pricing frills and customer ratings this paper explores whether and how a firm should adapt its strategy in view of consumer use of prior customer ratings specifically we consider optimal pricing and whether the firm should offer an unexpected frill to early customers to enhance their product experiences we show that if price history is unobserved by consumers a forward looking firm should always modify its strategy from single period optimal one but it may be optimal to do so by lowering price by lowering price and offering frills or by raising price and offering frills depending on the market growth rate specifically the last strategy becomes optimal when market growth rate is high enough the results are similar when the price history is observed by consumers except that no deviation from single period profit maximization choices is optimal when market growth is low enough we also analyze whether the firm should prefer that the price information be stated in or left out of consumer reviews in addition in considering the effects of consumer heterogeneity we conclude that the optimal firm s effort to affect ratings is higher when the idiosyncratic part of consumer uncertainty is larger

utilitarian aggregation of beliefs and tastes harsanyi s utilitarianism is extended here to savage s framework we formulate a pareto condition that implies that both society s utility function and its probability measure are linear combinations of those of the individuals an indiscriminate pareto condition has been shown to contradict linear aggregation of beliefs and tastes we argue that such a condition is not compelling society should not necessarily endorse a unanimous choice when it is based on contradictory beliefs our pareto condition is restricted to choices that involve identical beliefs only

a theory for market growth or decline market growth is fundamental to marketing frank bass s seminal diffusion theory explains growth in new product markets we develop an analogous theory for established markets exhibiting sporadic growth or intermittent declines our theory suggests that market participants repeatedly take successful and unsuccessful actions that cause them to change or to mutate in myriad and often unpredictable ways the environment sorts these mutations determining winners and losers abundant mutations often cause different market participants to become winners displacing past winners abundant mutations also often cause market growth because the natural selection mechanism leaves more surviving favorable mutations so one nonobvious falsifiable implication of our theory is that displacement precedes growth and stability precedes decline another is that risk taking diversity of opinions and experimentation should precede growth we develop a metric for measuring displacement using multiple publicly available data sets one including sales for top firms for 55 years and another including sales for all automobile models for 25 years we find that our metric provides a practical way to measure the rate of mutation and confirm our theory s predictions our easily replicated tests show that our displacement metric can predict intermittent market growth or decline in very different contexts without the need for exogenous idiosyncratic explanations moreover other alternative covariates trends lagged growth new product entry macroeconomic indicators etc are unable to predict growth or decline

evolutionary theorizing in economics modern economic analysis oriented toward understanding the workings of economies that make extensive use of markets came into existence with three guiding questions all central in adam smith s 1776 1937 the wealth of nations one question concerned order without any central authority guiding and commanding action how is economic activity coordinated the second question was the challenge of explaining the prevailing constellation of prices inputs and outputs what explains the price of labor and the rent of land the third question addressed the processes of economic progress or development smith and other early economists clearly were impressed by the inventiveness the energy and the growing productivity generated by the evolving market economy how to understand its dynamics the first two questions have defined continuing central concerns of the discipline of economics since they first were posed over two centuries ago when not posed in the context of an economy that is understood as in the process of developing they seem to pull the focus of theorizing toward equilibrium conditions the third question concerned with the processes driving economic progress pulls the theorizing toward an evolutionary orientation the question of economic development has waxed and waned in centrality to the discipline as has the importance of evolutionary theorizing during the first several decades of the twentieth century evolutionary thinking and language was widespread in economics but as one contrasts the economic

gender and command over property a critical gap in economic analysis and policy in south asia abstract this paper focuses on a much neglected issue the links between gender inequities and command over property it outlines why in rural south asia where arable land is the most important form of property any significant improvement in women s economic and social situation is crucially tied to their having independent land rights better employment opportunities can complement but not substitute for land but despite progressive legislation few south asian women own land even fewer effectively control any why a complex range of factors social administrative and ideological are found to underlie the persistent gap between women s legal rights and their actual ownership of land and between ownership and control the necessity of collective action by women for overcoming these obstacles and the aspects needing a specific focus for policy and action are also discussed

can redistributive reform be achieved via market based voluntary land transfer schemes evidence and lessons from the philippines this article examines market led agrarian reform mlar and its variants in the form of voluntary land transfer schemes under the comprehensive agrarian reform program carp in the philippines analysis of mlar variants in the philippines offers a preview of what is likely to happen when the mlar model currently being pushed by the world bank is implemented in the real world not only do mlar and mlar like schemes fail to promote redistributive reform they also undermine potentially redistributive state led land reform policies

research issues at the boundary of competitive dynamics and market evolution building on the observation that competitive dynamics and market evolution are inextricably linked and underresearched we propose a road map to guide and stimulate future research in the area a number of rationales have been proposed to explain why there is relatively little research directed toward understanding the links between competitive dynamics and market evolution these include the predominance of different research paradigms in each area a lack of data appropriate for analyzing the two areas together and the difficulty of obtaining robust and significant results with analysis that is by definition complex it must consider factors and outcomes both across firms and over time using this last rationale as a starting point we develop a series of research propositions related to key relationships where a insignificant or contradictory results have been obtained in extant research or b researchers have yet to delve the propositions are designed to deepen our understanding of the relationship between the areas throughout the analysis the key to developing the propositions is to recognize the importance of moderating factors mediating factors and covariates in addition where the approach to empirically test a proposition is new we propose categories measures and comparisons that can be used

farm size land yields and the agricultural production function an analysis for fifteen developing countries abstract the paper analyzes the relationship between factor inputs land yields and labor productivity for farms of different size on the basis of fao farm management data for 15 developing countries for all but three countries a strong negative correlation is found between farm size on the one side and factor inputs and yields per hectare on the other the fitting of unconstrained production functions to the above data suggests that in only few cases the decline in yields for increasing farm size can be attributed to decreasing returns to scale the higher yields observed in small farms are mainly to be ascribed to higher factor inputs and to a more intensive use of land therefore where conspicuous labor surpluses exist the superiority of small farming provides solid arguments in favor of land redistribution such an agrarian reform would determine higher output higher labor absorption and a more equitable income distribution thus contributing in a decisive manner to the alleviation of rural poverty the paper also provides estimates of cross sectional production functions for the 15 countries analyzed empirical relations are found between the output elasticities of land labor and intermediate inputs and physical indicators of their scarcity the paper concludes by proposing a simple method for deriving a long term production function for agriculture

a new product growth for model consumer durables this article originally appeared in management science january 1969 volume 15 number 5 pp 215 227 published by the institute of management sciences a growth model for the timing of initial purchase of new products is developed and tested empirically against data for eleven consumer durables the basic assumption of the model is that the timing of a consumer s initial purchase is related to the number of previous buyers a behavioral rationale for the model is offered in terms of innovative and imitative behavior the model yields good predictions of the sales peak and the timing of the peak when applied to historical data a long range forecast is developed for the sales of color television sets

land reforms poverty reduction and economic growth evidence from india recognition of the importance of institutions that provide security of property rights and relatively equal access to economic resources to a broad cross section of society has renewed interest in the potential of asset redistribution including land reforms empirical analysis of the impact of such policies is however scant and often contradictory this paper uses panel household data from india together with state level variation in the implementation of land reform to address some of the deficiencies of earlier studies the results suggest that land reform had a significant and positive impact on income growth and accumulation of human and physical capital the paper draws policy implications especially from the fact that the observed impact of land reform seems to have declined over time

empirical generalizations about market evolution and stationarity we present empirical generalizations about conditions under which marketing variables evolve or remain stationary we first define evolution statistically and make the case why it is an important concept for increasing our understanding of long run marketing effectiveness we then briefly review ways in which evolution can be tested empirically from readily available data we present a database of over 400 prior analyses and catalog the relative incidence of stationarity versus evolution in market performance and marketing spending we find that evolution is the dominant characteristic for sales and marketing mix spending but that stationarity is the dominant characteristic for market share thus we find strong support for the conjecture that many markets are in a long run equilibrium where the relative position of the players is only temporarily disturbed by their respective marketing activities we assess the impact of a number of covariates on the likelihood of finding stationarity evolution in sales

premature deagriculturalisation land inequality and rural dependency in limpopo province south africa cross national regressions reveal abnormally low agricultural workforce shares given gnp in developing countries that had historically concentrated land into large capital intensive farms we argue that such deagriculturalisation was premature since its concomitant labour shedding has undesirable outcomes in a new south african survey a large proportion of rural households and working age persons was dependent relying for income almost wholly on either migrant remittances or pensions a separate group with less poverty and unemployment relied mainly on local including own farm income the group was heavily over represented in one of the three regions where many more households had significant land

smallholders institutional services and commercial transformation in ethiopia this article examines the role of institutional services of credit input supply and extension in the overall commercial transformation process of smallholder agriculture in ethiopia survey data collected in 2006 from 309 sample households in three districts of ethiopia are used for the analyses tobit regression models are used to measure the effect of access to services on the intensity of inputs use for fertilizer and agrochemicals a probit model is used to measure these effects on the adoption of improved seeds intensity of use of seeds is analyzed using an ordinary least squares model logarithmic cobb douglass functions are estimated to analyze the effect of access to services on crop productivity heckman s two stage estimation is used to examine determinants of household market participation and the extents of participation results show that access to institutional support services plays a significant role in enhancing smallholder productivity and market orientation our results imply that expanding and strengthening the institutional services is critical for the intensification and market orientation of smallholder agriculture in ethiopia in particular appropriate incentives and regulatory systems are urgently needed to encourage the involvement of the private sector in the provision of agricultural services

brazil s agrarian structure changes from 1970 through 1980 abstract structural patterns that accompany the growth and modernization of brazil s agrarian economy are identified despite increasing land concentration a rather large and disproportionate economic contribution of sizable numbers of very small farms is documented as is an enhanced vitality of larger farms meanwhile large quantities of unused agricultural land remain on many medium sized and large farms the expected inverse relationship between farm size and various measures of production per land unit is validated and reasons for the inverse relationship are deduced production is so large on small farms because their intensity of resource use overwhelms the facts that yields are greater and higher valued export crops are more usually found on large farms that capitalized intermediate and large farms seem destined to play a larger role in future production in brazil is argued but it is doubtful that the small farm and by implication the peasantry will disappear in the foreseeable future

historical method in marketing research with new evidence on long term market share stability abstract several researchers have advocated historical or longitudinal approaches to study marketing phenomena although some have applied this approach more often it has been overlooked or denigrated the author argues that historical method is capable of producing scientific knowledge that is currently useful rather than simply a remembrance of the past the author presents a complete description of the historical method so researchers can use this article as a guide when applying this method the value of the method is illustrated by examining the prevailing finding in the marketing literature that market shares are stable over time although this finding is considered an empirical generalization an analysis of more than 650 brands in 100 categories raises doubts about the longevity of market share stability

land reform as commenced business the evidence against stopping abstract in the new paradigm institutions are long term endogenous thus the aims of land reform must be compatible with replace or substitute for initial incentives and power structures many reforms e g compulsory collectives are not redefinition of land reform is therefore needed yet the case for private land redistribution with ceilings remains the inverse relationship rests firmly on lower cost labor transactions in small farms though large but competitive transport or processing firms which enjoy lower cost capital transactions may be needed crucial is the impact of the postreform structure on livelihoods especially for the growing rural majority near landless workers new style market based reforms have potential probably best combined with old style ceilings substantial compensation with urban taxpayers sharing costs alternative off farm prospects and progressive taxes on large landholdings or bequests

is the first to market the first to fail empirical evidence for industrial goods businesses abstract when entering a new market the first entrant typically faces the greatest market and technological uncertainties memorable phrases reflect the associated survival risk such as the first to market is the first to fail and the pioneer is the one with the arrows in its back although research estimates the market pioneer s survival rate the typical pioneer survival rate has not been compared with that of early followers the authors study compares survival rates for 167 first entrant market pioneers versus 267 early followers for these industrial goods businesses 66 of the pioneers versus 48 of the early followers survived at least ten years the main conclusion is that the pioneer s temporary monopoly over the early followers plus its first mover advantages typically offset the survival risks associated with market and technological uncertainties these results are consistent with previous research in the sense that first mover advantages that increase a pioneer s market share also hel

the effect of customer satisfaction on consumer spending growth abstract predicting aggregate consumer spending is vitally important to marketing planning yet traditional economic theory holds that predicting changes in aggregate consumer spending is not possible previous attempts to predict consumer spending growth using standard macroeconomic predictor variables have met with little success the authors show that the lagged change in customer satisfaction which contributes to future demand has a significant impact on spending growth however this impact is moderated by increases in consumers debt service ratio a key budget constraint that affects consumers ability to spend using an asymmetric growth model more than 23 of the variation in the one quarter ahead spending growth is explained which represents a notable improvement over prior specifications

the future of small farms trajectories and policy priorities summary while smallholder development has in the past led to reductions in poverty and hunger does this still apply in today s more globalized world this paper reviews the debates on the contemporary role of agriculture in development and the case for small farms in light of the rise of supermarkets lower commodity prices and liberalized trade agricultural research funding environmental change hiv aids and changing policy ideas although the answers vary greatly by context for many low income countries smallholder development remains a key option the policy agenda however has changed in addition to providing public goods the growing challenge is to overcome market failures which is largely a matter of institutional innovation

contestable markets an uprising in the theory of industry structure presents a transcript of the presidential address delivered at the 94th meeting of the american economic association on december 29 1981 discussion of developments in the theory of industry structure welfare attributes of contestable markets behavior characteristics of oligopoly equilibrium intertemporal vulnerability to inefficient entry ebsco

the impossibility of a paretian rational a bayesian perspective abstract if a group takes a collective decision on the basis of separately aggregated group judgments on the probabilities of independent events there may not exist any anonymous aggregation rule that respects individuals unanimous outcome preferences at all profiles of beliefs

performance regimes and marketing policy shifts even in mature markets managers are expected to improve their brands performance year after year when successful they can expect to continue executing on an established marketing strategy however when the results are disappointing a change or turnaround strategy may be called for to help performance get back on track in such cases performance diagnostics are needed to identify turnarounds and to quantify the role of marketing policy shifts in this process this paper proposes a framework for such a diagnosis and applies several methods to provide converging evidence for two main findings first contrary to prevailing beliefs the performance of brands in mature markets is not always stable instead brands systematically improve or deteriorate their performance outlook in clearly identifiable time windows that are relatively short compared to windows of stability second these shifts in performance regimes are associated with the brand s marketing actions and policy shifts as opposed to competitive marketing promotion oriented marketing policy shifts are particularly potent in improving a brand s performance outlook

creating rural livelihoods some lessons for south africa from experience elsewhere abstract a development path for south africa that will create jobs and reduce poverty must include the encouragement of greater labor intensity in agriculture especially of smallholder farming which was suppressed under apartheid there is however widespread skepticism on both the left and the right about the prospects for more labor intensive farming but this skepticism is called into question by both theory and evidence of the advantages of small scale production in certain products and circumstances there are now numerous examples of this in many parts of the world the paper discusses the preconditions for the development of such farming in south africa including land reform and the need to reorient investment and supporting economic and technical services research training marketing credit from the privileged large scale white farms to the undercapitalized and neglected black smallholders

the veil of public ignorance abstract a theory of cooperative choice under incomplete information is developed in which agents possess private information at the time of contracting and have agreed on a utilitarian standard of evaluation governing choices under complete information the task is to extend this standard to situations of incomplete information our first main result generalizes harsanyi s j polit econ 63 1955 309 classical result to situations of incomplete information assuming that group preferences satisfy bayesian coherence and interim pareto dominance these axioms are mutually compatible if and only if a common prior exists we argue that this result partly resolves the impossibility of bayesian preference aggregation under complete information

the future of small farms new directions for services institutions and intermediation summary efficient pre and post harvest services are essential if small farms in high potential areas are to intensify production contribute to economic growth and reduce poverty they also matter if small farms in marginal areas are to manage their natural resource base in the face of growing population pressure and climate change difficulties that smallholders face in accessing services are reviewed showing how incentives for commercial delivery of services to smallholders differ between staple food traditional cash crop and high value product supply chains the major challenge in service delivery to smallholders in much of africa concerns coordination of service development and delivery different forms of intermediary institution for achieving such coordination are examined

rural market imperfections and the farm size productivity relationship evidence from pakistan the subject of this article is the relationships between farm size and productivity and between farm size and profitability in the developing countries the recent controversies over the inverse size output relationship are reviewed and a framework is provided that explains the inverse relationship based on plausible assumptions about imperfections in the markets for labor land credit and risk from this framework a set of testable hypotheses are derived the hypotheses are tested on recent farm level panel data from pakistan a strong inverse relationship between farm size and yield is present in the sample even when household fixed effects are used to account for unobserved heterogeneity moreover the suggested market imperfections framework is consistent with the data

is small beautiful farm size productivity and poverty in asian agriculture the debate on the relationship between farm size and productivity has gone through a complete circle in the 1960s it was perceived that small farms were efficient because they can fully use their resources particularly family labor and they can monitor their production activities closely but in the 1970s and 1980s as many asian countries rapidly moved towards industrialization and urbanization small farms were considered a major obstacle in this process