute utilities and we measure their initial attribute preferences prior to observing their choice interdependence and collecting network information these design elements help alleviate concerns in identifying social interaction effects from other confounds given that we have complete information on choices and their sequence we use a discrete time markov chain model nonetheless we also use a markov random field mrf model as an alternative when the information on choice sequence is missing we find significant social interaction effects our findings show that whereas experts exert asymmetrically gre

great expectations assortment size expectations and satisfaction abstract recent research challenges the idea that greater choice is always desirable showing that larger assortments can increase choice deferral and switching the current research demonstrates that even when consumers make a purchase the same item may generate lower satisfaction when chosen from a larger rather than a smaller assortment the authors explain this effect in terms of an expectation disconfirmation mechanism when assortments are small consumers have low expectations about their ability to match their preferences as assortment sizes increase so do consumers expectations of the degree of preference match they can achieve subsequently consumers may experience greater negative expectation disconfirmation or less positive expectation disconfirmation when a chosen item comes from a larger rather than a smaller set either less positive or more negative disconfirmation leads to lower choice satisfaction the results from three studies support this expectation based process and establish t

whatever the customer wants the customer gets exploring the gap between consumer preferences and default electricity products in germany abstract in liberalized electricity markets residential customers can choose their preferred provider and select among a variety of different electricity products including green power options successful product design and marketing strategies for green electricity may provide electricity providers with a competitive advantage while at the same time contributing to energy policy objectives this requires however a thorough understanding of customer preferences we investigate the relative importance of different product attributes in creating customer value and find that price and electricity mix are the two most important attributes the german electricity customers we surveyed in 2009 expressed an implicit willingness to pay a premium of about 16 for electricity from renewable sources we conclude that consumers are willing to pay a significant price premium for an upgrade from the current default electricity mix in germany to a more environmentally friendly default electricity mix and discuss implications for marketing strategy and energy policy our findings are based on a dataset of 4968 experimental choices made by 414 german residential consumers collected in a stated preference survey

downward occupational mobility and part time women workers 1988 downward occupational mobility and part time women workers applied economics vol 20 no 4 pp 485 495

the impact of choice inconsistencies in stated choice studies a new test procedure revealing mutuallyinconsistent choices has been developed andapplied to stated choice data our analysisshows that inconsistent choices commonly occurin several stated choice tasks an applicationof the test to the norwegian value of timestudy data shows that failing to excludeinconsistent choices resulted in asubstantially higher value of time theinconsistent choices were made by less educatedparticipants as the tasks were undertaken inthe easy context of choosing travelalternatives with three attributes practitioners of more complex and cognitivedemanding designs should be particularilyconcerned with these results

the sources of british economic growth since the industrial revolution not the same old story this paper updates the classic growth accounting research of the early 1980s taking account of improved data that has subsequently become available the picture of long run growth which results from incorporating many revisions is considerably different the long run path of productivity growth is now that of a roller coaster with twin peaks in the third quarters of the 19th and 20th centuries rather than a u shape productivity growth appears to have been very slow to accelerate in the industrial revolution the notion of an edwardian climacteric is not persuasive and the current productivity slowdown stands out as unprecedented