a many good many person corlett hague tax rule abstract generalising the corlett hague rule yields an insight into the case for differentiated commodity taxation when the linear income tax is not optimal thus complementing earlier work by deaton

micro to macro simulation a primer with a labor market example simulation models now widely used in the physical sciences can also help economists in depicting the actions and interactions of individuals and firms through time such models can be built and run on any personal computer they can illuminate a wide variety of issues that are difficult to analyze with an economist s conventional tool kit and are especially useful in studying dynamic processes microsimulation models allow the analyst to produce simulated aggregate time series that are rigorously consistent with the assumptions made about behavior on the micro level thus simulations provide a means of bridging the micro macro split in economic analysis this article provides an introduction to microsimulation how it works how to do it its potential and its drawbacks it then allows readers even those with no experience in computer programming to work through the details of a simple microsimulation model readers can put this model on their pcs watch it run through its paces and experiment with their own modifications with this model as an example it should be fairly easy to create programs for new models on other subjects for use in theoretical exploration empirical research or classroom demonstrations the demonstration model i present depicts the experience of individual workers during recession and recovery in the labor market as the model runs its internal census bureau performs surveys on the microlevel and sums up to macrolevel variables the model is simple but it has some interesting applications after explaining how to set it up i use it to explore the effect of unemployment insurance on the level of unemployment and to point up a common fallacy in current labor market literature

optimal indirect taxation with a restricted number of tax rates this paper analyzes the optimal structure of indirect taxation when the number of available tax rates is smaller than the number of taxable commodities such a constraint requires to choose the levels of tax rates and the groups of commodities that will be taxed at equal rates or exempted in a partial equilibrium framework with a single agent and a low amount of tax collection it is shown that the process of allocation of commodities to groups depends on both price elasticities and consumption spendings still the optimal tax structure displays a weak form of the inverse elasticity rule consumption spendings influence the size of the fiscal base and may lead to many tax exemptions

access based consumption the case of car sharing access based consumption defined as transactions that can be market mediated but where no transfer of ownership takes place is becoming increasingly popular yet it is not well theorized this study examines the nature of access as it contrasts to ownership and sharing specifically the consumer object consumer consumer and consumer marketer relationships six dimensions are identified to distinguish among the range of access based consumptionscapes temporality anonymity market mediation consumer involvement the type of accessed object and political consumerism access based consumption is examined in the context of car sharing via an interpretive study of zipcar consumers four outcomes of these dimensions in the context of car sharing are identified lack of identification varying significance of use and sign value negative reciprocity resulting in a big brother model of governance and a deterrence of brand community the implications of our findings for understanding the nature of exchange consumption and brand community are discussed

the politics of housing consumption renters as flawed consumers on a master planned estate master planned estates offer package dreams of homeownership to those wanting to live among others who share their lifestyle aspirations yet we show in this paper how divisions can arise between housing tenure types with owner occupiers constructing private rental tenants as a problem extending bauman s concept of the flawed consumer using rose s writings on ethopolitics we show how renters are viewed as failing in three domains of social life aesthetics ethics and community by undermining the aesthetic value of the neighbourhood and by failing to demonstrate an ethic of care for themselves and others as a result the homeowners in this study try to avoid living among rental properties and are disappointed to find that contrary to expectations moving to a master planned estate does not guarantee this

green entrepreneurship in the sharing economy utilising multiplicity of institutional logics the green potential of the sharing economy to exploit underutilised or redundant resources has generated a considerable interest and expectations on the part of government institutions investors and consumers alongside the emerging green logic more established economic and social logics appear to be critical for growth of sharing platforms applying an institutional logics approach this paper investigates how entrepreneurial teams in the sharing economy deal with this complexity of expectations of various constituents and institutions based on 30 semi structured interviews with founders and executives of uk sharing platforms we examine the strategies used by entrepreneurial teams to utilise and combine the green logic with other institutional logics present the results demonstrate that sharing platforms are able to grow via utilising the green logic together with the economic and social logics in a flexible manner applying complexity reducing and complexity absorbing strategies as well as temporal adjustments in the use of logics

urban public transport companies and strategies to promote sustainable consumption practices abstract development policy adopted by governments and companies increasingly pays attention to issues of sustainability one dominant strategy emphasizes behavioural change vis a vis technological innovation however often attempts at changing individual and collective behaviour is ineffective one of the main reasons for this failure is that policy makers do not consider the gap between values and practices we propose to address this gap by using theories of practice which give centrality to reflexivity in the analysis of practices and have long been applied in research on environmental behaviours we will use the example of the transport sector which has long been a major contributor to climate change and technological improvements have not been enough to make up for the growth of impacts focusing on the role of a transport company in promoting sustainability through behavioural change the main goal of this article is to analyse transport practices from the supplier s perspective choices made by transport companies towards green technologies are strongly limited by available economic resources by the public policies and by the fuel market results also reinforce the idea that the economic dimension constrains the strategies to reduce environmental impacts

interpreting consumers a hermeneutical framework for deriving marketing insights from the texts of consumers consumption stories the author describes and illustrates a hermeneutically grounded interpretive framework for deriving marketing relevant insights from the texts of consumer stories and gives an overview of the phi

optimal grouping of commodities for indirect taxation indirect taxes contribute to a sizeable part of government revenues around the world typically there are few different tax rates and the goods are partitioned into classes associated with each rate the present paper studies how to group the goods in these few classes we take as given the number of tax rates and study the optimal aggregation or classification of commodities of the fiscal authority in a second best setup the results are illustrated on data from the united kingdom

social status and economic performance a survey abstract this survey combines ideas and results from sociology and economics recognizing that economic decisions are often shaped by social concerns and influences based on the sociological literature we define social status and describe its measurement we then describe the role of social status in economic analysis of saving and consumption wages and economic growth we review recent work on status determination in equilibrium including evolutionary models we conclude with some remarks on the need for further interaction between sociology and economics

a characteristics approach to optimal taxation line drawing and tax driven product innovation real world tax legislation assigns goods to different categories of tax rates on the basis of observable characteristics allowing the tax system to handle a constantly evolving set of available goods we recast the theory of optimal taxation in the language of characteristics and we show how to optimally draw lines that delineate tax rate regimes such lines are associated with notches in tax liability as a function of characteristics creating incentives to introduce goods with new combinations of characteristics in order to reduce tax liability with a restricted set of tax instruments such notches are in general part of the second best optimal tax system

understanding food sharing models to tackle sustainability challenges abstract the current global scene is characterized by a huge paradox on one side there is the scourge of poverty on the other 1 3 billion tonnes of food is wasted around the world every year to address these problems alternative distribution formats aimed at reducing food waste and generating a positive social impact are emerging particularly food banks and social supermarkets recently opportunities created by digital technology and the phenomenon of the sharing economy have boosted the increasing number of web platforms and food sharing apps that are being developed by existing organizations or by new entities that work exclusively online the main aim of this research is to highlight following an overview of existing food sharing models how alternative distribution systems change in response to digitalization and how the value propositions they claim change in the online context a hierarchical cluster analysis based on a sample of 52 food sharing cases was carried out three categories of models have emerged the sharing for money model which is primarily a b2c for profit model to reduce waste and at the same time generate revenue the sharing for charity model in which food is collected and given to non profit organizations the sharing for the community model which is a p2p model where food is shared amongst consumers by way of conclusion we suggest that food bank seems to be replicated online in the same way in the online context the sharing for charity model however the model of the social supermarket does not seems to be replicated in the same way in the digital context but changes towards a more profit oriented approach the sharing for money model additionally in the digital scenario a new model emerges the sharing for the community finally the study highlights some preliminary evidences on the effects of the new forms of sharing on social inequality

understanding the link between collaborative economy and sustainable behaviour an empirical investigation abstract the collaborative economy is growing at an exponential rate and the accommodation sector is especially affected the relevance of the phenomenon is linked with sustainable consumption that encourages resource efficiency waste reduction development of better products and surplus reutilization due to overproduction and overconsumption this paper aims at investigating the relationship between collaborative consumption and the adoption of sustainable practices from the users perspective after identifying the gaps existing in the literature different research approaches were integrated at first 4 focus groups were conducted to detect the main attributes and benefits attached to collaborative economy in tourism the personal values instrumental and terminal values relevant to p2p accommodation renting were identified through laddering technique as the propensity to put in place sustainable behaviour thereafter a structural model based on the framework of the theory of planned behaviour tpb constructs was set and tested to understand its consistency with the above values an ad hoc questionnaire was projected and administered online based on a sample of 384 respondents quantitative data were analysed through statistical and structural equation modeling software from an academic perspective the paper enhances the current knowledge in identifying the desired end states that users want to achieve by renting a p2p accommodation moreover it exploits and adapts the tpb to an emerging consumption model such as collaborative economy thus disclosing the relation between collaborative consumption and sustainable behaviour moreover the adaptation of tpb model to the newest context of collaborative economy expands the knowledge related to sustainable consumption from a managerial perspective it is necessary to emphasize the importance of defining a new business paradigm considering collaborative consumption to support environmental policy and encouraging sustainable behaviour

willingness to pay in different policy planning methods insights into respondents decision making processes willingness to pay in different policy planning methods insights into respondents decision making processes

sharing sustainability how values and ethics matter in consumers adoption of public bicycle sharing scheme this study investigates the antecedents and mechanisms of consumers adoption of a public bicycle sharing scheme pbss as a form of shared sustainable consumption drawing on marketing ethics and sustainability literature it argues that cultural and consumption values drive or deter the adoption of pbss through the mediating mechanism of ethical evaluation this study tests its hypotheses using a sample of 755 consumers from one of the largest pbss programs in china the results confirm the significance of collectivism man nature orientation materialism and face consciousness as key determinants of the adoption of pbss interestingly these values play mixed roles in influencing pbss adoption it also finds that such values and beliefs need to be effectively translated into ethical evaluations of pbss adoption and need to be addressed in the specific social context thus ethical evaluation constitutes a cognitive strategy that allows consumers to justify and defend their adoption of sustainability practices the results suggest that a desirable sustainability program needs to not only cater to the cultural and psychological motivations of consumers but also reflect the social norms and social context in which the sustainability practices and consumers are embedded

the role of values in collaborative consumption insights from a product service system for lending and borrowing in the uk abstract collaborative consumption is an emerging socio economic model based on sharing renting gifting bartering swapping lending and borrowing made possible through community interaction and increasingly use of network technologies these alternative and more sustainable ways of consuming have attracted growing attention for their potential to prevent new purchases intensify the use of idle assets and promote reuse of possessions that are no longer wanted nonetheless the uptake of product service systems psss that enable collaborative consumption is still very limited this paper investigates how consumers values can influence the acceptance adoption and diffusion of collaborative consumption it reviews two theoretical frameworks used to understand pro environmental behaviour social psychological models of behaviour and social practice theory coming from contrasting disciplinary perspectives these approaches conceptualise values differently the paper evaluates the possibility of resolving these differences through a mixed methods study it examines values empirically through a case study of ecomodo a uk based online marketplace where people can lend and borrow each other s objects spaces and skills and present the results of a quantitative study which identified and measured value priorities among ecomodo users through schwartz s portrait value questionnaire it concludes with a discussion of the role of values in relation to the introduction and scaling up of psss that enable collaborative consumption

social rewards externalities and stable preferences this paper examines the role of social rewards as a corrective mechanism for activities which generate externalities the focus of this paper is on the circumstances under which social rewards provide effective and feasible incentive mechanism that may replace laws and regulations in particular social mechanism is effective only in a society in which individuals who care about their standing in the society can survive in the long run we show that the nature of economic interaction between matched players influences whether the socially minded individuals survive in the long run and restricts the effectiveness of social rewards however circumstances exist where the socially minded survive even though relative fitness is determined only by economic payoff 1998 elsevier science s a all rights reserved

the theory of reform and indian indirect taxes abstract given a set of value judgements an initial state and a model of the economy one can ask whether some feasible tax change would increase welfare we do this by defining the marginal cost in terms of welfare of raising an extra rupee from the i th good the inverse optimum problem is the calculation of non negative welfare weights on households which imply that the initial state is optimum if no such welfare weights exist then a pareto improvement is possible we illustrate the concepts and results using data from the indian economy for 1979 1980 directions of tax reform for a number of specific social welfare functions and for pareto improvements are presented

democratising platform governance in the sharing economy an analytical framework and initial empirical insights the growing controversy around the adverse impacts of sharing economy platforms including airbnb and uber has led to calls for more democratic models of platform governance advocates of democratic governance models claim that these could help to create a more sustainable sharing economy by ensuring that platforms promote social and environmental values alongside the instrumental values of the capitalist economy exploring this claim we bring together theories of platform governance democratic organisational governance and the enactment of values in socio technical systems offering a conceptual framework for analysing emerging democratic models of platform governance applying this framework we present a mixed methods case study focused on freegle a platform that enables people to gift unwanted consumer goods locally and one of very few platforms to have sustained a democratic governance model at scale in particular we explore the extent to which the social environmental and instrumental values of platform users and owners have been accommodated in the governance of freegle our findings are broadly supportive of the claims made by advocates of democratic platform governance although in freegle s case social and environmental values are rather better accommodated than instrumental values while we are cautiously optimistic about the potential from a sustainability perspective of democratic platform governance models we emphasise that major challenges are likely to be faced by those implementing these and that such models should be complemented by government regulation of the sharing economy

interpreting the beveridge curve an agent based approach abstract we construct an agent based computational model of the labour market with heterogeneous workers and firms to study the behaviour of the beveridge curve along the business cycle in this framework search frictions arise because filling a vacancy is a costly activity that takes time whereas productivity mismatch comes from firms imperfect information about the value of the workers before the job interview takes place the model offers an interpretation for the outward movement exhibited by the u s beveridge curve since the last months of 2009 sectoral misallocation plays a role moreover when the speed of recovery from a recession is not uniform across sectors unemployed workers are less selective in their application strategy and firms must spend more time in choosing the best match unemployment remains high in spite of an increase in the number of vacancies

optimal commodity grouping in a partial equilibrium framework this note characterizes in a partial equilibrium economy with a single agent which commodities should be taxed whenever there is only one available tax rate we show that commodities with low price elasticities should be imposed luxuries are eventually exempted

a policy agenda for changing our relationship with consumption in this government initiatives contribution we present policy recommendations made available to the scottish government on how to change scottish consumers relationships with material goods and so contribute to its greenhouse gas emissions targets rather than focusing on the individual actions of consumers we discuss how the underlying neoliberal political narrative must be addressed as it creates the conditions in which invidious materialism can occur we then propose an alternative conceptualization of marketing that would harness marketing tools and concepts to help build connections between people and stimulate demand for pro environmental prosocial consumption this function stands in contrast to marketing acting in a way that contributes to the fragmentation of society and degradation of our planet a series of controls on marketing are then outlined which seek to facilitate changes to current dominant consumption narratives including using material input labelling as a mechanism to restrict unethical marketing practices overall these ideas represent a more interventionist perspective but one that we deem necessary when considered against the scale of the task now facing humanity in avoiding catastrophic climate change

credit cards as lifestyle facilitators credit cards are an increasingly essential technology but they carry with them the paradoxical capacity to propel consumers along lifestyle trajectories of marketplace freedom or constraint we analyze accounts provided by consumers credit counselors and participants in a credit counseling seminar in order to develop a differentiated theory of lifestyle facilitation through credit card practice the skills and tastes expressed by credit card practice help distinguish between the lifestyles of those with higher cultural capital relative to those with lower cultural capital differences in lifestyle regulation practice are posited to originate in cultural discourses related to entitlement and frugality

selling sharing and everything in between the hybrid economies of collaborative networks recent consumer research has examined contexts where market based exchange gift giving sharing and other modes of exchange occur simultaneously and obey several intersecting logics but consumer research has not conceptualized these so called hybrid economic forms nor explained how these hybrids are shaped and sustained using ethnographic and netnographic data from the collaborative network of geocaching this study explains the emergence of hybrid economies performativity theory is mobilized to demonstrate that the hybrid status of these economies is constantly under threat of destabilization by the struggle between competing performativities of market and nonmarket modes of exchange despite latent tension between competing performativities the hybrid economy is sustained through consumer producer engagements in collaborative consumption and production the creation of zones of indeterminacy and the enactment of tournaments of value that dissipate controversies around hybrid transactions implications are drawn for consumer research on the interplay between market and nonmarket economies

tax reform via commodity grouping abstract in designing indirect taxation administrative costs can be saved by placing commodities in common rate groups the corlett hague reform is used to investigate how commodities should be grouped differentiated tax groupings which dominate uniformity are identified a restriction on the size of tax changes reveals conditions for local optimality important determinants are initial budget shares and how commodities differ in terms of optimal tax characteristics e g in the single person case compensated cross wage elasticities along the line of tax characteristics the locally optimal grouping is connected