battery electric vehicles looking behind to move forward abstract it is getting increasingly crucial for policymakers to acquire reliable price forecasts for battery electric vehicles bevs to make choices and set priorities here we examine the prospects for the wide deployment of bevs following an ex post analysis of their learning rate and an ex ante forecast of their price up to 2040 we make a clear distinction between the mainstream of bevs and a hypothetical group of bevs that are technically on a par with internal combustion vehicles icvs to do so we introduce a new index in which the driving range and max speed of a vehicle are coupled together i e the mobility diffusion coefficient we highlight different shares of battery packs i e 19 1 and the ensemble of electrification components e g battery pack electric motor power electronics i e electrification cost 52 2 in the price of a bev our price projections suggest that there is no prospect of breakeven between bevs and icvs before 2040 for both groups of bevs because the current learning rates of 9 2 and 15 1 for the price and electrification costs respectively of bevs strong and long term support from policymakers is required to ensure competitiveness of bevs with icvs in the near future

the denomination effect labeled the denomination effect study 1 shows in three field studies that the likelihood of spending is lower when an equivalent sum of money is represented by a single large denomination e g one 20 bill relative to many smaller denominations e g 20 1 bills in two of the three field studies individuals spent more once the decision to spend had been made study 2 then shows that consumers deliberately choose to receive money in a large denomination relative to small denominations when there is a need to exert self control in spending study 3 further shows that the denomination effect is contingent on individual differences in people s desire to reduce the pain of paying associated with spending the results suggest that the denomination effect occurs because large denominations are psychologically less fungible than smaller ones allowing them to be used as a strategic device to control and regulate spending

on the electrification of road transport learning rates and price forecasts for hybrid electric and battery electric vehicles abstract hybrid electric vehicles hevs and battery electric vehicles bevs are currently more expensive than conventional passenger cars but may become cheaper due to technological learning here we obtain insight into the prospects of future price decline by establishing ex post learning rates for hevs and ex ante price forecasts for hevs and bevs since 1997 hevs have shown a robust decline in their price and price differential at learning rates of 7 2 and 23 5 respectively by 2010 hevs were only 31 22 2010 kw 1 more expensive than conventional cars mass produced bevs are currently introduced into the market at prices of 479 171 2010 kw 1 which is 285 213 2010 kw 1 and 316 209 2010 kw 1 more expensive than hevs and conventional cars our forecast suggests that price breakeven with these vehicles may only be achieved by 2026 and 2032 when 50 and 80 million bevs respectively would have been produced worldwide we estimate that bevs may require until then global learning investments of 100 150 billion which is less than the global subsidies for fossil fuel consumption paid in 2009 these findings suggest that hevs including plug in hevs could become the dominant vehicle technology in the next two decades while bevs may require long term policy support

on the perceived value of money the reference dependence of currency numerosity effects money illusion research shows that the nominal face value of money affects consumer perceptions of its real value recent mixed findings on consumer valuations in different currencies suggest that the underlying anchoring and adjustment processes are complex we develop a framework to identify boundary conditions that specify the direction of anchoring effects on valuations in different currencies consumers anchor on the numerosity of the nominal difference between prices and salient referents e g budgets when evaluating transactions support for our framework comes from a series of experiments that evoke different reference standards we discuss implications and opportunities for future research

assessing the progress toward lower priced long range battery electric vehicles abstract the aim of this study is to show the progress in attributes and prices of battery electric vehicles bev and to analyse in which market segments long range bev can be produced at comparable cost to conventional cars we assess 48 models available to consumers since 1997 collecting data on attributes weight and vehicle prices we also provide an analysis of recent progress in battery pack costs based on this data the share of bev vehicle price that is related to the battery pack is modelled to illustrate future progress we estimate when it is possible to produce a bev with a 200 mile range in a given price percentile we find that the price percentile where the price of a bev is comparable to conventional cars changes in a nonlinear way when battery pack costs fall below 200 250 usd kwh furthermore we show that battery pack costs of 150 usd kwh could imply that production costs of a bev with a 200 mile range are cost competitive for almost 50 of the us car market segments by 2020 finally the most critical conditions for this development are discussed and assessed by sensitivity analysis applying conservative values to our model

term structure of interest rates in the singapore asian dollar market this paper investigates empirically the term structure of interest rates in the singapore asian dollar market we consider extended versions of the arch m model of engle lilien and robins 1987 the extended models permit autocorrelation skewness and leptokurtosis in the residuals the robustness of the empirical tests with respect to alternative specifications of the arch process is examined it turns out that there is significant time varying term premium and this conclusion is independent of the hypothesized arch model

opportunity cost consideration normatively consumers should incorporate opportunity costs into every decision they make yet behavioral research suggests that consumers consider them rarely if at all this research addresses when consumers consider opportunity costs who considers opportunity costs which opportunity costs spontaneously spring to mind and what the consequences of considering opportunity costs are perceived constraints cue consumers to consider opportunity costs and consumers high in propensity to plan consider opportunity costs even when not cued by immediate constraints the specific alternatives retrieved and the likelihood of retrieval are functions of category structures in memory for a given resource some uses are more typical of the category of possible uses and so are more likely to be considered as opportunity costs consumers who consider opportunity costs are less likely to buy focal options than those who do not when opportunity costs are appealing but no less likely when opportunity costs are unappe

nested tests of alternative term structure theories controversies in term structure theory center around the existence and variability of term premia in securities yields in this paper the term premium on a default free n period bond is defined as the difference between its observable yield to maturity and the average expected per annum rate of return on an n period strip of rollover investments in one period bonds to test alternative term structure theories without introducing ex post proxies for expectational variables this paper uses a set of cross section interest rate forecasts collected jointly with burton malkiel of princeton university from a population of large institutional lenders at four different phases of a single interest rate cycle statistical tests strongly confirm the existence of nonzero term premia at each survey date thereby rejecting the pure expectations theory of the term structure additional tests are unable to reject restrictions implied by the liquidity premium hypothesis that term premia should be positive and increase with maturity finally contrary to the martingale hypothesis ex ante term premium data vary significantly overtime and show a positive association with the level of interest rates this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

disentangling the dividend information in splits a decomposition using conditional event study methods while folklore in finance holds that split valuation effects are due to dividend increases associated with splits little is known about magnitudes of dividend and nondividend components of split announcement effects we find that splits and dividends are indeed informational substitutes a notion we characterize more precisely but a significant portion of split valuation effects 46 according to our estimates cannot be attributed to dividend information in splits our techniques extend the literature on conditional event study methods and we illustrate their practical value in testing hypotheses and analyzing data not amenable to analysis by standard procedures article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

when more seems like less differential price framing increases the choice share of higher priced options four experiments supported by six supplemental studies show that premium but higher priced products e g direct flights larger capacity data storage devices are more popular when the additional

mental budgeting and consumer decisions consumers often set budgets for categories of expenses e g entertainment and track expenses against their budget because budgets cannot perfectly anticipate consumption opportunities people may earmark too much or too little money for a particular category this leads them to overconsume or underconsume goods in that category the results of three studies suggest that consumers do indeed set budgets and that budgeting may lead to underconsumption to show that consumers track expenses the studies demonstrate that budgeting effects are larger for purchases that are highly typical of their category such purchases reduce the amount people spend in a category and block the purchase of other typical items the studies control for satiation and income effects thus budgeting adds predictive power to standard economic consumer theory

good bye financial repression hello financial crash some unintended consequences of financial liberalization in latin america are analyzed in this paper intrinsic imperfectious in financial markets and the policy dilemmas they pose are reviewed first the stylized facts of southern cone experiments in financial liberization are then presented alternative ways of organlzing domestic capital markets under latin american conditions are discussed and an eclectic reform mongering program is proposed

the effect of credit on spending decisions the role of the credit limit and credibility the objective of the present research is to study consumer decisions to utilize a line of credit the life cycle hypothesis from economics argues that consumers should intertemporally reallocate their incomes over their life stream to maximize lifetime utility one form of intertemporal allocation is to use past income in the form of savings in the future a second form is the use of future income in the present this can only be done if consumers have access to a temporary pool of money that they can draw from and replenish in the future a function performed by consumer credit however our research reinforces prior findings that consumers are unable to correctly value their future incomes and that they lack the cognitive capability to solve the intertemporal optimization problem required by the life cycle hypothesis instead we argue that consumers use information such as the credit limit as a signal of their future earnings potential specifically if consumers have access to large amounts of credit they are likely to infer that their lifetime income will be high and hence their willingness to use credit and their spending will also be high conversely consumers who are granted lower amounts of credit are likely to infer that their lifetime income will be low and hence their spending will be lower however based on research in the area of consumer skepticism and inference making we also argue for a moderating role of the credibility associated with the credit limit specifically we argue that the above effect of credit availability would be particularly strong for consumers who believe that the credit limit credibly signals their future earnings potential i e a naive consumer who has limited experience with consumer credit however as consumers gain experience with credit they start discounting credit availability as a predictor of their future and start questioning the validity of the process used to set the credit limit hence with experience the effect of credit limit on the willingness to use credit should be attenuated we test these predictions in five separate studies in the first experimental study we manipulate credit limit and credibility and pose subjects with a hypothetical purchase opportunity consistent with our prediction credit limit impacted the propensity to spend but only when the credibility was high in the second experimental study we replicate these findings even when subjects were given information about their expected future salaries and also show that the credit limit influences their expectation of future earnings potential in the third study we show that the mere availability and increase of current liquidity cannot explain our findings in the fourth study we conduct a survey of consumers in which we measure a number of demographic characteristics and also ask them for their propensity to spend in a given purchase situation in the fifth study we use the survey of consumer finances scf dataset a triennial survey of u s families that is designed to provide detailed information on the use of financial services spending behaviors and selected demographic characteristics results from both studies 4 and 5 provide further support for our proposed framework credit limits influence spending to a greater extent for consumers with lower credibility younger consumers and less educated consumers across all studies we achieved triangulation by using a variety of approaches surveys and experiments subjects types young students and older consumers nature of predictor variables manipulated and measured dependent measures purchase likelihood credit card balance new charges and methods of analysis anova and regression and consistently found that increasing credit limits on a credit card increases spending especially when the credibility of the limit is high this paper joins a growing body of literature in marketing and behavioral decision theory that goes beyond the traditional domains of inquiry e g product choice effects of marketing mix variables and focuses on consumer decisions relating to the appropriate use of income to finance consumption our framework differs from prior research on the effect of payment mechanisms on spending in two significant ways first we are interested in the effects of the availability of credit on spending and not necessarily in the effect of the transaction format that is associated with each payment mechanism second while prior research has studied the point of purchase and historic i e prepurchase effects of credit the present research is concerned with the availability of credit in the future specifically our framework is invariant to the current and prior usage of credit by the consumer

a comparative analysis of reference price models the effect of reference price on brand choice decisions has been well documented in the literature researchers however have differed in their conceptualizations and therefore in their modeling of reference price in this article we evaluate five alternative models of reference price of which two are stimulus based i e based on information available at the point of purchase and three that are memory based i e based on price history and or other contextual factors we calibrate the models using scanner panel data for peanut butter liquid detergent ground coffee and tissue to account for heterogeneity in model parameters we employ a latent class approach and select the best segmentation scheme for each model the best model of reference price is then selected on the basis of fit and prediction as well as on the basis of parsimony in cases where the fits of the models are not very different in all four categories we find that the best reference price model is a memory based model namely one that is based on the brand s own price history in the liquid detergent category however we find that one of the stimulus based models namely the current price of a previously chosen brand also performs fairly well we discuss the implications of these findings

affordability of electric vehicles for a sustainable transport system an economic and environmental analysis abstract this paper compares the economic and environmental benefits of electric and hybrid electric vehicles with that of conventional vehicles without tax credits only the hybrids without plug in incur lifetime total costs equivalent to a conventional vehicle whereas the consumer affordability for all other vehicles is less encouraging and depends on changes in gasoline prices with the provision of federal tax incentives the lifetime total cost for all electric vehicle types that are driven for 120 000 miles over 12 years was found to be generally affordable with no more than 5 higher in lifetime total cost than a conventional vehicle except the hybrid electric plug in equipped with a 35 mile electric driving range results of sensitivity analysis reveal that a greater lifetime driven mileage would promote further overall cost savings even at a greenhouse gas abatement cost as low as 42 per ton our study has demonstrated the importance of an energy policy that includes tax credits to address the inadequacy of cost differentials and consumer affordability the environmental benefits provided by the electric and hybrid electric vehicles should satisfy consumers interest in protecting the environment reducing the dependence on imported fossil fuels and switching from traditional to alternative fuel vehicles

how to make a 29 increase look bigger the unit effect in option comparisons quantitative information can appear in different units e g 7 year warranty 84 month warranty this article demonstrates that attribute differences appear larger on scales with a higher number of units expressing quality information on such an expanded scale makes consumers switch to a higher quality option testifying to its practical importance expressing the energy content of snacks in kilojoules rather than kilocalories increases the choice of a healthy snack the unit effect occurs because consumers focus on the number rather than the type of units in which information is expressed numerosity effect therefore reminding consumers of alternative units in which information can be expressed eliminates the unit effect finally the unit effect moderates relative thinking consumers are more sensitive to relative attribute differences when the attribute is expressed on expanded scales the relation with anchoring and implications for temporal discounting and loyalty programs are discussed

the term structure of interest rates during a financial reform argentina 1977 81 abstract this paper studies the term structure of interest rates in argentina following the financial and monetary reforms of 1977 which mainly entailed the liberalization and deregulation of the financial system using first order conditions from the international capital asset pricing model we derived a set of term structure equations expressed in terms of returns data alone empirical implementation of these equations yielded results that are consistent with an important degree of time variation in term premiums

effect of face value on product valuation in foreign currencies ringgits p 1 u s dollar four studies demonstrate the robustness of the face value dinar p 1 effect across different currencies exchange rate frames and with samples from two countries and two studies show that ability related factors such as time pressure and experience moderate the face value effect the article concludes by discussing the theoretical implications of the findings

incommensurate resources not just more of the same abstract the pricing literature is replete with research that focuses on how consumers respond to sales promotions when both the reference level and the change are expressed in dollar terms i e discounts the psychophysics of pricing suggests that changes in monetary magnitude are not based on their absolute level but rather on their deviation from some reference level or how the change is framed often however a promotion is presented in nonmonetary terms e g a premium when two resources are delivered simultaneously but in different currencies e g receive a free razor with the purchase of a can of shaving cream the marginal value of the nonmonetary incremental benefit may be difficult to evaluate in relation to the focal product or its price therefore the value of the premium may be less likely than a comparable discount to be viewed in a relative sense and thus less likely to suffer from diminishing marginal returns this research explores how people often fail to exhibit the sam

specification seeking how product specifications influence consumer preference we offer a framework about when and how specifications e g megapixels of a camera and number of air bags in a massage chair influence consumer preferences and report five studies that test the framework studies 1 3 show that even when consumers can directly experience the relevant products and the specifications carry little or no new information their preference is still influenced by specifications including specifications that are self generated and by definition spurious and specifications that the respondents themselves deem uninformative studies 4 and 5 show that relative to choice hedonic preference liking is more stable and less influenced by specifications

socio technical inertia understanding the barriers to electric vehicles it is widely accepted that electrification of the transport sector is one of several technological trajectories that could redress some of the environmental issues associated with the growth in travel demand including climate change and oil demand at a global scale and air quality and noise pollution at the urban scale electric vehicles have been considered a promising technology at repeated intervals over the last century but this promise has not been realised this paper is a contribution to understanding the key tools and strategies that might enable the successful introduction of new technologies and innovations by exploring the key barriers to electric vehicles encountered in two countries uk and germany where the automobile industry has been historically significant the study evaluates stakeholders opinions on relevant regulation infrastructure investment r d incentives and consumer incentives the key findings of the research are that the introduction and penetration of evs is confronted by several barriers that inhibit a larger market penetration under current conditions which in turn casts doubt on the assumptions of strategic niche management and transitions theory

reframing the discount as a comparison against the sale price does it make the discount more attractive abstractsales induced through price promotions depend heavily on discount depth so firms create mechanisms to influence perceptions of discount depth typically consumers compute discount depth as the difference between the sale price and the original price with this difference compared against the original price but thus far no research has examined the effect of reframing this difference by comparing the discount depth against the sale price multiple studies including a field study across four grocery stores show that framing the discount depth by comparing it against the sale price increases consumers discount depth perceptions and thus increases purchase intentions as evidence of the underlying process the authors identify boundary conditions related to both individual differences numeracy and managerially relevant factors discount depth size in addition to contributing to research on price promotions behavioral pricing and numeric processing the article offers implications for both