unfixed resources perceived costs consumption and the accessible account effect consumption depletes one s available resources but consumers may be unaware of the total resources available for consumption and therefore be influenced by the temporary accessibility of resource accounts consistent with this possibility consumers in four experiments perceived a unit of consumption to be smaller and consequently consumed more when large resource accounts of money calories or time e g the money in their savings account were made temporarily accessible compared with when small resource accounts were made temporarily accessible e g the money in their wallet manipulating the cognitive accessibility of resources available for consumption influences both subjective judgment and behavior

price promotions cause impatience in this research the authors propose that incidental exposure to price promotions can cause downstream impatience in an unrelated domain specifically price promotions trigger reward seeking a ge

citations and incentives in academic contests i consider a contest between scholars on the basis of three popular indices of citation there exist equilibria in which there are more and better quality papers in the total citations contest than in the h index contest in some cases the total citations contest yields the same quality of papers but more papers than the euclidean contest as the cost of writing a paper increases the h index is inferior to the total citations index in both the quality and quantity of papers this result is partly driven by how the number of papers constrains how the h index counts citations jel d72

where are the economists who publish publication concentration and rankings in europe based on cumulative publications we measure the past production of research articles by current members of european economics institutions all econlit journals are used weighted to reflect differences in quality both a long 1971 2000 and a short 1996 2000 time period are considered we also provide production indices that take into account the authors career length the total output of each research center is measured as well as its production per member the focus is on 600 centers from eighteen european countries eu 14 israel norway switzerland and turkey european centers are compared to the top sixty u s economics departments statistics regarding the concentration of article production across researchers institutions and countries are provided as well as on publication habits jel a14 l11 r32

cultural differences in consumer impatience abstract in this article the authors examine cross cultural variations in how people discount the future specifically they predict that people from western cultures are relatively less patient and therefore discount the future to a greater degree than do people from eastern cultures and thus westerners value immediate consumption relatively more furthermore on the basis of regulatory focus theory the authors predict that when easterners are faced with the threat of a delay in receiving a product i e a prevention loss they are more impatient whereas when westerners are faced with the threat of not being able to enjoy a product early i e a promotion loss their impatience increases this enhanced impatience manifests in preference for expedited consumption of a product purchased online in two studies in both studies the authors used a priming methodology on bicultural singaporean participants the results support the predictions in the second study they also found evidence in support

valuation of landmass degradation using fuzzy hedonic method a case study of national capital region a hedonic model to determine the revealed willingness to pay for landmass of different suitability classes based on landmass functional characteristics obtained through subjective assessments is developed for the national capital region in india the inherent non specificity involved in subjective evaluation is minimized using fuzzy logic based regression technique the proposed fuzzy regression involves regression using central values of triangular fuzzy number and minimization of non specificity using linear programming the revealed willingness to pay for landmass of different suitability classes is used for valuation of disbenefits due to urban expansion on landmass of different agricultural suitability classes in national capital territory of delhi appropriate pricing policies to prevent the future inappropriate landuse practices are developed using the landmass valuation

is economics a house divided analysis of citation networks we investigate divisions within the citation network in economics using cita tion data between 1990 and 2010 we consider all partitions of top institutions into two equal sized clusters and pick the one that minimizes cross cluster ci tations the strongest division is much stronger than could be expected to be found under idiosyncratic citation patterns and is consistent with the reputed freshwater saltwater division in macroeconomics the division is stable over time but varies across the fields of economics

a non unitary discount rate model we develop a simple macroeconomic model in which agents discount their utility from consumption and the utility from leisure at different rates under this setting time inconsistency emerges for the preferences of agents moreover the time inconsistency problem generates two types of inefficiencies intratemporal and intertemporal we examine the welfare effects of savings subsidy and consumption tax the effects of taxation in our model are quite different from those in the standard model if the discount rate for consumption is higher lower than that for leisure today s self cares less more about the consumption of the future selves than the leisure of the future selves depressing stimulating the consumption of future selves improves the utility of today s self hence a positive negative consumption tax rate improves the utility level of all selves

cointegration relationships and hedonic pricing of differentiated commodities an application to price dynamics in the us dairy sector this study investigates the implications of hedonic pricing for price dynamics of differentiated commodities a conceptual model of hedonic pricing is developed under a leontief technology showing how commodity prices reflect the underlying value of their components implications for the existence of cointegration relationships among commodity prices are derived an application to the pricing and dynamics of selected us dairy commodities is presented it provides evidence on the role of component valuation in the dynamics of dairy commodity prices in the short run as well as in the long run distinguishing between market regime and government regime when the government price support is active the analysis finds significant differences in dairy price dynamics between the two regimes

average derivative estimation of hedonic price models conventional parametric techniques for estimatinghedonic price models require a correct functionalform in this paper we side step this parametricshortcoming by estimating a hedonic price model usingaverage derivative estimation ade thissemiparametric approach produces robust estimates ofthe marginal effects without assuming a specificfunctional form a priori in our application ofthe model to a unique data set on korean home prices ade produced estimates consistent with priorexpectations providing initial evidence that themodel may represent a viable alternative when usingthe hedonic approach

the labor illusion how operational transparency increases perceived value aubiquitous feature of even the fastest self service technology transactions is the wait conventional wisdom and operations theory suggest that the longer people wait the less satisfied they become we demonstrate that because of what we term the labor illusion when websites engage in operational transparency by signaling that they are exerting effort people can actually prefer websites with longer waits to those that return instantaneous results even when those results are identical in five experiments that simulate service experiences in the domains of online travel and online dating we demonstrate the impact of the labor illusion on service value perceptions demonstrate that perceptions of service provider effort induce feelings of reciprocity that together mediate the link between operational transparency and increased valuation and explore boundary conditions and alternative explanations this paper was accepted by pradeep chintagunta and preyas desai special issue editors this paper was accepted by pradeep chintagunta and preyas desai special issue editors

the bottom dollar effect the influence of spending to zero on pain of payment and satisfaction spending that exhausts a budget is shown to decrease satisfaction with purchased products relative to spending when resources remain in the budget six studies including those in which participants earn and spend real resources and evaluate real products explore this bottom dollar effect this research contributes to prior mental accounting research regarding how costs influence decision making e g bundling coupling sunk costs and to the satisfaction literature supporting the role of pain of payment in this process we show that the bottom dollar effect increases as effort required to earn budgetary resources increases decreases in the presence of windfall gains and decreases when there is less time between budget exhaustion and replenishment mediation analyses further demonstrate the role of payment pain in the bottom dollar effect implications are discussed in the context of behavioral research marketing promotions management and public policy

we will be right with you managing customer expectations with vague promises and cheap talk delay announcements informing customers about anticipated service delays are prevalent in service oriented systems how delay announcements can influence customers in service systems is a complex problem that depends on both the dynamics of the underlying queueing system and on the customers strategic behavior we examine this problem of information communication by considering a model in which both the firm and the customers act strategically the firm in choosing its delay announcement while anticipating customer response and the customers in interpreting these announcements and in making the decision about when to join the system and when to balk we characterize the equilibrium language that emerges between the service provider and her customers the analysis of the emerging equilibria provides new and interesting insights into customer firm information sharing we show that even though the information provided to customers is nonverifiable it improves the profits of the firm and the expected utility of the customers the robustness of the results is illustrated via various extensions of the model in particular studying models with incomplete information on the system parameters allows us also to highlight the role of information provision in managing customer expectations regarding the congestion in the system further the information could be as simple as high congestion low congestion announcements or it could be as detailed as the true state of the system we also show that firms may choose to shade some of the truth by using intentional vagueness to lure customers

the time vs money effect shifting product attitudes and decisions through personal connection the results of five field and laboratory experiments reveal a time versus money effect whereby activating time vs money leads to a favorable shift in product attitudes and decisions because time increases focus on product experience activating time vs money augments one s personal connection with the product thereby boosting attitudes and decisions however because money increases the focus on product possession the reverse effect can occur in cases where merely owning the product reflects the self i e for prestige possessions or for highly materialistic consumers the time versus money effect proves robust across implicit and explicit methods of construct activation

retail level hedonics and the valuation of milk components a retail level hedonic model for analyzing the value of milk components contained in aggregate dairy product commodities is developed and applied to household food consumption survey data the findings support perrin s conjecture that a hedonic approach applied at the retail level can be used to value milk components milk component values are found to be a function of household sociodemographic variables the sample weighted average implicit fat value estimate was very similar to values published in two of three previous component value analyses in the journal but protein values were significantly different

research productivity over the life cycle evidence for academic scientists the relationship between age and the publishing productivity of ph d scientists is analyzed using data from the survey of doctorate recipients national research council and the science citation index the longitudinal nature of the data allows for the identification of pure aging effects in five of the six areas studied life cycle aging effects are present only in particle physics where scientists often speak of being on a religious quest is the indication that scientific productivity is not investment motivated vintage effects are also considered the expectation that the latest educated are the most productive is not generally supported by the data copyright 1991 by american economic association

congestion based lead time quotation for heterogenous customers with convex concave delay costs optimality of a cost balancing policy based on convex hull functions we consider a congestible system serving multiple classes of customers who differ in their delay sensitivity and valuation of service or product customers are endowed with convex concave delay cost functions a system manager offers a menu of lead times and corresponding prices to arriving customers who then choose the lead time price pair that maximizes their net utility value minus disutility of delay and price we investigate how such menus should be chosen dynamically depending on the system backlog to maximize welfare we formulate a novel fluid model of the problem and show that the cost balancing policy based on the convex hulls of the delay cost functions is socially optimal if the system manager can tell customer types apart if types are indistinguishable to the system manager the cost balancing policy is also incentive compatible under social optimization finally we show through a simulation study that the cost balancing policy does well in the context of the original stochastic problem by testing it against various natural benchmarks

a generalizable scale of propensity to plan the long and the short of planning for time and for money planning has pronounced effects on consumer behavior and intertemporal choice we develop a six item scale measuring individual differences in propensity to plan that can be adapted to different domains and used to compare planning across domains and time horizons adaptations tailored to planning time and money in the short run and long run each show strong evidence of reliability and validity we find that propensity to plan is moderately domain specific scale measures and actual planning measures show that for time people plan much more for the short run than the long run for money short and long run planning differ less time and money adaptations of our scale exhibit sharp differences in nomological correlates short run and long run adaptations differ less domain specific adaptations predict frequency of actual planning in their respective domains a very long run money adaptation predicts fico credit scores low planners thus face materially higher cost of credit

adding asymmetrically dominated alternatives violations of regularity and the similarity hypothesis an asymmetrically dominated alternative is dominated by one item in the set but not by another adding such an alternative to a choice set can increase the probability of choosing the item that dominates it this result points to the inadequacy of many current choice models and suggests product line strategies that might not otherwise be intuitively plausible

economics an emerging small world we study the evolution of social distance among economists over the period 1970 2000 while the number of economists has more than doubled the distance between them which was already small has declined significantly the key to understanding the short average distances is the observation that economics is spanned by a collection of interlinked stars a star is an economist who writes with many other economists most of whom have few coauthors and generally do not write with each other

revealed performances worldwide rankings of economists and economics departments 1990 2000 in this paper i study the production of academic research by economics departments and economists worldwide rankings are provided based on both citations and publications these rankings reveal a dominant position of the united states in the production of economics literature over time however the extent of this dominance is decreasing jel a10 a14

the value of time ten studies are used to document that time is valued in accordance with a double kinked value function there is a zone of indifference for small time gains losses increasing marginal utility disutility for moderate time gains losses and diminishing marginal utility disutility for large time gains losses moderate amounts of time exhibit increasing marginal utility disutility because larger blocks of time provide a more diverse set of usage opportunities it is only when it is difficult to imagine how more less time would be beneficial detrimental that there is diminishing marginal utility disutility for time thus time valuation shows increasing marginal utility when there is a time deficit but diminishing marginal utility when there is a time surplus these findings have implications for how other resources might be valued

the slowdown of the economics publishing process over the last three decades there has been a dramatic slowdown of the publication process at top economics journals a substantial part is due to journals requiring more extensive revisions various explanations are considered democratization of the review process increases in the complexity of papers growth of the profession and cost and benefit arguments changes in the profession are examined using time series data connections between these changes and the slowdown are examined using paper level data there is evidence for some explanations but most of the slowdown remains unexplained changes may reflect evolving social norms

a nonlinear programming analysis of production response to multiple component milk pricing the problem of feeding holstein cows so as to maximize revenue over feed costs was analyzed under various scenarios concerning milk component prices results suggested that production response of milk components to component price incentives was inflexible when compared to baseline solutions generated under a standard federal order pricing system fat production was within 3 5 and solids nonfat and fluid carrier within 1 0 of baseline levels for a 100 cow herd component pricing scenarios having blend prices equal to the blend price in the baseline scenario were associated with reductions in revenue over feed costs of less than 4

eliciting prospect theory when consequences are measured in time units time is not money we elicited the prospect theory components utility probability weighting and loss aversion when consequences are expressed as the time dedicated to a specific task or activity a similar elicitation was performed for monetary consequences to allow an across attribute time money comparison of the elicited components at the individual level we obtained less concave utility and smaller loss aversion for time than for money moreover while the probability weighting was predominantly inverse s shaped for both attributes it was less sensitive to probabilities and more elevated for time than for money this finding implies more optimism for gains and more pessimism for losses this paper was accepted by peter wakker decision analysis

affect or information labeling policy and consumer valuation of rbst free and organic characteristics of milk abstract using a labeling policy framework we answer the question of whether attitude has an impact on consumers valuation of rbst free and organic characteristics of milk we utilize 2 years of consumer survey data and a hedonic model to estimate marginal effects of attitude on consumer valuation of rbst free and organic milk findings indicate that in 2001 milk value was impacted by attitude regardless of whether attitude was measured using an opinion based or behavioral construct in 2004 the contribution of attitude to value was insignificant implications for labeling policy are discussed

adaptive behavior of impatient customers in tele queues theory and empirical support we address the modeling and analysis of abandonments from a queue that is invisible to its occupants such queues arise in remote service systems notably the internet and telephone call centers hence we refer to them as tele queues a basic premise of this paper is that customers adapt their patience modeled by an abandonment time distribution to their service expectations in particular to their anticipated waiting time we present empirical support for that hypothesis and propose an m m m based model that incorporates adaptive customer behavior in our model customer patience depends on the mean waiting time in the queue we characterize the resulting system equilibrium namely the operating point in steady state and establish its existence and uniqueness when changes in customer patience are bounded by the corresponding changes in their anticipated waiting time the feasibility of multiple system equilibria is illustrated when this condition is violated finally a dynamic learning model is proposed where customer expectations regarding their waiting time are formed through accumulated experience we demonstrate via simulation convergence to the theoretically anticipated equilibrium while addressing certain issues related to censored sampling that arise because of abandonments

contests with money and time experimental evidence on overbidding in all pay auctions competition for a prize frequently takes the form of dedicating time toward winning a contest those who spend more time become more likely to obtain the prize we model this competition as an all pay auction under incomplete information and report an experiment in which expenditures and rewards are in terms of time in the experiment subjects must stay in the laboratory doing nothing for an initially prespecified length of time however they can bid in terms of time to leave early the auction has an all pay structure so that if an individual does not submit the highest bid within her group she must stay for the additional time that she bid we correlate behavior in this game with behavior in an isomorphic all pay auction played with money bids we also consider how two measures of sophistication the cognitive reflection test crt score and performance on a probability calibration task correlate with behavior we find strong similarities in overall behavior between the auctions conducted with money and with time bidding greater than equilibrium levels is typical and as a consequence average earnings are negative in both auctions thus the result that there is overdissipation of rent in all pay auctions extends to competition in terms of time

travel configuration on consumer trip chained store choice we predict that in evaluating alternative equidistant trip chains i e the combining of multiple destinations into a single outing consumers will choose trip chains where destinations are more clustered i e closer to each other and further from the origin over equidistant trip chains where destinations are less clustered but closer to the origin this prediction is based on the assumptions of diminishing marginal sensitivity and reference point dependence postulated by reference dependent theory results of the first experiment provide support for this prediction results of the second experiment provide evidence that trip chain configuration affects route choice via both facets of reference dependent theory

waiting time and decision making is time like money time is a resource as such consumers have to make decisions regarding their use of time in the purchase and consumption of goods and services using prospect theory and mental accounting as theoretical frameworks this article investigates whether consumers treat time like money when they make decisions in a series of studies we found that the value of consumers time is not constant but depends on contextual characteristics of the decision situation our results also suggest that in deterministic situations people make decisions involving time losses in a manner consistent with the convex loss function proposed by prospect theory however in decision making under conditions of risk people seem to make risk averse choices with respect to decisions in the domain of time in contrast to the risk seeking behavior often found with respect to decisions involving losses of money we discuss the nonfungibility of time as an explanation for the discrepancy between decisions involving time and those involving money

where are they now tracking the ph d class of 1997 we report early career outcomes of economics ph d s by tracking the u s class of 1996 1997 we examine employment outcomes work activities salaries and graduates attitudes toward their jobs by 2003 all of the respondents were employed although almost half changed employers during the six years salaries of the cohort increased at an average annual rate of 8 2 from 1997 through 2003 academic year salaries rose about 5 7 per year whereas private sector salaries skyrocketed at 15 per year finally the median salaries of first year full time permanent 9 to 10 month academic economists hired in 2002 2003 actually exceed the median 2003 salaries of their counterparts initially hired in 1997 1998 some of this apparent salary inversion reflects a different mix of employers and departments between the two cohorts with the younger group securing relatively more jobs at higher paying institutions

spending time versus spending money we find systematic differences in the way that people spend time versus money ex post people are able to more easily accommodate negative outcomes by adjusting the value of their temporal inputs ex ante people are willing to spend more time for higher risk higher return options whereas when spending money the pattern is reversed and the more standard pattern of increasing risk aversion is observed although accurate assessment of the opportunity costs of time is key to making good decisions ambiguity in the value of time promotes accommodation and rationalization

the effects of publication lags on life cycle research productivity in economics we investigate how increases in publication delays have affected the life cycle of publications of recent ph d graduates in economics we construct a panel dataset of 14 271 individuals who were awarded ph d s between 1986 and 2000 in u s and canadian economics departments for this population of scholars we amass complete records of publications in peer reviewed journals listed in the jel a total of 368 672 observations we find evidence of significantly diminished productivity in recent relative to earlier cohorts when productivity of an individual is measured by the number of aer equivalent publications diminished productivity is less evident when the number of aer equivalent pages is used instead our findings are consistent with earlier empirical findings of increasing editorial delays decreasing acceptance rates at journals and a trend toward longer manuscripts this decline in productivity is evident in both graduates of top 30 and non top 30 ranked economics departments and may have important implications for what should constitute a tenurable record we also find that the research rankings of top economics departments are a surprisingly poor predictor of the subsequent research rankings of their ph d s graduates jel a11 j24 j29 j44