material flows vs natural capital what makes an economy sustainable abstract in the discourse about sustainable development constant natural capital is frequently referred to as a criterion for ecological sustainability but what is natural capital the concept will be analyzed by presenting arguments in favour of using the term and different versions of sustainability strong and weak subsequently a critique of the natural capital concept is brought forward from an ecological as well as from an economic perspective following this critique the use of material inputs and the material input per unit of service mips as a measure for the environmental impact potential is suggested dematerialisation is understood to be an alternative management rule for sustainability in conclusion a change of perspective is proposed due to the conceptual and measurement problems associated with the constant natural capital criterion which refers to a stock it seems more reasonable from a scientific as well as from a practical perspective to add flows i e material inputs to a decision criterion for whether a development is sustainable or not

promoting network competition by regulating termination charges abstract this paper contributes to the policy debate about the optimal termination charge when penetration rates are explicitly taken into account although lowering termination charges towards cost leads to more efficient usage its impact on consumer surplus is ambiguous since it induces an increase in fixed subscription fee through the so called waterbed effect we show that a reduction in termination charge below cost has two opposing effects on consumer surplus it softens competition but also helps to internalize network externalities hence it can decrease or increase penetration depending on whether or not the first effect dominates the second we show that the first effect dominates the second when networks are weak substitutes or the penetration rate is high

a quality adjusted price index for personal computers this study estimates quality adjusted price indexes for personal computers three separate hedonic models are estimated using data from 1 841 personal computers over the period 1984 1991 in addition to the traditional linear model a nonlinear model is developed and estimated the nonlinear model is parsimonious in parameters allows time varying attribute prices and can be estimated using a pooled data set the results indicate that nominal quality adjusted prices of mail order firms declined at an average annual rate of 24 62 quality adjusted prices of major manufacturers declined at a slower rate

practice prize report planning new tariffs at tele ring the application and impact of an integrated segmentation targeting and positioning tool tele ring is a mobile phone organization selling contracts and cell phones in the austrian market the market situation in 2005 was highly competitive and dynamic resulting in relatively short tariff life cycles excessively long lead times made tele ring s management feel dissatisfied with their new tariff development process furthermore a new competitor had entered the market posing a major threat and it was unclear how to effectively safeguard tele ring s position in the market in cooperation with the management we implemented and tested a new segmentation targeting and positioning tool which provides managers with information on their target markets customer preferences competitors strengths and customer segments it allows for the simultaneous visualization of these data on a single map and facilitates timely and accurate decision making in particular we report on the design and the implementation of a new pricing scheme formel 10 which became the most successful new tariff introduction in this competitive market tele ring s managers were very much impressed with our tool s ability to represent the market on a single map and with its capacity to allow for intuitive interpretation in addition the tool enhanced internal communication between its users and different stakeholders during the new tariff development process

on the optimality of the full cost pricing abstract this article is aimed at defining the full cost pricing as a leader follower game in two tier organizations i the upstream unit fixes the production capacity and uses it as a cost driver to compute the average cost ii the downstream unit operates on the market and chooses the output level on the basis of the average cost in the cournot oligopoly case the full cost pricing is compared with other pricing rules there exists a wide range of values of the fixed cost for which the full cost pricing dominates any other pricing rules in terms of gross profit

degrowth a missile word that backfires language use and cognition are generally underappreciated topics in ecological economics even if effective communication is essential for social and political impact to challenge the economic growth paradigm the concept and term degrowth has recently been embraced by various activists and scholars drawing on a body of evidence from cognitive science psychology and related fields we argue that using the word degrowth might be disadvantageous in public communications about alternatives to growth we begin by reviewing arguments in favor of the term then we outline three main counterarguments first degrowth has a downward orientation which triggers negative initial feelings due to the basic conceptual metaphor up is good down is bad this puts advocates of an alternative to the growth paradigm in an unfavorable starting position given that subsequent thought will be unconsciously biased by the initial feeling second more conscious reactions are likely to be negative as well because people unfamiliar with the term will mis interpret it as a contraction of the economy even though it is not always meant as such third degrowth repeats and possibly strengthens the growth frame and may activate undesirable frames associated with economic recessions to conclude we briefly discuss alternative terms and summarize key aspects to be considered for more effective communication

a probabilistic choice model for market segmentation and elasticity structure marketing scholars commonly characterize market structure by studying the patterns of substitution implied by brand switching though the approach is useful it typically ignores the destabilizing

innovation in services the purpose of this article is to lay the foundations of a theory that can be used to interpret innovation processes in the service sector the hypothesis underpinning this article is based on lancaster s definition of the product in both manufacturing and services as a set of service characteristics the article follows the example of those who have sought to apply lancaster s work to technological phenomena various modes of innovation in the service sectors are highlighted and illustrated

using bill and keep interconnect arrangements to soften network competition abstract this paper demonstrates that low below marginal cost interconnect or access charges can be used to sustain high subscription prices under network competition with two part tariffs and price discrimination this result stands in contrast to other results in the literature suggesting that high interconnect charges can play a collusive role

sunk costs uncertainty and market exit a real options perspective in this article we examine whether the option value of keeping an operation alive will deter firms from exiting an industry we find that uncertainty dissuades firms from exiting an industry but only when the sunk costs of entering and exiting that industry are sizeable moreover we argue and find that sunk costs can be influenced by the technological intensity of an industry by the extent to which a firm competes on the basis of innovation and by the firm s diversification strategy copyright 2009 the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

incentives and uncertainty an empirical analysis of the impact of demand on innovation we study the impact of demand on innovation by focusing on a sample of small and medium sized enterprises in several industries and european countries we analyse how demand stimulates innovation by providing economic incentives and reducing uncertainty considering the size of the market as a proxy for the presence of demand we find support for the idea that the presence of incentives stimulates innovation this is particularly true for process innovation in considering interaction with customers as a way to reduce uncertainty we find that firms that see customers as the most important sources of information for both innovation ideas and completion tend to introduce product innovations firm size r d expenditure and sectoral effects also matter

gender differences in labor market decisions evidence from rural mexico this study examines gender employment differences in mexicos rural sector using the 1994 survey of rural entrepreneurs and financial services it employed an approach that separate the effects of initial endowments from the gender differences that can be attributed to preferences available opportunities labor market discrimination and other market conditions all of which referred to as labor market structural issues findings show that higher levels of education are associated with a higher employment propensity although the variable for some secondary schooling is not significant for men as expected married men are more likely to be employed than single men while for females the opposite results ensues which indicate that women in rural areas tend to specialize in non market activities particularly after marriage also gender differences in labor market experience proxied by age seems to influence the self employment choice these results have implications for public policy aimed at reducing gender inequality in labor market outcomes in rural mexico the main lesson is that policies that focus solely on individual endowments could have a limited impact on reducing gender inequality if they are not accompanied by policies addressing structural supply and demand factors that are unique to the study population and that influence the choice of women to enter and remain in the workforce

the economics of the greenhouse effect the recognition that economic activity is contributing to climatic change with attendant costs that may be of large magnitudes has set in motion a substantial research effort this paper seeks to review the contribution of economics to analysis of the greenhouse effect and to the policies and instruments suggested as means of mitigating its damage a brief overview of the causes and consequences of global warming is given and a number of energy economy forecasting models are examined as the costs of global warming depend upon the extent to which preventative and adaptive measures are undertaken the techniques available to evaluate these costs are surveyed we examine extant targets for greenhouse gas emissions reduction and explore the frameworks within which optimal policy targets can be designed the paper also considers the narrower question of minimized abatement costs and surveys the types of models used to estimate them the merits of alternative policy instruments are examined paying particular attention to the role that risk and uncertainty and the costs of monitoring and implementation of policy under conditions of imperfect information may play in the choice of instruments problems of international co operation in the development of abatement policy are examined and we consider the compensations across both nations and generations that are likely to be necessary conditions for effective action

optimal access pricing for natural monopoly networks when costs are sunk and revenues are uncertain this paper studies optimal access pricing for natural monopoly networks with large sunk costs and uncertain revenues using techniques from the option pricing literature we show that the optimal access price corresponds to a risk free form of the efficiency component pricing rule ecpr that is where the opportunity cost is based on the risk free rate of return we also show that at levels of revenue above the optimal level that triggers entry the entrant should pay a premium above risk free ecpr that rewards the incumbent for relinquishing his rights to the risky cash flows at the higher revenue level

the role of incentives for opening monopoly markets comparing gte and boc cooperation with local entrants while the 1996 telecommunications act requires all incumbent local telephone companies to cooperate with local entrants section 271 of the act provides the bell companies but not gte additional incentives to cooperate using an original data set i compare the negotiations of at t as a local entrant with gte and with the bell companies in states where both operate my results suggest that the differential incentives matter the bells accommodate entry more than does gte as evidenced in quicker agreements less litigation and more favorable prices offered for network access consistent with this there is more entry into bell territories

sustainability indicators policy and governance issues for ecological economics abstract ecological economics is a major forum for discussion of theoretical and analytical aspects of measuring sustainability the role of sustainability indicators as an evaluation method for sustainability within the emerging context of governance merits further analysis focusing on policy processes surrounding the production of sustainability indicators this paper addresses two questions what is the potential utility of indicators for policy and in what ways can indicators influence governance the former is addressed by exploring three disciplines with long histories of indicator application public administration studies urban studies and environmental sciences the latter is addressed by distilling key perspectives from public policy literature on knowledge utilisation and policy learning which become the foundation for clarifying the notion of policy resonant indicators this clarification is achieved by canvassing the spectrum of the influences on indicators and the mechanisms of their resonance in policy processes the final section of the paper brings these arguments together by exploring two major insights in terms of challenges for ecological economics strengthening indicator theory and practice by addressing four key ingredients and mobilisation of indicators through their active use within the context of governance

the rhetorics of ecological economics since the early 1980s there has been a lively discussion about the rhetoric of economics ecological economists however so far have not tried to incorporate this discussion into their work this paper is a first step towards including the discourse on rhetoric into the self awareness of ecological economics after a brief outline of what this discourse is about the importance of metaphors as one aspect of rhetoric is examined connections of the rhetorical discourse to ecological economics as a post normal science are shown it is argued that two rhetorics of ecological economics can be distinguished internal and external rhetoric while the former refers mostly to methodological issues the latter is of particular importance for the political impact that ecological economics can have finally some suggestions for research are made

demand heterogeneity and technology evolution implications for product and process innovation the evolution of technology has been a central issue in the strategy and organizations literature however the focus of much of this work has been on what is essentially the supply side of technical change the evolution of firm capabilities we present a demand based view of technology evolution that is focused on the interaction between technology development and the demand environment in which the technology is ultimately evaluated we develop a formal computer simulation model that explicitly considers the influence of heterogeneity in market demand the presence of consumers with different needs and requirements on firms innovation choices the model is used to examine the dynamics of product and process innovation utterback and abernathy 1975 the analysis reveals that demand heterogeneity offers an alternative to supply side explanations of the technology life cycle further by considering the implications of decreasing marginal utility from performance improvements the model highlights the role of technologically satisfied consumers in shaping innovation incentives and suggests a rationale for a new stage in the technology life cycle characterized by increasing performance at a stable price the stage has not yet been treated formally in the literature but is widely observed most prominently in digital and information based technologies

submarket dynamics and innovation the case of the us tire industry beginning in 1922 the rate of exit of us tire producers increased sharply and the industry began a severe and protracted shakeout just 5 years earlier the tire industry experienced a surge in entry that led to a rise of over 80 in the number of producers we propose an explanation for this episode based on the idea of industry submarkets which we incorporate in a model of shakeouts we test this theory and alternative explanations for the surge in entry and exit and the shakeout using a novel data set on patenting in tires and production in the early 1920s of the cord tire a key innovation we feature in our theory our analysis suggests that the development of a new submarket can open up opportunities for entry but also stimulate innovation and in the process reinforce the advantages of the leading incumbents accentuating the shakeout of producers copyright 2010 the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

heterogeneous preferences and new innovation cycles in mature industries the amateur camera industry 1955 1974 this paper examines the amateur camera industry between 1955 and 1974 the case raises important issues for our understanding of the product lifecycle first an industry can experience more than one round of radical product and process innovation in its history second there is not a strict sequence of product innovation followed by process innovation third the existence of a dominant design depends on there being a relatively homogeneous set of consumers heterogeneous consumer preferences support different camera designs in two distinct market niches in the amateur camera industry fourth new rounds of entry and exit and new industry shake outs can occur with new innovative entrants displacing old firms fifth when the new firms are from developing countries a shift in global production occurs the success of new japanese entrants in this period lay in their being more successful innovators not in their exploiting wage cost advantages

oecd organisational discourse peer reviews and sustainable development an ecological institutionalist perspective as part of the recent ideational turn in research on international organisations the study of organisational discourse has gained popularity yet ecological economics has thus far paid little attention to the role of organisations as sites for the discursive battles over the meaning of sustainable development for an international organisation without regulatory powers such as the oecd organisation for economic cooperation and development discourse is the main vehicle for policy influence but it also plays a key role in re defining the organisation s identity and authority the oecd s organisational discourse has been strongly dominated by modern mainstream economics and has given little room for marginalised discourses this paper compares from the perspective of institutionally oriented ecological economics ioee and borrowing from critical discourse analysis the experience from attempts to integrate the concept of sustainable development within two oecd peer review mechanisms the economic surveys and the environmental performance reviews the extent to which the respective conceptions of sustainable development in the two reviews are in line with the principles of ioee and the reasons for the apparent failure of sustainable development discourse to gain foothold within the organisation are analysed

price and quality of desktop and mobile personal computers a quarter century historical overview when introduced in 1976 personal computers pc s had only several kilobytes of randomaccess memory ram and no hard disk processed commands at speeds of less than 1 megahertz mhz yet typically cost several thousand dollars today s pc s have megabytes mb of ram and gigabytes of hard disk memory process commands at speeds exceeding 1 000 mhz and often cost less than 1 000 ever more powerful pc boxes have been transformed into increasingly smaller and lighter notebooks in the context of such rapid technological progress government statistical agencies face the formidable tasks of reliably tracking real output growth in the pc industry and adjusting pc prices for quality changes in 1986 following collaboration with ibm researchers the bureau of economic analysis bea began adjusting mainframe computer prices for quality change using hedonic price methods rosanne cole et al 1986 in 1990 the bureau of labor statistics bls first published an experimental price index for mainframe computers also based on hedonic methods today the bls publishes producer and consumer price indexes for a number of electronic goods including informationprocessing equipment using hedonic price methods dennis fixler et al 1999 the hedonic regression methods employed by researchers and government statisticians to adjust pc prices for quality changes are usually based on pooled cross section and time series data and they typically assume some parameter equality across models as well as some parameter stability over time here we report on results from an examination of the stability of annual pc hedonic price parameters over almost the first quarter century of their history 1976 1999 and on the equality of estimated hedonic price parameters between desktop and mobile models we compute price indexes based on alternative assumptions concerning parameter equality and stability and we assess at what point in time when constructing price indexes mobile and desktop models were appropriately treated as distinct product groups

network competition ii price discrimination our companion article developed a clear conceptual framework of negotiated or regulated interconnection agreements between rival operators and studied competition between interconnected networks under the assumption of nondiscriminatory pricing this article relaxes this assumption and allows networks to charge different prices for calls terminating on the subscriber s network and those terminating on a rivals network this creates a price differential between services that are identical for the consumer and generates network externalities despite network interconnection we show that in both the mature and entry phases of the industry the nature of competition is substantially affected by such price discrimination

developing post normal technologies for sustainability abstract the last two decades have seen the development of an array of techniques and practices aimed at promoting sustainability for many results have been disappointing there are charges that supposedly new organisational approaches remain embedded in managerialist functionalist and anti dialogic frameworks that are a significant part of the problem similarly the technocratic scientization of public policy is viewed as ill equipped to deal with the social economic and ecological issues currently facing neo liberal societies in this paper we seek to interpret these frustrations and identify pathways that move beyond this specifically we argue that the gap between sustainability rhetoric and sustainability practices can be reconceptualised through the practice of science as post normal and through developing the notion of post normal sustainability technologies pnsts the exponents of post normal science show why stakeholder engagement in sustainability and other scientific issues is critical for the legitimacy and quality of decisions and the admission of complexity in decision making and accountability processes building on this now well established foundation we seek to characterise and give examples of pnsts as tools for achieving this participation wherein stakeholders assume expertise and interact with those possessing more traditional forms of expertise in order to co produce knowledge about sustainability recognition of ideological and value diversity is also central to the post normal sustainability agenda and with pnsts the values based nature of the issues involved is articulated in a way that seeks to bring politics openly into the picture to this end we identify processes that are emerging in the literature and in practice that will enable pnsts these include extended peer communities and multi actor heuristics agonistic processes and new characterisations of citizenship that support moves to sustainability in so doing we believe that pnsts offer clumsy solutions for wicked problems that can be engaged with in both the research and practice arenas as significant contributions to addressing urgent needs

the case for methodological pluralism abstract ecology and economics share the same greek root both address complex systems ecology consists of numerous approaches to understanding natural systems energetics population biology food web models hierarchy theory to mention just a few within ecology field knowledge and the reporting of new observations are well respected economics on the other hand is dominated by one pattern of thinking and standard of proof the market model and econometrics within economics field knowledge and observations per se are little valued agreement on a correct method is frequently taken as an indication of the maturity of a science the argument is developed in this paper that all the aspects of complex systems can only be understood through multiple methodologies the agreement on method within economics however seems to reflect stronger pressures within the discipline for conformity than for truth relative to ecology since ecological economics seeks to understand a larger system than either economics or ecology seeks to understand a diversity of methodologies is appropriate and pressures to eliminate methodologies for the sake of conformity should be avoided

discursive ethics in ecosystems valuation and environmental policy abstract discursive ethics has its origin in the frankfurt school of critical theory as an applied ethic it is also associated with practical philosophy in this paper discursive ethics is discussed as a conceptual and practical framework for ecosystems valuation and environmental policy the discussion focuses on three main strengths of discursive ethics 1 it offers an integrated process for ecosystems valuation 2 it offers a decision making framework for responding to uncertainty and risk and the reality of action in indeterminacy 3 it offers a process for deconstructing common valuation concepts and identifying conditions for their critical reconstruction the theoretical discussion is followed by a case study example which illustrates the usefulness of discursive ethics in identifying valuation biases hidden behind disciplinary assumptions and conceptual norms these include cultural norms of rationality information biases which consider hard facts over soft values and disciplinary valuation biases which distinguish between hard and soft expert contributions as the case study illustrates a successful application of discursive ethics in ecosystems valuation and environmental policy demands sensitivity to such underlying biases beyond its policy relevance discursive ethics may also offer a framework for an extended peer discourse through which new foci in research and education can be identified

the diffusion of mobile telecommunications services in the european union we study the technological and regulatory determinants of the diffusion of mobile telecommunications services in the european union using a logistic model of diffusion we find that the transition from the analogue to the digital technology during the early 1990s and the corresponding increase in spectrum capacity had a major impact on the diffusion of mobile telecommunications countries which granted first licenses at later points in time show a significant but slow catching up effect implying international convergence only by around 2006 the impact of introducing competition has also been significant during both the analogue and the digital period though the effect was smaller than the technology effect

the second generation of ecological economics how far has the apple fallen from the tree this paper examines the discourse produced in the academic journal ecological economics from its inception in 1989 and compares this discourse with that of the field of environmental economics i used methods for discourse analysis alceste and iramuteq on 6308 abstracts of papers published in four journals namely ecological economics the journal of environmental economics and management environmental values and environmental and resource economics published between 1989 and 2013 the results suggest that the discourses of ecological economics and environmental economics have grown closer over time the semantic classification of co occurrent terms used in ecological economics indicates increasing significance of the notions of ecosystem services and of monetary valuation i argue that this trend is parallel to costanza s career path which suggests the rise of a tacit recognition of the new environmental pragmatic scientific approach i conclude with some of the implications for ee of promoting this kind of discourse to such an extent

a sketch of the economics of the greenhouse effect over the last decade scientists have studied extensively the greenhouse effect which holds that the accumulation of carbon dioxide co2 and other greenhouse gases ghgs is expected to produce global warming and other significant climatic changes over the next century see stephen schneider 1989 the present study presents an economic approach for analyzing policies to slow climate change

collusive conduct in duopolies multimarket contact and cross ownership in the mobile telephone industry the deregulation of the telecommunications industry has resulted in a variety of industry structures which have been created in hopes of increasing competition one example is the licensing of cellular telephone services in the united states where the fcc created duopolies in which two firms were granted licenses to compete in strictly defined product and geographic markets taking advantage of the unique regulatory environment we test to what degree duopolistic competition leads to competitive market outcomes we find that cross ownership and multimarket contact are important factors in explaining non competitive prices

the influence of industry downturns on the propensity of product versus process innovation this article sheds light on how industry fluctuations affect firms propensity to innovate we test two seemingly conflicting arguments that suggest how firms are more or less inclined to engage in innovation activities during industry fluctuations by studying a panel of 622 italian manufacturing firms during the period 1995 2003 we show how differentiating between product and process innovation may help reconcile the theory of opportunity cost of innovation with the cash flow effect argument we find that industry downturns are related to product and process innovation in different ways firms tend to invest in product innovation rather than process innovation in downturns the findings have implications for both theory showing when the opportunity cost of innovation dominates and research design showing the importance of both the input and output measures in innovation studies and how they might influence the results

towards a theory of innovation in services abstract the paper sets out some foundations for a theory of innovation in service industries and indicates the role that such innovation may play in the generation of growth cycles the discussion starts with the origins of a major new technology in the capital goods sector and its subsequent development according to the normal product cycle theory this is followed by a consideration of the transmission process by which the new technology is taken up in user industries within the consumer goods and services sector a reverse product cycle is then proposed to describe the innovation process which takes place in user industries such as services once the new technology has been adopted this cycle starts with process improvements to increase the efficiency of delivery of existing services moves on to process innovations which improve service quality and then leads to product innovations through the generation of new types of services finally the existence of two out of phase innovation cycles in the capital and consumer sectors deriving from a technology transmission process which causes disequilibrium in technical progress between the two is put forward as a mechanisms helping to create the long wave fluctuations in economic development associated with schumpeterian technological revolutions

economics as discourse an analysis of the language of economists 1 introduction 2 economics as a postmodern discourse 3 a hermeneutic approach to economics if economics is not science and if it is not merely mathematics then what could it be 4 economics as ideology 5 the textbook presentation of economic discourse 6 hermeneutics subjectivity and the lester machlup debate toward a more anthropological approach to empirical economics 7 walras economics and mechanics translation commentary context 8 deconstructing robert lucas

estimating price cost markups under nonlinear pricing competition this paper provides a structural interpretation to the estimates of the shape and position of nonlinear tariffs we focus on the evaluation of price cost margins and thus we need to identify marginal cost from an equilibrium model of nonlinear pricing competition we estimate these price cost margins using quarterly data from the early u s cellular telephone industry between 1984 and 1988 our results indicate that the margins are increased under duopoly due to a significant reduction in marginal costs moreover we find that the price cost margins vary over the consumption levels and that low end users are subject to higher price cost margins than high end users the impact of competition further increases the margins in the low end user segment relative to high end users in that sense the benefits of competition which are largely due to increased efficiencies are passed on relatively more to high end users we also show that these findings are robust even if one includes a number of observable market demand and cost variables jel d43 d82 l96

ecological economic modeling in a pluralistic participatory society abstract this paper discusses the evolution of the role of the scientist and clarifies the demands on all scientists who wish to have their scientific results well represented in public debate this evolution is traced starting with the progressive movement in the late 1800s when the neutrality of scientists was taken for granted and the facts were believed to be sufficient to resolve most public policy questions to the current situation marked by the increasingly tentative nature of scientific inquiry disagreement among experts within a specific discipline and interdisciplinary conflict reflected in competing paradigms and interest groups given this perspective on scientific inquiry and modeling the process of convincing one s peers and the public at large is only partially separable in spite of symptoms of information overload rigorous analysis is a prerequisite to having anything persuasive to say to either group easy to understand explanations are dependent on not a short cut around such analysis the paper discusses some specific recommendations on how scientists can contribute to the pluralistic policy formulation process

interactive innovation in financial and business services the vanguard of the service revolution abstract the concept of the reverse product cycle as a theoretical model of innovation in services is developed further in this paper using the vanguard sector of financial and business services as a case study example of how innovation operates as an interactive process the parallels between the emerging service revolution and the nineteenth century industrial revolution are explored in order to identify the key characteristics of the vanguard sectors in each technological revolution the particular nature of the new techno economic paradigm based on information technology is then identified leading to a discussion of the unique conjunction of factors favouring financial and business services as the vanguard sector of the service revolution the central part of the paper then offers an elaboration of the reverse product cycle model stressing the interactive nature of the innovation process as it reflects the prevailing technological opportunities market conditions and industry structures within the adopting sector the example of retail banking is used to illustrate how the innovation cycle proceeds from increases in efficiency through improvements in service quality to the generation of new network service products there is then a discussion of the question of the optimal industry structure for innovation suggestion that in the reverse product cycle large corporations are likely to dominate the early stage of incremental process innovations whereas later in the cycle there is an important role for small entrepreneurial firms to advance more radical process and product innovations the concluding section summarises six major characteristics of the service revolution and suggests how it may proceed from its first to its second phase as the focus of innovation shifts from the vanguard sector of financial and business services to a much broader range of higher level knowledge based services many of which are currently delivered by the public sector

observed and unobserved preference heterogeneity in brand choice models this paper extends the scanner based choice literature by explicitly incorporating individual level brand preference data we illustrate our model using a unique data set that combines survey and scanner data collected from the same individuals the addition of individual specific brand preference information significantly improves fit and prediction furthermore this observed heterogeneity better explains choice than does unobserved heterogeneity in the standard scanner model s parameters more importantly we find that the standard model underestimates the importance of consumers brand preferences and overestimates both brand loyalties and price sensitivities brand loyalty is overestimated because models without preference information confound state dependence heterogeneity and preference effects price sensitivities are inflated because the average preference based consumer is implicitly assumed to be more willing to switch from his preferred brand than is the real preference based consumer further standard models overestimate the heterogeneity in price and loyalty sensitivities and misidentify both price and loyalty sensitive consumers the managerial implications of our findings and the applicability of our methodology when survey data are collected infrequently and for only a subsample of consumers are pursued we demonstrate that even under these circumstances better populationwide pricing and promotion decisions are identified and more accurate targeting results

macroeconomic narratives in a world of crises an analysis of stories about solving the system crisis since the financial crisis in 2008 a series of publications on macroeconomic responses to the compound crises of the economy and the environment have emerged under labels such as green new deal green growth and the great transition attempts at offering coherent responses to the crises have been made these responses have in common that they all present a large number of policy proposals for ways in which to solve the current crises and achieve a sustainable economy this article provides a mapping of a selection of such responses and an analysis of their content the analysis combines discourse theory and narrative analysis and investigates discourses by studying the narratives they produce the study thus contributes to the long line of analyses on discourses on sustainable economy empirically by investigating and analysing a number of macroeconomic proposals for solving the system crisis and theoretically by elaborating on the concept of narrative dynamics in relation to persuasive strength in political decision making

research note using basket composition data for intelligent supermarket pricing how can supermarkets use the vast data they have to design strategies to compete for large basket shoppers potentially their most profitable customers we say analyze the data to glean basket composition of heterogeneous consumers of theoretical and practical interest is the question will our suggestion improve supermarket profits and if so by what pricing strategies by answering this we can also answer the question do results of extant research on single product marketing that using such information intensifies competition and lowers profits generalize to multiproduct marketing by supermarkets that carry several products and whose patrons purchase multiple items we derive equilibrium data based intelligent pricing strategies that also produce increased supermarket profits what is more interesting is our result that data analysis is profitable whether or not a competitor undertakes data analysis if not too costly implementing data analysis is a dominant strategy moreover with comprehensive data analysis connecting basket information and household data stores can increase profits further by targeting rewards at individual households thereby segmenting the market more completely in contrast to past research findings we show that for supermarkets even under competition use of information on past purchases enables intelligent pricing better segmentation and higher profits

choosing the wrong calling plan ignorance and learning when a firm offers several tariff options to its customers the possibility arises that they will make an ex post mistake in tariff choice this occurs since consumers cannot commit to a certain purchase level at the time they subscribe to the service option and thus they might find out later that a different choice of tariff could have resulted in a lower payment for their actual level of consumption this is a common feature of increasingly important subscriptions markets in which buyers and sellers maintain long term nonanonymous relations and where learning induces interesting dynamics on the one hand buyers may learn their taste over time thus making the right choice as times goes by on the other hand the seller may design options to identify the type of each buyer and if possible to extract a higher proportion of their consumer surplus by offering tariff options that are better tailored to the profile of the consumer this paper focuses on the first type of learning in turn i document buyer behavior in a subscriptions market using data from a tariff experiment run by south central bell scb in kentucky during the second half of 1986 the most frequently studied case of subscriptions markets is the choice among optional calling plans ocps in the telephone industry this paper shows that contrary to the conven

a contract and balancing mechanism for sharing capacity in a communication network we propose a method for determining how much to charge users of a communication network when they share bandwidth our approach can be employed either when a network owner wishes to sell bandwidth for a specified period of time to a number of different users or when users cooperate to build a network to be shared among themselves our proposed contract and balancing mechanism can mediate between rapidly fluctuating prices and the longer time scales over which bandwidth contracts may be traded an advantage of the process is that it avoids perverse incentives for a capacity provider to increase congestion

quality adjusted price indexes for portable computers constructing an accurate price index requires controlling for changes in quality the potential for bias is especially problemaic for rapidly changing goods such as computers this study extends previous research on quality adjusted or hedonic price indexes for computers by investigating price and quality changes in portable models in particular recent research by nelson et al 1994 and berndt et al 1995 on desktop and portable computers is extended after adjusting for quality changes price indexes in this tudy exhibit average declines of 26 to 33 per year the magnitude of quality adjusted price changes is consistent with these auhors and with the extensive line of research on quality adjusted price indexes for computers of various types the results emphasize the extent of potential bias in estimating price level changes if technological advancement is ignored significant potential for bias implies the need to account properly for changes in quality in consructing indexes for both individual

latent submarket dynamics and industry evolution lessons from the us laser industry in its first 35 years the us laser industry was characterized by steady growth in output and the number of producers whereas subsequently the number of producers steadily declined despite continued growth in the industry s output a model of industry evolution that features the creation destruction and fusing of independent submarkets is developed to explain these two eras data on all laser producers are used to test various implications of the model concerning entry exit and innovation the findings suggest that the emergence of an integrative submarket can fundamentally alter an industry s market structure and the character of innovation which is applied to explain historical developments in the evolution of various innovative industries

practice prize article chan4cast a multichannel multiregion sales forecasting model and decision support system for consumer packaged goods we discuss the development and implementation of chan4cast a sales forecasting model by pack size category channel region customer account and a web based decision support system dss for consumer packaged goods in addition to capturing the effects of such variables as past sales trend own and competitor prices and promotional variables and seasonality the model accounts for the effects of temperature significant holidays new product introductions trading day corrections and adjustments to the wholesale level in general the model forecasts sales volume satisfactorily for a leading consumer packaged goods company the dss enables top and mid level executives in sales marketing strategic planning and finance to develop accurate forecasts of sales volume plan prices and promotional activities over a long time horizon to track sales response to marketing actions over time and to simulate forecast scenarios based on possible marketing decisions and other variables chan4cast is being rolled out for more users and more divisions in the company the key take aways are that successful development and implementation of a rigorous marketing science model require a strong internal champion a careful balance between modeling sophistication and practical relevance good diagnostic features regular validations and greater attention to the development of a fast and responsive dss

the spatial representation of market information to be used effectively market knowledge and information must be structured and represented in ways that are parsimonious and conducive to efficient managerial decision making this manuscript proposes a new latent structure spatial model for the representation of market information that meets this requirement when applied to a priori defined e g socioeconomic segments our proposed methodology provides a new way to display marketing data parsimoniously via dimension reduction through a factor analytic specification in post hoc studies we simultaneously derive market segments from the data and represent the structure of market information within each of the unobserved derived groups segments we summarize all relevant information concerning derived market segments via a series of maps that prove conducive to the quick and accurate dissemination of customer and competitor market information the associations between the variables are captured in a reduced space where each variable is represented by a vector that emanates from the origin and terminates on a hypersphere of unit the vector length is arbitrary radius e g a unit circle in a two dimensional space the angles between the variable vectors capture the correlation structure in the reduced space the method is very general and can be utilized to identify latent structures in a wide range of marketing applications we present an actual commercial marketing application involving the normalized prescription shares of specialists of ethical drugs to demonstrate the effectiveness of representing market information in this manner and to reveal the advantage of the proposed methodology over a more general finite mixture based method the proposed methodology derives three segments that tend to group specialists with respect to the stage of adoption of innovation in this therapeutic category the specialists in the first group appear to be laggards because they prescribe more of the older class of brands however they also have a higher than average preference for a newer and somewhat cheaper brand this suggests that some of the specialists belonging to this segment may be price sensitive while others may exhibit a slower adoption cycle replacing the older class with the newer brands and thus skip one stage in the cycle of innovation the specialists in the second segment are heavy users of the newer class of brands but are not particularly fast to adopt the latest brands finally the last segment clearly consists of innovators traditionally pharmaceutical marketers have viewed specialists in one of two extremes all specialists are the same i e the market has only one segment or all specialists are very different i e the market consists of 10 000 segments of one physician each not surprisingly this analysis suggests a more moderate perspective specialists adopt new products at different rates

recent evolutionary theorizing about economic change this famous passage from marshall s principles of economics it first appeared in the fifth edition which came out in 1907 nicely brings out two issues which are as germane to economics today as they were when marshall wrote the first is the heavy reliance by economists in their formal theorizing on the notion of equilibrium the other is the appeal that biological conceptions3x201d have for many economists particularly when their focus is on economic change

innovation and recurring shifts in industrial leadership three phases of change and persistence in the camera industry abstract this study examines factors underlying three phases of change or persistence in industrial leadership in the sector of interchangeable lens cameras over the past century during this period there were two major phases of leadership change both associated with the emergence of innovations involving major discontinuities in the industry s core technologies first japan won market leadership from germany in the mid 1960s after commercializing the single lens reflex slr camera that replaced the previously dominant german rangefinder camera second in the late 2000s japanese latecomer firms and a korean firm developed mirrorless cameras which allowed them to capture the majority of market share from the incumbent japanese leaders we also examine the long period about 60 years between these two phases of change during which leading japanese firms were able to sustain their market leadership despite the digital revolution from the 1980s to 1990s this paper explores the factors influencing these contrasting experiences of change and persistence in industry leadership the analysis integrates several aspects of sectoral innovation systems i e windows of opportunity associated with technology demand and institution as well as the strategies of incumbents and latecomer firms the conclusions highlight the complex and diverse combinations and importance of the factors that help explain the patterns of shifts in leadership

willingness to pay estimation with choice based conjoint analysis addressing extreme response behavior with individually adapted designs the increasing consideration of behavioral aspects in operations management models has prompted greater use of choice based conjoint cbc studies in operations research such studies can elicit consumers willingness to pay wtp a core input for many optimization models however optimization models can yield valid results only if consumers wtp is estimated accurately a simulation study and two field studies show that extreme response behavior in cbc studies such that consumers always or never choose the no purchase option harms the validity of wtp estimates reporting the share of consumers who always and never select the no purchase option allows for detecting extreme response behavior this study suggests an individually adapted design that avoids extreme response behavior and thus significantly improves wtp estimation accuracy

trends in the well being of american women 1970 1995 this paper examines the trends in the well being of american women over the last 25 years a time of significant changes in the relative economic status of women and in the labor market as a whole a broad range of indicators are considered to capture changes in women s well being in the family as well as in the labor market for virtually all age and education groups substantial evidence is obtained of rising gender equality in labor market outcomes notably labor force participation wages and occupational distributions broad evidence is also found of greater gender parity within married couple families as the housework time of husbands increased relative to wives and the relative wages of wives rose compared to their husbands however parallel to the recent evidence of the declining labor market position of lower skilled men there has been a similar deterioration in the economic status of less educated women especially high school dropouts their labor force participation rates and wages have risen at a much slower pace than those of more highly educated women while their incidence of single headship has increased much more rapidly these findings for less educated women serve to underscore the widening gap between more and less skilled americans of both sexes as well as to emphasize its broad dimensions

demand and innovation in services the case of mobile communications abstract this paper aims to analyse the pricing strategies of mobile communications operators and examine the role of demand characteristics in the development of new tariff plans in so doing we depart from a traditional industrial organization approach to price discrimination and interpret new tariff plans as innovations in the spirit of schumpeter we look at competition in this sector as depending upon this form of innovation and we argue that given the specific features of the industry the development of new tariff plans is strongly related to the users characteristics and behaviour our main point is that in a context of uncertainty demand affects firms innovative strategies in two ways first by providing information on user behaviour and by increasing the capability of market segmentation and second by providing the incentives to innovate this argument is supported by an empirical analysis carried out on the basis of an original dataset which includes all the tariff plans on offer in the history of the italian market between 1992 and 2005 we find that both a firm s installed customer base and the level of market saturation play a role in shaping firms innovative pricing strategies in terms of the number and characteristics of the new tariff plans

network competition i overview and nondiscriminatory pricing we develop a model of unregulated competition between interconnected networks and analyze the mature and transition phases of the industry in this deregulated environ ment networks pay negotiated or regulated access charges to each other and com pete in prices for customers we show that a competitive equilibrium may fail to exist for large access charges or for large network substitutability and that freely negotiated access charges may prevent effective competition in the mature phase of the industry and erect barriers to entry in the transition toward competition last we examine the meaning and impact of policies such as the efficient component pricing rule

plant size and the decline of unionism abstract declining plant size is shown to explain a significant portion of the recent decline in unionism particularly in manufacturing the paper also shows how to use the probit model to decompose the change in unionism into explained and unexplained components

how do switching costs affect market concentration and prices in network industries i investigate the effects of switching costs on the market outcome in network industries using a dynamic duopoly model of price competition in the presence of an outside option i find that the role of switching costs depends on network effects and the outside option without a viable outside option high switching costs can neutralize the tendency towards high market concentration associated with network effects but with a viable outside option switching costs increase market concentration furthermore switching costs lower prices if network effects are modest and there exists a viable outside option but generally raise prices otherwise

network competition with income effects i generalize the workhorse model of network competition to include income effects in demand empirical work has shown income effects to be positive and statistically significant income effects deliver theoretical results consistent with regulatory concern about excessive termination rates unregulated network operators competing in nondiscriminatory retail contracts negotiate termination rates above cost for any positive income effect this also holds when operators discriminate between on net and off net calls if networks are differentiated operators profit from increasing termination rates above cost under second degree price discrimination if a sufficient share of consumers prefer on net off net contracts and their subscription demand is relatively inelastic