time orientation and asset prices we analyze a general equilibrium asset pricing model where a small subset of the consumers investors have a short run urge to save that is their attitude toward consumption in the long run is a standard one f they do place zero weight on consumption far enough out in the future f but their short run effective rates of discount may be negative our model which is an elaboration on the framework proposed by faruk gul and wolfgang pesendorfer does not feature time inconsistencies thus we view consumers as fully rational but subject to specific internal frictions in the form of temptation and self control problems the model nests the mehra prescott model and we use it as a way of interpreting the wealth and asset pricing data some aspects of these data we argue can possibly be better understood using our model than the standard one r 2002 published by elsevier science b v

an economic theory of self control the concept of self control is incorporated in a theory of individual intertemporal choice by modeling the individual as an organization the individual at a point in time is assumed to be both a farsighted planner and a myopic doer the resulting conflict is seen to be fundamentally similar to the agency conflict between the owners and managers of a firm both individuals and firms use the same techniques to mitigate the problems which the conflicts create this paper stresses the implications of this agency model and discusses as applications the effect of pensions on saving saving and the timing of income flows and individual discount rates

behavioral contract theory abstract this review provides a critical survey of psychology and economics behavioral economics research in contract theory first i introduce the theories of individual decision making most

structural changes in volatility and stock market development evidence for spain abstract in this paper we review the factors that lead to changes in stock market volatility and use alternative methodologies of endogenous breakpoint detection in order to analyze whether the volatility of the spanish stock market has changed significantly over the period 1941 2001 this period corresponds to years of profound development of both the financial and the productive sides of the economy in this country the analysis of the spanish stock market suggests that volatility has behaved in a different manner over the period 1941 2001 after three decades of low volatility a structural break in volatility is detected in 1972 coinciding with the opening of the spanish economy from 1972 to 2001 the years of more intense financial development the stock market presents a higher level of volatility and lower persistence this effect is partly attributable to the increased growth of trading volume brought about by the economic development process

the behavior of risk and market prices of risk over the nasdaq bubble period we exploit the information in the options market to study the variations of return risk and market prices of different sources of risk during the rise and fall of the nasdaq market we specify a model that accommodates fluctuations in both risk levels and market prices of different sources of risk and we estimate the model using the time series returns and option prices on the nasdaq 100 tracking stock our analysis reveals three key variations during the period from march 1999 to march 2001 first return volatility increased together with the rising nasdaq index level even though the two tend to move in opposite directions second although the market price of diffusion return risk averages around 1 82 over the whole sample the estimates reached negative territory at the end of 1999 the estimates reverted back to highly positive values after the collapse of the nasdaq market third the market price of jump risk increased with the rising nasdaq valuation and this increase in market price coincided with an increased imbalance in open interest between put and call options

heuristics and biases in timing the replacement of durable products the process by which individuals make recurrent decisions about when to replace durable goods is examined two experiments are reported in which subjects play the role of purchasing agents who must repeatedly decide whether to keep a currently owned manufacturing device or replace it with a superior new one given uncertainty about the future performance of new and currently owned machines replacement patterns are compared with those that would be predicted if subjects made decisions as rational economic agents following the principles of optimal replacement theory this comparison reveals a number of systematic departures from optimality that do not vanish with experience among these are a tendency to replace at a slower rate than would be predicted by normative theory and a tendency to weigh opportunity costs arising from obsolescence greater than those arising from product deterioration in addition subjects display a bias against making replacement purchases given short lapses of time since the previous replacement the findings are interpreted in terms of known biases in decision making under uncertainty in dynamic and static settings

how do consumers make choices a survey of evidence in this paper we review the evidence about the purchase behaviour of consumers we concentrate on the characteristics of the choice process choice of the external information source and nature of the information obtained from these sources the impact of important systematic differences among consumers and products on choice behaviour is also discussed

selling to overconfident consumers consumers may overestimate the precision of their demand forecasts this overconfidence creates an incentive for both monopolists and competitive firms to offer tariffs with included quantities at zero marginal cost followed by steep marginal charges this matches observed cellphone service pricing plans in the us and elsewhere an alternative explanation with common priors can be ruled out in favor of overconfidence based on observed customer usage patterns for a major us cellular phone service provider the model can be reinterpreted to explain the use of flat rates and late fees in rental markets and teaser rates on loans nevertheless firms may benefit from consumers losing their overconfidence

a probit latent variable model of nutrition information and dietary fiber intake nutrition information and intake data for a sample of u s household meal planners are used to estimate the effects of fiber specific information on dietary fiber intake the information variables are measured using survey questions on fiber content of foods attitude toward consuming fiber rich foods and awareness of fiber health links the evidence confirms the influence of nutrition information on fiber intake household income meal planner age smoking status vegetarian status race and ethnicity are major determinants of both information and intake education exerts a sizable intake effect by enhancing the information level direct and indirect effects of exogenous variables are reported

financial market volatility and primary placements abstract this paper studies empirically the link between financial market volatility and primary placements of stocks and bonds for the us economy we find that the impact of volatility on primary placements is not statistically significant

consumer information search revisited theory and empirical analysis a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding consumers information search behavior is presented unlike previous research our model identifies not only what factors affect consumers search behavior but also how these factors interact with each other in particular the model emphasizes the effect of prior brand perceptions on the search process we argue that when consumers have brand specific prior distributions of utility the existence of relative uncertainty among brands is necessary for search to be useful thus we explain why product class involvement or low search costs may not be sufficient to induce large amounts of search activity and why there may be an inverted u shaped relationship between search activity and experience we test our theory on consumers search behavior for new automobiles using data collected contemporaneously with consumers actual decision process our data support our theory

commitment flexibility and optimal screening of time inconsistency this paper develops a theory of optimal provision of commitment devices to people who value both commitment and flexibility and whose preferences differ in the degree of time inconsistency if time inconsistency is observable both a planner and a monopolist provide devices that help each person commit to the efficient level of flexibility however the combination of unobservable time inconsistency and preference for flexibility causes an adverse selection problem to solve this problem the monopolist and possibly the planner curtail flexibility in the device for a more inconsistent person at both ends of the efficient choice range moreover they may have to add unused options to the device for a less inconsistent person and also distort his actual choices this theory has normative and positive implications for private and public provision of commitment devices

paying not to go to the gym how do consumers choose from a menu of contracts we analyze a novel dataset from three u s health clubs with information on both the contractual choice and the day to day attendance decisions of 7 752 members over three years the observed consumer behavior is difficult to reconcile with standard preferences and beliefs first members who choose a contract with a flat monthly fee of over 70 attend on average 4 3 times per month they pay a price per expected visit of more than 17 even though they could pay 10 per visit using a 10 visit pass on average these users forgo savings of 600 during their membership second consumers who choose a monthly contract are 17 percent more likely to stay enrolled beyond one year than users committing for a year this is surprising because monthly members pay higher fees for the option to cancel each month we also document cancellation delays and attendance expectations among other findings leading explanations for our findings are overconfidence about future self control or about future efficiency overconfident agents overestimate attendance as well as the cancellation probability of automatically renewed contracts our results suggest that making inferences from observed contract choice under the rational expectation hypothesis can lead to biases in the estimation of consumer preferences

temptation self control and competitive nonlinear pricing abstract standard pricing theories consider consumers without temptation with temptation and costly self control consumers dislike choice sets with tempting alternatives we study firms strategy against such consumers using gul pesendorfer preferences and a game where firms compete by offering menus

the dynamic interrelation between external finance and bank credit abstractthis article studies the interrelation among the volumes of bonds and stocks issued by non financial firms and levels of industrial loans outstanding in the united states these aggregates are co integrated and characterized by asymmetric volatility their co movements are driven by financial indicators such as the yield spread size of loan market and market volatility bond and stock issuance are positively correlated and even more so during the expansionary phase of the cycle loans outstanding and bond issuance are negatively correlated and their substitutability increases in periods of economic downturn highlighting the importance of bond markets to mitigate credit crunches

information health risk beliefs and the demand for fats and oils mean and variance measures of health information about cholesterol and saturated fat are included in a demand system for fats and oils a bayesian model of health risk belief and consumer awareness surveys are the basis for computing these measures the empirical demand model shows that health information has resulted in significant increases in consumption for corn cottonseed and soybean oils and decreased consumption for butter and lard the predicted demand effects based on the bayesian information model are more reasonable than predictions from using either a time trend or a simple cumulative cholesterol information index copyright 1995 by mit press

margin regulation and stock market volatility using daily and monthly stock returns we find no convincing evidence that federal reserve margin requirements have served to dampen stock market volatility the contrary conclusion expressed in recent papers by hardouvelis 1988a b is traced to flaws in his test design we do detect the expected negative relation between margin requirements and the amount of margin credit outstanding we also confirm the recent finding by schwert 1988 that changes in margin requirements by the fed have tended to follow rather than lead changes in market volatility after 55 years stock market margin requirements are again a source of controversy the securities and exchange act of 1934 transferred to the federal reserve system the authority exercised previously by the new york stock exchange and other private sector exchanges to set the minimum margins i e down payments that securities brokers and dealers subsequently expanded to all lenders must require of customers purchasing common stocks on credit the transfer of authority reflected the view widely held at the time that the low initial margins set by the exchanges had fueled the stock market boom of the 1920 s and that the frenzied liquidation of shares in response to margin calls had accelerated the crash in october 1929 supposedly dragging the economy down with it congress hoped that timely raising of margin requirements by the monetary authorities might dampen speculative excesses before they raged out of control or in today s terms that margin controls might reduce market volatility what the federal reserve has done since then with its margin setting authority can be seen from figure 1 which shows the time paths both of margins and one measure of market volatility from october 1934 to december 1987 margin requirements were set initially at 45 percent raised to 55 percent during the boomlet of 1936 and then cut back to a low of 40 percent after the sharp stockmarket break in the autumn of 1937 the requirement stayed at that level for the remainder of the 30 s and most of the war years but was stepped up sharply as the war drew to a close reaching 100 percent i e all cash no borrowing for most of 1946 changes were frequent over the next two and a half decades

packaging of sin goods commitment or exploitation abstract we consider the shopping and consumption decision of an individual with a self control problem the consumer believes that restricting the consumption of a sinful product such as chips is in his long run interest but when facing the actual decision he is tempted to overeat we ask how firms react to such self control problems and possibly exploit them by offering different package sizes in a competitive market either one or three package sizes are offered in contrast to common intuition the large and not the small package might be a commitment device the latter may serve to exploit the naive consumer

stock volatility in the new millennium how wacky is nasdaq abstract the recent volatility of stock prices has caused many people to conclude that investors have become irrational in valuing at least some stocks this paper investigates the behavior of the volatility of stocks on the nasdaq which tend to be smaller companies with more growth options in relation to the more seasoned issues reflected in the standard poor s 500 portfolio it also analyzes the relation of the unusual nasdaq volatility to the hot ipo market in 1998 and 1999 the factor that seems to explain unusual volatility best is technology not firm size or the immaturity of the firm

reservation price as a range an incentive compatible measurement approach abstract drawing from the literature on buyers uncertainty in preference and product knowledge the authors suggest and empirically test the proposition that a consumer s reservation price for a product is more meaningfully and accurately represented as a range than as a single point given this conceptualization they propose an approach for incentive compatible elicitation of a consumer s reservation price range icerange that builds on becker degroot and marschak s 1964 point of purchase method two empirical applications of the approach provide an assessment of its practicality and its predictive performance relative to current methodologies for reservation price elicitation the results demonstrate that the proposed method significantly outperforms the benchmark approaches in terms of predictive validity and yields valuable incremental information about uncertainty in product valuation

consumption self control by rationing purchase quantities of virtue and vice consumers attempts to control their unwanted consumption impulses influence many everyday purchases with broad implications for marketers pricing policies addressing theoreticians and practitioners alike this paper uses multiple empirical methods to show that consumers voluntarily and strategically ration their purchase quantities of goods that are likely to be consumed on impulse and that therefore may pose self control problems for example many regular smokers buy their cigarettes by the pack although they could easily afford to buy 10 pack cartons these smokers knowingly forgo sizable per unit savings from quantity discounts which they could realize if they bought cartons by rationing their purchase quantities they also self impose additional transactions costs on marginal consumption which makes excessive smoking overly difficult and costly such strategic self imposition of constraints is intuitively appealing yet theoretically problematic the marketing literature lacks operationalizations and empirical tests of such consumption self control strategies and of their managerial implications this paper provides experimental evidence of the operation of consumer self control and empirically illustrates its direct implications for the pricing of consumer goods moreover the paper develops a conceptual framework for the design of empirical tests of such self imposed constraints on consumption in consumer goods markets within matched pairs of products we distinguish relative virtue and vice goods whose preference ordering changes with whet her consumers evaluate immediate or delayed consumption consequences for example ignoring long term health effects many smokers prefer regular relative vice to light relative virtue cigarettes because they prefer the taste of the former however ignoring these short term taste differences the same smokers prefer light to regular cigarettes when they consider the long term health effects of smoking these preference orders can lead to dynamically inconsistent consumption choices by consumers whose tradeoffs between the immediate and delayed consequences of consumption depend on the time lag between purchase and consumption this creates a potential self control problem because these consumers will be tempted to over consume the vices they have in stock at home purchase quantity rationing helps them solve the self control problem by limiting their stock and hence their consumption opportunities such rationing implies that per purchase occasion vice consumers will be less likely than virtue consumers to buy larger quantities in response to unit price reductions such as quantity discounts we first test this prediction in two laboratory experiments we then examine the external validity of the results at the retail level with a field survey of quantity discounts and with a scanner data analysis of chain wide store level demand across a variety of different pairs of matched vice regular and virtue reduced fat calorie or caffeine etc product categories the analyses of these experimental field and scanner data provide strong convergent evidence of a characteristic crossover in demand schedules for relative vices and virtues for categories as diverse as among others potato chips chocolate chip cookies cream cheese beer soft drinks ice cream and frozen yogurt chewing gum coffee and beef andturkey bologna vice consumers demand increases less in response to price reductions than virtue consumers demand although their preferences are not generally weaker for vices than for virtues constraints on vice purchases are self imposed and strategic rather than driven by simple preferences we suggest that rationing their vice inventories at the point of purchase allows consumers to limit subsequent consumption as a result of purchase quantity rationing however vice buyers forgo savings from price reductions through quantity discounts effectively paying price premiums for the opportunity to engage in self control thus purchase quantity rationing vice consumers are relatively price in sensitive from a managerial and public policy perspective our findings should offer marketing practitioners in many consumer goods industries new opportunities to increase profits through segmentation and price discrimination based on consumer self control they can charge premium prices for small sizes of vices relative to the corresponding quantity discounts for virtues virtue consumers on the other hand will buy larger amounts even when quantity discounts are relatively shallow a key conceptual contribution of this paper lies in showing how marketing researchers can investigate a whole class of strategic self constraining consumer behaviors empirically moreover this research is the first to extend previous theoretical work on impulse control by empirically demonstrating its broader implications for marketing decision making

securities transaction taxes an overview of costs benefits and unresolved questions many major developed countries including germany japan and the united kingdom have some form of tax on securities transactions the clinton administration recently considered imposing fees of from 14 on transactions in futures contracts past budgets have considered fees of from 6 to 15 proponents of a securities transaction tax in the u s argue that it would tap into a significant source of revenues and would in addition act to reduce excess volatility in securities markets by discouraging speculative and noise trading some have argued that it would also increase investors expected holding periods hence encourage corporate managers to build for the long term opponents argue that any benefits from such a tax would be overwhelmed by its costs they point out that a tax on transactions would increase the cost of capital reduce market liquidity and bring down security values furthermore as the tax would change the relative costs of holding and issuing different classes of securities it might be expected to change capital structures and investment portfolios too at its worst a securities transaction tax could drive trading in some securities to overseas markets not burdened by taxation the economic and societal distortions resulting from taxation and avoidance would likely be large

consumer evaluations of multiple versus single price change this article examines how consumer evaluations of multiple price changes differ from the evaluation of a single price change of an equal amount consistent with r thaler s theory about segregation versus integration of gains and losses we find that multiple price decreases are evaluated more favorably than a single price decrease and multiple price increases are evaluated more unfavorably than a single price increase however these effects are moderated by consumer price uncertainty and relative magnitude of the prices being evaluated because price uncertain consumers consider higher ranges of prices acceptable they are less unfavorable to multiple price increases and more favorable to multiple price decreases than certain consumers moreover when the magnitude of one price is very small relative to other prices consumers preference for multiple price decreases relative to a single price decrease is reduced however this effect is not found when there are price increases

single option aversion this article documents single option aversion an increase in consumers desire to search when faced with a single option this effect can lead to a product being chosen more often when competing alternatives are included in the choice set contrary to various rational models of search as well as to recent research on choice conflict showing that additional options can lead to higher deferral rates a series of lab studies document this effect differentiate it from other context effects and test some of its boundary conditions the results suggest that single option aversion is not driven by the information provided by the additional options that the desire to search is critical for this effect to occur and that the effects of single option aversion are not limited to the immediate choice set these results have both practical and theoretical implications for the understanding of consumer search and choice deferral

estimating search benefits from path tracking data measurement and determinants we study consumer search behavior in a brick and mortar store environment using a unique data set obtained from radio frequency identification tags which are attached to supermarket shopping carts this technology allows us to record consumers purchases as well as the time they spent in front of the shelf when contemplating which product to buy giving us a direct measure of search effort we estimate a linear regression of price paid on search duration in which search duration is instrumented with a search cost shifter we show that this regression allows us to recover the marginal return from search in terms of price at the optimal stopping point for the average consumer our identification strategy and coefficient interpretation are valid for a broad class of search models and we are hence able to remain agnostic about the details of the search process such as search order and search protocol we estimate an average return from search of 2 10 per minute and explore heterogeneity across consumer

all things considered the role of choice set formation in diversification abstract the diversification effect a tendency toward greater variety as multiple choices are made simultaneously in advance of consumption is a robust and important phenomenon researchers have typically explained the diversification effect in terms of differences in the process by which people select items from among those available this precludes the possibility that the locus of the effect lies in people s choice sets themselves that is how people decide which options to consider when making choices the authors examine the effects of set formation using an experimental choice sequence task and conjoined stochastic model of set formation and conditional choice the findings demonstrate that set formation plays a critical role in diversification previously chosen options are indeed discounted but only for simultaneous choices and only in the set formation portion of the model furthermore the expected number of choice set items is substantially greater in multiple versus single item choice s

empirical evidence of risk shifting in financially distressed firms this paper provides evidence of risk shifting behavior in the investment decisions of financially distressed firms using a real options framework i show that shareholders risk shifting incentives can reverse the expected negative relation between volatility and investment i test two hypotheses that are consistent with risk shifting behavior i volatility has a positive effect on distressed firms investment ii investments of distressed firms generate less value during times of high uncertainty empirical evidence using 40 years of data supports both hypotheses i further evaluate the effect of various firm characteristics on risk shifting and estimate the costs of the investment distortion

buyer uncertainty and information search preliminary measures of pre purchase uncertainty were developed through focus group interviews and were administered to a nationwide sample of recent appliance purchasers responses indicated the presence of two general types of uncertainty knowledge uncertainty uncertainty regarding information about alternatives and choice uncertainty uncertainty about which alternative to choose in exploring how each of these uncertainty dimensions was related to search behavior we found that choice uncertainty appeared to increase search but knowledge uncertainty had a weaker negative effect on search implications of the findings for previous research on the relationship between uncertainty and search are discussed along with research directions

temptation and taxation we study optimal taxation when consumers have temptation and self control problems embedding the class of preferences developed by gul and pesendorfer into a standard macroeconomic setting we first prove in a two period model that the optimal policy is to subsidize savings when consumers are tempted by excessive impatience the savings subsidy improves welfare because it makes succumbing to temptation less attractive we then study an economy with a long but finite horizon which nests as a special case the phelps pollak laibson multiple selves model thereby providing guidance on how to evaluate welfare in this model we prove that when period utility is logarithmic the optimal savings subsidies increase over time for any finite horizon moreover as the horizon grows large the optimal policy prescribes a constant subsidy in contrast to the well known chamley judd result

monopoly with incomplete information recent theoretical research on principal agent relationships has emphasized incentive problems that arise when the parties involved are constrained by either asymmetric information or their inability to monitor each other s actions here we concentrate on the former constraint and consider the case of a single principal the monopolist the main contribution is to show that under a separability assumption strong conclusions can be drawn about the nature of optimal incentive schemes although the primary focus is on optimal quantity discounts in a monopolized market the results also shed light on related topics such as optimal income taxation and commodity bundling

temptation and self control some evidence and applications this paper studies the empirical relevance of temptation and self control using household level data from the consumer expenditure survey we construct an infinite horizon consumption savings model that allows but does not require temptation and self control in preferences in the presence of temptation a wealth consumption ratio in addition to consumption growth becomes a determinant of the asset pricing kernel and the importance of this additional pricing factor depends on the strength of temptation to identify the presence of temptation we exploit an implication of the theory that a more tempted individual should be more likely to hold commitment assets such as individual retirement account ira or 401 k accounts our estimation provides empirical support for temptation preferences based on our estimates we explore some quantitative implications of this class of preferences for capital accumulation in a neoclassical growth model and the welfare cost of the business cycle

contracts biases and consumption of access services we study theoretically and empirically the consumption of access services we demonstrate that consumption is affected by contract structure pay per use versus three part tariffs even if the optimal consumption plans are identical we find that although there is extensive individual heterogeneity on average consumers choices follow a structure that is similar to a nearly optimal heuristic and correctly react to imbalances between the number of free calls and call opportunities remaining however consumers use the free units too quickly leading to overconsumption and lost surplus these errors are partially driven by mistaken beliefs about the value distribution we also measure subjects willingness to pay for a contract with free access units and we find that nearly half of subjects are willing to pay at least the full per unit price with a substantial fraction willing to overpay in response the optimal firm strategy offers a three part tariff at a very small discount which increases revenue by 8 14 compared to only offering a pay per use contract data as supplemental material are available at http dx doi org 10 1287 mnsc 2013 1889 this paper was accepted by teck hua ho behavioral economics

revealed p reference theory abstract this paper develops axiomatically a revealed preference theory of reference dependent choice behavior instead of taking the reference for an agent as exogenously given in the description of a choice problem we suitably relax the weak axiom of revealed preference to obtain endogenously the existence of reference alternatives as well as the structure of choice behavior conditional on those alternatives we show how this model captures some well known choice patterns such as the attraction effect jel d11 d81

does futures trading increase stock market volatility 1988 does futures trading increase stock market volatility financial analysts journal vol 44 no 1 pp 63 69

re evaluating the role of energy efficiency standards a behavioral economics approach abstract the economic models that prescribe pigovian taxation as the first best means of reducing energy related externalities are typically based on the neoclassical model of rational consumer choice yet consumer behavior in markets for energy using durables is generally thought to be far from efficient giving rise to the concept of the energy efficiency gap this paper presents a welfare analysis of energy policies that is based on a behavioral model of temptation and self control introduced by gul and pesendorfer 23 24 we find that in the presence of temptation i pigovian taxes alone do not yield a first best outcome ii when viewed as substitutes energy efficiency standards can dominate pigovian taxes and iii a policy combining standards with a pigovian tax can yield higher social welfare than a pigovian tax alone implying that the two instruments should be viewed as complements rather than substitutes

optimal search for product information consumers often need to search for product information before making purchase decisions we consider a tractable continuous time model of gradual learning in which consumers incur search costs to learn further product information and update their expected utility of the product at each search occasion we characterize the optimal stopping rules for either purchase or no purchase as a function of search costs and of the importance informativeness of each attribute this paper also characterizes how the likelihood of purchase changes with the ex ante expected utility search costs and the importance informativeness of each attribute we discuss optimal pricing the impact of consumer search on profits and social welfare and how the seller chooses its price to strategically affect the extent of the consumers search behavior we show that lower search costs can hurt the consumer because the seller may then choose to charge higher prices discounting creates asymmetry in the purchase and no purchase search thresholds and may lead to lower prices if search occurs in equilibrium or higher prices if there is no search in equilibrium this paper also considers searching for signals of the value of the product heterogeneous importance of attributes endogenous intensity of search and social learning this paper was accepted by pradeep chintagunta marketing

the behavioral life cycle hypothesis self control mental accounting and framing are incorporated in a behavioral enrichment of the life cycle theory of saving called the behavioral life cycle blc hypothesis the key assumption of the blc theory is that households treat components of their wealth as nonfungible even in the absence of credit rationing specifically wealth is assumed to be divided into three mental accounts current income current assets and future income the temptation to spend is assumed to be greatest for current income and least for future income considerable empirical support for the blc theory is presented primarily drawn from published econometric studies

volatility in an era of reduced uncertainty lessons from pax britannica abstract although it has been well established that financial volatility is related to news and macroeconomic shocks less emphasis has been placed on the importance of underlying economic and political stability in this paper we study the behavior of consol returns since 1729 and identify a greater than 50 decline in volatility from the end of the napoleonic wars in 1815 until the first world war news events and macroeconomic variables cannot account for this extended period of reduced volatility underlying political stability under pax britannica seems to be a more likely explanation

social learning in networks of friends versus strangers networks and the embedded relationships are critical determinants of how people communicate and form beliefs the explosion of social media has significantly increased the scope and impact of social learning among consumers this paper studies observational learning in networks of friends versus strangers a consumer decides whether to adopt a product after receiving a private signal about product quality and observing the actions of others the preference for the product has greater heterogeneity in the stranger network than in the friend network we show that when the network is small observing friends actions helps the consumer make more accurate inferences about quality as the network grows however the stranger network becomes more effective underlying these results are two competing effects of network heterogeneity on social learning these are the individual preference effect which allows one to make a better quality judgment when the preference element of past actions is more certain and the social conforming effect wherein private signals are underused in quality judgment as people follow others actions we find cascading is more likely to occur in the friend network than in the stranger network for a high quality firm the stranger network generates greater sales than the friend network when the network size is sufficiently large or the private signal is sufficiently accurate we also examine the existence of experts and firms using advertising to influence consumers finally we show how networks that are highly homogeneous or heterogeneous could impede observational learning

for a few cents more why supersize unhealthy food health care experts believe that increases in portion sizes served by food vendors contribute to the obesity epidemic this paper shows that food vendors can profit handsomely by using supersizing strategies where regular portion sizes are priced sufficiently high to discourage price conscious consumers from selecting them and the prices for enlarging food portions are set so low that these customers are tempted to order the larger portion sizes and overeat setting aside the impact of obesity on health care costs we show that using supersizing to steer customers toward consuming excessive amounts of food can destroy value from a social perspective thus this social value destruction trap adds another justification for pressuring food vendors to reduce supersizing for unhealthy food as a public policy response we consider how moderating policies may counter these effects through measures designed specifically to encourage eating in moderation by applying supersizing bans taxes and warnings

the economics of consumer knowledge while approaches to measuring the state of a consumer s knowledge are well developed much less is known about the relationship between knowledge and consumer choice and information search the purpose of this article is to explore these relationships by treating consumer knowledge as human capital which affects the full price of consumption and search activities using this framework models are presented to explain life cycle consumption patterns lifestyles brand loyalty choice of features and search behavior this economic perspective is compared and contrasted to other consumer research on these topics including recent qualitative research that examines consumption behavior

margin requirements volatility and the transitory component of stock prices official margin requirements in the u s stock market were established in october 1934 to limit the amount of credit available for the purpose of buying stocks since then higher or rising margin requirements are associated with lower stock price volatility lower excess volatility and smaller deviations of stock prices from their fundamental values the results hold throughout the post 1934 period and are not very sensitive to the exclusion of the turbulent depression years from the sample thus margin requirements seem to be an effective policy tool in curbing destabilizing speculation jel 313 520 federal regulation of securities margins was mandated by congress in the securities exchange act of 1934 the stock market experience of the late 1920s led congress to the conclusion that credit financed speculation in the stock market might create excessive market volatility through a pyramidingdepyramiding process congress reasoned that the imposition of margin requirements could constrain the amount of borrowing and prevent excessive market volatility and subsequently gave the federal reserve jurisdiction over the level of margin requirements since 1934 the federal reserve

the behavioural homogeneity evaluation framework multi level evaluations of consumer involvement in international segmentation this paper presents a generic strategic framework of alternative international marketing strategies and market segmentation based on intra and inter cultural behavioural homogeneity consumer involvement ci is proposed as a pivotal construct to capture behavioural homogeneity for the identification of market segments results from a five country study demonstrate how the strategic framework can be valuable in managerial decision making first there is evidence for the cultural invariance of the measurement of ci allowing a true comparison of inter and intra cultural behavioural homogeneity second ci influences purchase behaviour and its evaluation provides a rich source of information for responsive market segmentation finally a decomposition of behavioural variance suggests that national cultural environment and nationally transcendent variables explain differences in behaviour the behavioural homogeneity evaluation framework therefore suggests appropriate international marketing strategies providing practical guidance for implementing involvement contingent strategies 2007 academy of international business all rights reserved

uncertain demand consumer loss aversion and flat rate tariffs we consider a model of firm pricing and consumer choice where consumers are loss averse and uncertain about their future demand possibly consumers in our model prefer a flat rate to a measured tariff even though this choice does not minimize their expected billing amount a behavior in line with ample empirical evidence we solve for the profit maximizing two part tariff which is a flat rate if a marginal costs are not too high b loss aversion is intense and c there are strong variations in demand moreover we analyze the optimal nonlinear tariff this tariff has a large flat part when a flat rate is optimal among the class of two part tariffs

the relation between price changes and trading volume a survey this paper reviews previous and current research on the relation between price changes and trading volume in financial markets and makes four contributions first two empiri cal relations are established volume is positively related to the magnitude of the price change and in equity markets to the price change per se second previous theoretical research on the price volume relation is summarized and critiqued and major insights are emphasized third a simple model ofthe price volume relation is proposed that is consis tent with several seemingly unrelated or contradictory observations and fourth several directions for future research are identified

the impact of product line extensions and consumer goals on the formation of price image abstract how do vertical product line extensions influence a retailer s price image conventional wisdom suggests that adding an upscale or downscale item to a product line has a directionally consistent impact on price image such that upscale extensions increase price image and downscale extensions decrease price image in contrast this research argues that vertical extensions can have the opposite effect such that upscale extensions can decrease rather than increase price image and vice versa for downscale extensions the authors further propose that the impact of vertical extensions on price image is a function of consumer goals and in particular whether consumers have the intent of browsing or buying the authors test these predictions in a series of five empirical studies that offer converging evidence in support of the proposed theory

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

estimating a household production function heterogeneity the demand for health inputs and their effects on birth weight the household production literature emphasizes that technical or biological processes condition input selection by households in their production activities along with prices and income exogenous variations in health to the extent that they are perceived by individuals heterogeneity lead to correlations between inputs and health outcomes that cannot be used to derive causal conclusions therefore estimates of health technology must be obtained from a behavioral model in which health inputs are themselves choices consistent estimates are reported of the effect of endogenous inputs such as medical care smoking and fertility on birth weight and fetal growth in the presence of health heterogeneity

heterogeneous beliefs asset prices and volatility in a pure exchange economy abstract this paper extends the lucas 1978 asset prices in an exchange economy econometrica 46 1429 1445 model to a setting in which investors have heterogeneous beliefs about the structure of a dividend process by assuming that all investors have logarithmic preferences and different subjective discount rates we can obtain a closed form representation of the stock price this closed form solution enables us to analyze the dynamics of the stock price and its volatility the model can simultaneously generate several well known empirical facts excessive volatility leverage effects and positive relationships between price and trading volume and between volatility and volume all of these effects are driven by the different beliefs of investors

an empirical two stage choice model with varying decision rules applied to internet clickstream data abstract in this article the author proposes and applies an empirical two stage choice model to internet clickstream data that captures observed choices for two choice stages products viewed and products purchased the model allows for interdependences between choices within a stage as well as the use of varying decision rules in each stage the author accommodates heterogeneity in preferences and in decision rules the proposed model uses observed choices to infer both attribute preference ratings and criterion attributes the results show empirically in a field setting that the product attributes evaluated in stage 1 differ from those evaluated in stage 2 consistent with existing theory consumers tend to use simpler decision rules based on a subset of attribute information in earlier stages the author also finds some preliminary evidence that attributes such as price and size tend to be considered in only one of the two stages whereas ingredient attributes tend to be considered in both stages f

nonlinear pricing with self control preferences a basic assumption of economics is that consumers choose what they want however many consumers find it difficult to stop overeating overspending smoking procrastinating etc even though they want to in reality consumers have temptation and it is psychologically costly to exercise self control to clarify the implications of the existence of temptation and self control costs this paper studies a firm s optimal selling strategy exploiting the behavioral features of consumers we characterize optimal nonlinear pricing schemes for a monopoly when self control is costly for consumers since consumers have a preference for commitment the firm faces a trade off between offering a small menu that makes the consumers self control easier and offering a large menu that achieves better price discrimination we show that the optimal menu resembles the one in the standard nonlinear pricing problem with a price ceiling where the upper bound on prices is determined endogenously by a participation constraint the ceiling motivates the firm to offer a relatively flat and compact price schedule serving more consumers with low demand the characterization also shows that the firm may earn less if consumers have temptation

incentives for procrastinators we examine how principals should design incentives to induce time inconsistent procrastinating agents to complete tasks efficiently delay is costly to the principal but the agent faces stochastic costs of completing the task and efficiency requires waiting when costs are high if the principal knows the task cost distribution she can always achieve first best efficiency if the agent has private information the principal can induce first best efficiency for time consistent agents but often cannot for procrastinators we show that second best optimal incentives for procrastinators typically involve an increasing punishment for delay as time passes

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

monopoly and quality distortion effects and remedies a monopolist that sells in a market in which consumers differ in their willingness to pay for quality will distort and enlarge the range of products offered for sale we examine the positive and normative impacts of remedies used to counteract such distortions for the case of a price ceiling the monopolist improves quality at the low quality end of the market offsetting the distortion induced by the unregulated exercise of monopoly power social welfare can be shown to increase for a sufficiently slight degree of price regulation for minimum quality standards the social welfare implications are ambiguous because the standards may exclude some consumers from the market

schooling health knowledge and obesity the connection between schooling and health is well documented an important empirical issue that needs to be examined however is whether schooling s effects are due to individual health knowledge differences this empirical study examines this issue with an increasingly important health indicator obesity since provision of health knowledge is a major tool of public agencies promoting health this empirical study uses a new direct measure of health knowledge to test this hypothesis the results show that knowledge is inversely related to the probability that an individual is obese schooling s effects on relative weight and the probability of being obese are explained by differences in knowledge this result may imply that schooling s effect on the allocative efficiency of the household production of health is the main reason schooling is linked to health behaviour the result also may imply that the most effective method of health education is to highlight the disease element of poor dietary habits a

animal spirits margin requirements and stock price volatility a simple overlapping generations model is used to characterize the effects of initial margin requirements on the volatility of risky asset prices investors are assumed to exhibit heterogeneous preferences for risk bearing the distribution of which evolves stochastically across generations this framework is used to show that imposing a binding initial margin requirement may either increase or decrease stock price volatility depending upon the microeconomic structure behind fluctuations in economy wide average risk bearing propensity the ambiguous effect on volatility similarly arises when the source of heterogeneity is noise trader beliefs beyond their prudential functions the effects of initial margin requirements on securities markets are not well understood many have argued based upon empirical findings that the level of margin requirements has no discernable impact on stock price behavior nevertheless the view that high margin requirements dampen speculative excesses and reduce excess price volatility remains popular the simultaneous existence of such views highlights the uncertainty surrounding this issue in fact there exists no rigorously articulated theory of the interaction between initial margin requirements and stock prices and their returns characteristics in this paper we construct a simple dynamic model useful for characterizing the effects of initial margin requirements on security prices and returns to analyze the impact of margins we introduce investor heterogeneity into an otherwise simplified overlapping generations olg economy 2 the olg models are constructed so that each generation displays heterogeneous preferences or beliefs the distribution of which evolves stochastically across generations in each of two heterogeneous taste models we consider there are two types of agents one of which is more risk tolerant than the other in one model the

information transmission between the nasdaq and asian second board markets abstract in the 1980s and early 1990s the nasdaq s success helped to prompt singapore sesdaq japan jasdaq taiwan taisdaq and south korea kosdaq to set up or formalize their own second board markets in 1999 malaysia mesdaq and hong kong gem followed suit given the growing importance of these second board markets we examine whether there is any evidence of spillovers from nasdaq returns and volatilities to asian second board market returns and volatilities after controlling for spillovers from the nyse and whether these cross country spillovers are strong relative to domestic spillovers from the corresponding main board markets we employ egarch models dynamic causality tests and var based forecast error decompositions using daily data of a recent sample period that includes the asian financial crisis of 1997 and continues until april 20 2001 there is strong evidence of lagged returns and volatility spillovers from the nasdaq market to the asian second board markets when we exclude contemporaneous main board market returns there is also strong evidence of contemporaneous and lagged returns and volatility spillovers from the local main board markets to the corresponding second board markets however even in the presence of contemporaneous main board market returns there are substantial spillovers from the lagged nasdaq returns and volatilities to asian second board market returns and volatilities these findings are not sensitive to whether we use us dollar based data or local currency based data given the difference in the trading hours between the nasdaq and asian stock markets we use available intra day return data and canadian return data the findings seem quite robust there is substantial information spillover from the nasdaq to the asian and canadian second board markets these findings indicate the existence of a substantial cross country industry effect or meteor shower effect as well as a domestic market effect or heat wave effect and imply that both country diversification and industry diversification are important

a consumer perspective on price matching refund policies effect on price perceptions and search behavior although price matching refund policies are common in many retail environments the impact of such policies on consumers has largely been ignored this article reports the results of three studies that examine price matching policies from a consumer perspective study 1 shows that consumers perceive price matching policies as signals of low store prices and that the presence of a refund increases the likelihood of discontinuing price search contrary to the predictions based on signaling theory in information economics studies 2 and 3 show that when search costs are low the number of stores searched increases in the presence versus absence of a price matching policy when search costs are high consumers appear to accept the price matching signal at face value and search less in the presence of a refund the article concludes by discussing the theoretical implications of the findings and suggesting directions for future research