the complex evolution of a simple traffic convention the functions and implications of habit this chapter presents an agent based simulation of the emergence of a traffic convention concerning whether to drive on the left or the right of the road the interaction between agents and structures involves causal influences in two directions showing how agents constitute institutions and how institutions can have reconstitutive causal effects on individuals

testing an alternative habit persistence model marshall long ago noted the phenomenon of past consumption being highly correlated with current consumption if habit was indeed a major determinant of current consumption behavior then the neoclassical theory of utility maximization should take it into account a rigorous incorporation of habit formation into consumer theory began with gorman 12 pollak 21 22 23 laid out the theoretical conditions that needed to be satisfied in order for habit persistence to be consistent with the utility maximizing model of consumer behavior competent empirical work in this area was done initially by houthakker and taylor 14 with subsequent studies by manser 16 phlips 18 19 pollak and wales 24 anderson and blundell 2 and blanciforti and green 8 these papers have focused on examining the impact of measured past consumption on current consumption blundell 9 provides a comprehensive review of this literature

a globally flexible almost ideal demand system the almost ideal demand system is combined with the fourier expenditure system subject to the assumption that preferences are of the price independent generalized logarithmic class the resulting demand system has the desirable features of each of its components aggregate demand equations are consistent with preferences of a representative consumer and consistent estimates of elasticities are obtained for all observed prices application of the new demand system to u s consumption of meats and fish reveals that it fits the data well and that the restriction to the usual specification is rejected

one market one number a composite indicator assessment of eu internal market dynamics we consider the lack of consensus about an appropriate theoretical framework linking sub indicators as a defining characteristic of composite indicators this intrinsic feature implies uncertainties about the appropriate normalization and aggregation of the raw data the two are related index theory offers some valuable guidelines about their connection yet these do not fully solve the basic problem of expert disagreement we embed such residual disagreement in the aggregation method itself specifically we apply an impartial benefit of the doubt weighting procedure where weight restrictions incorporate the available information on experts opinions we apply this procedure to the dynamic performance assessment of eu internal market effects thereby highlighting its capacity to disaggregate member states observed performance shifts into changes relative to benchmarks and performance changes of the benchmarks i e catching up versus genuine progress our results indicate that the latter factor is more important in explaining the observed progress

the use of the scaling property in a frontier analysis of a system of equations this article presents a one stage efficiency frontier analysis based on the scaling property this type of analysis is a not very often applied in empirical work in spite of its nice features due

growth in horticultural trade japan s market for developing countries abstract this paper explores possibilities and oppurtunities of expansion of horticultural exports from developing countries through an investigation on a rapidly growing market japan as an example among major promising markets in this paper six horticultural commodities are selected to analyze emphasizing on exports from developing countries observations on japan s horticultural imports make us presume that consumers differentiate products by place of production therefore import behavior is considered in a two stage budgeting procedure the second stage demands for imports from different sources are specified in an almost ideal demand system aids model and estimated statistically as well as the first stage import demand equations the estimated second stage aids equations show that the magnitude of own price coefficients varies with the source of imports and so does that of expenditure coefficients therefore the characteristics of import demand on a commodity basis which are captured by the estimates of the first stage import demand equations are not equally transmitted to the demand for imports by source in each commodity the estimated coefficients of the first stage import demand and the second stage aids equations were combined to obtain the total effects of price and income changes on imports by source the calculated own price elasticities are greater than one in absolute value in ten of the 15 cases and so are the calculated income elasticities in twelve cases the large elasticities promise suppliers that they benefit from japan s income growth and that they increase their earnings if they can reduce the price by lowering their costs however factors in non price competition also play import roles in the import growth in this paper the importance of sales promotions by exporters and preshipment inspections was indicated in the cases of mangoes and cut flowers other factors such as market structure and public infrastructure for post harvest activities were also discussed

the role of key stakeholders in the international joint venture negotiations case studies from eastern europe recent literature has suggested that a key stakeholder may be able to shift the balance of bargaining power during a joint venture negotiation and thus change the outcome of the process this paper explores the role of central and eastern european transitional governments as key stakeholders and how they influence international joint venture negotiations this role is described and analyzed by examining eight dyads of western european and central eastern european enterprises that have recently negotiated agreements the findings suggest that transitional governments as key stakeholders intervene at different stages of the negotiation process have both direct and indirect influences on the process and that they can change the balance of power in the negotiations sometimes to the detriment of their own state owned enterprise

the us retail demand for fish products an application of the almost ideal demand system the main objective is to address the limitations of past us fish demand research through the development of a variation of the almost ideal demand system model for disaggregate fish products at the retail level price and expenditure elasticities as well as elasticities of substitution between fish products and other protein commodities determined from this work may be used in the context of fisheries management and market development and promotion results indicate that with the exception of shellfish demand for the various fish products is relatively inelastic cross price elasticities are generally moderate while expenditure elasticities are large and positive for fresh fish and shellfish demographic effects especially geographical division season race occupation age sex household composition and price income interaction as a proxy for quality are highly significant variables

an inverse demand system for new england groundfish welfare analysis of the transition to catch share management the welfare effects of the 2010 transition from days at sea to catch share management in the northeast u s groundfish fishery are examined by combining a model of groundfish demand with a simulation based model of supply counterfactual supply is constructed based on the days at sea system that was recalibrated to meet mandated conservation goals due to the decreases in catch that were required to meet those goals the 2010 policy undoubtedly resulted in worse outcomes for both producers and consumers compared to 2009 however the conservation equivalent days at sea system would have been far worse for both consumers and producers copyright 2013 oxford university press

conditional and unconditional food demand elasticities in a dynamic multistage demand system this paper estimates conditional and unconditional demand elasticities in a three stage analysis of consumer demand for food and non food items in greece a dynamic version of the aids model is specified and estimated and full system misspecification tests applied correction formulas for price and expenditure elasticities are used to calculate unconditional elasticities from conditional demand sub systems all food items rank as price inelastic deviations between the calculated conditional and unconditional price and expenditure elasticities are found to be significant demonstrating the importance of correcting conditional elasticities before they can be used for policy purposes or welfare analyses

evaluating prior beliefs in a demand system the case of meat demand in canada an almost ideal demand system for meats is estimated using canadian data a bayesian approach is used to impose inequality restrictions on substitution elasticities via monte carlo integration and importance sampling in order to conform with prior beliefs about curvature and monotonicity restrictions and substitution relationships results are more consistent with the concavity and monotonicity restrictions from demand theory than with the added restriction that all meats are substitutes

the health returns of education policies from preschool to high school and beyond the accessibility of quality schools and educational resources for children are key engines of upward mobility in the united states holding the potential to break the cycle of poverty from one generation to the next inequalities in economic status tend to be correlated across generations in part because of intergenerational correlations in health and education rucker c johnson 2009 residential segregation by race and class that leads to unequal access to quality schools is often cited as a culprit in perpetuating inequality in attainment outcomes over the past four decades three major government interventions have had substantial impacts on the provision of school resources and have narrowed black white differences in access to dimensions of school quality i court mandated school desegregation ii state legislation and legal action aimed to change the distribution and level of school funding and iii the expansion of targeted preschool programs for disadvantaged children through head start court ordered school desegregation has been described as the most controversial and ambitious social experiment of the past 50 years human capital health outcomes and inequality

the cost structure of american research universities 1597 this study estimates translog variable cost functions for 147 american doctorate granting universities accounting for three major products of these institutions undergraduate and graduate instruction and research explicit measures of research output and quality are employed evidence is found for considerable economies of scale for the average institution as well as economies of scope related to the joint production of undergraduate and graduate instruction the public or private ownership of an institution is not significant for the explanation of variable costs the intensity of state regulation in the public sector does not have a significant impact on production efficiency copyright 1991 by mit press

determinants of international university rankings scores this article analyses the relationship between a university s score in international university rankings its expenditure per student and other factors such as university mission size and productive inefficiency we develop an economic model of rankings and universities and estimate this model with data on universities classified in the top 200 by the times higher education supplement ranking of 2007 we find that the elasticity of a university s ranking score for the expenditure per student is between 4 and 9 and that there are no clear signs of inefficiency in production among the top 200 universities university mission and size are also significant predictors of ranking score these results are especially interesting given the relevance attributed to rankings by government officials university directors and students

willingness to pay and price elasticities of demand for energy efficient appliances combining the hedonic approach and demand systems abstract this article proposes a combined approach for estimating willingness to pay for the attributes represented by energy efficiency labels and providing reliable price elasticities of demand own and cross for close substitutes e g those with low energy efficiency and those with higher energy efficiency this is done by using the results of the hedonic approach together with the quantity based demand system qbds model the elasticity results obtained with the latter are then compared with those simulated using the linear almost ideal demand system la aids the methodology is applied to the dishwasher market in spain it is found that 15 6 of the final price is actually paid for the energy efficiency attribute this accounts for about 80 of the average market price the elasticity results confirm that energy efficient appliances are more price elastic than regular ones

evaluating the productive performance of uk universities as cost constrained revenue maximizers an empirical analysis the study presents an empirical analysis of the relative revenue efficiency of uk universities in providing teaching and research with government policies pressurizing the largely public funded universities to secure efficiency in both input usage and output revenue university producers are modelled as cost constrained revenue maximizers taking explicit account of the quality of research output the methodology uses linear programming techniques to construct nonparametric cost indirect production frontiers and to compute revenue efficiency relative to these frontiers revenue efficiency is then decomposed into its output allocative and technical components further analysis investigates the sources of allocative and technical inefficiencies

revisiting aggregate u s meat demand with a bayesian averaging of classical estimates approach do we need a more general theory although meat demand is one of the most studied issues in agricultural economics our understanding of this phenomenon has been hampered by valid concerns about model specification uncertainty this article revisits the need for more general theories of aggregate u s meat demand using a bayesian averaging of classical estimates approach we draw comprehensive inferences over 1 048 576 demand systems we find very little evidence supporting the need for more general theories that include demand determinants beyond prices and expenditures we find strong evidence in support of symmetry and negativity but strong evidence against homogeneity which is consistent with other research copyright 2008 oxford university press

competition and diversification in public and private higher education the development of mass higher education and growing competition between higher education institutions has given increasing visibility to the issue of diversification this article analyses the issue of programme diversification using a panel of 181 portuguese higher education institutions over the period 1995 to 2007 by comparing the behaviour of public and private institutions the results show that the legal status of institutions is the major determinant of programme diversification as private institutions are far more specialized than their public counterparts the study also evaluates the role of other institutional variables such as the institution s size age location institutional mission and research intensity to explain differences in the diversification behaviour of higher education institutions the results provide important insights as competition has been thought to improve the performance of higher education institutions

sixty years after the magic carpet ride the long run effect of the early childhood environment on social and economic outcomes this paper estimates the effect of the early childhood environment on a large array of social and economic outcomes lasting almost 60 years to do this we exploit variation in the living conditions experienced by yemenite children after being airlifted to israel in 1949 we find that children who were placed in a more modern environment i e with better sanitary and infrastructure conditions were more likely to obtain higher education marry at an older age have fewer children and work at age 55 they were also more likely to be assimilated into israeli society to be less religious and have more worldly tastes in music and food however these effects are found mainly for women and not for men we also find an effect on the next generation children who lived in a better environment grew up to have children with more education

cultural transmission and discrimination workers can have good or bad work habits these traits are transmitted from one generation to the next through a learning and imitation process which depends on parents investment in the trait and the social environment where children live if a sufficiently high proportion of employers have taste based prejudices against minority workers we show that their prejudices are always self fulfilled in steady state and minority workers end up having on average worse work habits than majority workers this leads to a ghetto culture affirmative action can improve the welfare of minorities whereas integration can be beneficial to minority workers but detrimental to workers from the majority group

standard errors for elasticities a comparison of bootstrap and asymptotic standard errors this article compares two methods of deriving standard errors for elasticities in a linear expenditure demand system with first order autoregressive errors the first is the ordinary taylor series method and the second is efron s bootstrap in an example problem these two methods yielded similar values for the standard errors with the exception of the income elasticity standard errors for which the asymptotic standard errors were apparently too large by a factor of two

input and output substitution in higher education abstract this study estimates a multi input multi output model of production in higher education based on data from academic departments from a large public university the results show that there are economies of scale in all dimensions undergraduate and graduate instruction and research of the university s output over the observed range all three types of labor tenured faculty non tenured faculty and graduate assistants are substitutes with the demand for the most skilled category tenured faculty being least elastic

institutions of higher education as multi product firms economies of scale and scope a multiple output cost function is estimated for institutions of higher education in the united states employing data for 1981 82 the authors flexible fixed cost quadratic function includes three outputs undergraduate teaching graduate teaching and research grants and one input price average faculty salaries results indicate the existence of scope economies at least up to a point for both public and private institutions of higher education ray economies of scale are more pronounced in the private sector and product specific economies of scale are observed only in the public sector for research and graduate teaching copyright 1989 by mit press

are there halo effects of us grain export promotion the objective of the research reported in this article is to examine both the own and cross effects of us export promotion for us and non us grains we focus on two previously neglected dimensions of the cross effects first we examine whether a halo effect i e promotion for one us commodity positively effects demand for another us commodity for us commodities exists second we look at whether us grain export promotion has public goods characteristics that is does us grain promotion have a halo effect on grain demand for other countries we use a linear approximation of an almost ideal demand system la aids model for us and non us rice wheat and sorghum that include us export promotion as one of the explanatory variables our goal is to provide further empirical evidence for the halo effect issue by using us grains as a case study since this sector has not been previously explored in addition to estimating own and cross export promotion elasticities the magnitude of cross effects on us market s

cross cultural interaction the international comparison fallacy international management studies have been based primarily on the comparison of managerial behavior in countries around the world often these studies have implied that business people behave similarly with their domestic colleagues as with their foreign counterparts in questioning that assumption this study tests whether intra cultural behavior accurately predicts cross cultural behavior using a negotiation simulation and a sample of 462 japanese american and canadian businesspeople behaviors in cross cultural negotiations were found to differ in some important ways from those in intra cultural negotiations

decomposition analysis of consumers demand changes an application to greek consumption data a decomposition analysis for consumer demand functions is developed changes in marshallian demand or expenditure shares functions over time are decomposed into a total substitution effect an income effect and a habit effect this framework is applied to post war greek consumption patterns through a habit persistence version of the quadratic almost ideal demand system quaids it is found that for all commodity categories i e food beverages and tobacco footwear and clothing settling and housing and others the income effect was the main driving force in explaining changes in both quantity demanded and expenditure shares followed by habit and total substitution effects

the multinational corporation as a multilingual community language and organization in a global context this paper develops a framework for analyzing the multinational corporation mnc as a multilingual community in which parent functional language and subunit functional languages are concurrently used and recursively linked through an intra corporate communication network the unit breadth and intensity of an mnc s language system are designed to apply global strategies within the context of evolving environmental and organizational realities to the extent that language design is the product of deliberate choice we suggest that headquarters functional language is determined by the mnc s international strategy organizational structure and transnationality while subunit functional language is designed in accordance with organizational form strategic role and expatriate deployment aligning language systems with organizational strategy and dynamics improves mnc communication coordination and knowledge sharing

the producer welfare effects of trade liberalization when goods are perishable and habit forming the case of asparagus asparagus is a perishable highly seasonal crop we find that out of season imports of asparagus caused habit formation that increased demand in the u s growing seasons we find that habit effects offset about 64 of the welfare losses to u s asparagus producers from increased mexican imports under nafta and all of the u s producer welfare losses from increased peruvian imports under the andean trade preference act we estimate that the u s producer welfare losses from nafta are less than the annualized value of market loss assistance provided them in the 2008 farm bill jel classifications d12 f130 q17 q18

bias in estimating the almost ideal demand system with the stone index approximation this paper shows that the commonly used stone index approximation can bias the parameter estimates of the almost ideal demand system the bias mostly affects the price parameters and can be more serious when the budget share equations are estimated with individual household rather than aggregate data in the absence of strong substitution effects the price parameter bias can be largely corrected through simple reparameterization copyright 1993 by royal economic society

the influence of culture on the process of business negotiations an exploratory study the processes of business negotiations in three countries the united states japan and brazil are compared and contrasted three dyads from each country were videotaped during a buyer seller negotiation simulation both verbal behaviors and nonverbal behaviors were observed and recorded observed differences provide the basis for hypothesized differences which might be tested in future work

hierarchical choice in economics abstract the paper examines the relevance for economic issues of choice which is not characterized by unlimited substitutability after showing that hierarchical choice is common in other social sciences like psychology the paper proceeds with an examination of such choice and of its different categories subsequently the implications for hierarchical choice for specific economic issues are analysed in particular there is discussion and literature review of demand theory engel curves the theory of the firm and social choice theory finally some suggestions for the application to other economic problems are considered

higher education costs and scale and scope economies higher education multi product cost functions are estimated for the public and private sectors disaggregated by research comprehensive baccalaureate and associate level institutions the output mix incorporates professional school teaching output in addition to undergraduate and graduate teaching and research outputs scale and scope economies are examined by sector and institutional level also accounting for regional differences ray economies are found throughout the private sector but confined to lower level public institutions research economies are widespread throughout all sector levels economies of scope prevail among private institutions across levels but only among comprehensive and baccalaureate public colleges

a measure of segregation based on social interactions we develop an index of segregation based on two premises 1 a measure of segregation should disaggregate to the level of individuals and 2 an individual is more segregated the more segregated are the agents with whom she interacts we present an index that satisfies 1 and 2 and that is based on agents social interactions the extent to which blacks interact with blacks whites with whites etc we use the index to measure school and residential segregation using detailed data on friendship networks we calculate levels of within school racial segregation in a sample of u s schools we also calculate residential segregation across major u s cities using block level data from the 2000 u s census

demand for collective food safety standards in 2007 leading members of the u s fresh tomato industry responded to pressure from the u s food and drug administration regarding the industry s long history of poor food safety outcomes and adopted a set of standards for production practices related to food safety at all levels of the fresh tomato supply chain adherence to these standards was required under a federal marketing order that applied to essentially all tomatoes grown in florida the california tomato farmers cooperative whose members produced the vast majority of fresh tomatoes grown in california also required that its members adopt these standards the collective food safety standards for fresh tomatoes closely resemble the requirements of the u s food safety modernization act fsma produce safety rule so the collective adoption of these standards provides an excellent case study to illustrate the possible effects of fsma implementation on demand i assess the hypothesis that demand for tomatoes from florida and california increased following the adoption of standards for food safety practices by growers in those states relative to demand for tomatoes from other regions my analysis demonstrates essentially no evidence that demand for fresh tomatoes responded positively to the implementation of collective food safety practices

price premium for high efficiency refrigerators and calculation of price elasticities for close substitutes a methodology using hedonic pricing and demand systems this article uses the hedonic pricing method to estimate the price premium paid for the highest energy efficiency label a in the refrigerators market of the basque autonomous community spain the estimated figure is 8 9 of the final price or about 60 euro which represents one third of the energy savings that a consumer gets during the lifetime of a refrigerator with the highest energy efficiency label this figure is then combined with the linear version of the almost ideal demand system la aids to obtain own and cross price elasticities of demand the information presented here is useful for policy design and analysis the results indicate that the demand for refrigerators with the highest energy efficiency label is highly sensitive to price variations

consumer behaviour in greece an application of the almost ideal demand system this paper estimates the almost ideal demand system on greek data for the period 1960 1986 for seven commodity groups the results conform with earlier research findings that the homogeneity and symmetry restrictions of demand theory are broadly inconsistent with the data the imposition of the restrictions leads to substantial changes in the estimated elasticities in both the static and dynamic specifications the introduction of habit effects with lagged consumption supported statistically by the data led to plausible results leaving however the problem of rejection of homogeneity and symmetry intact

reconsidering the economics of demand analysis with kinked budget constraints this paper has two objectives first we identify a problem with the ability of the discrete continuous choice framework and conditional demand functions to fully describe consumer preferences in the presence of kinked budget constraints second we propose and illustrate an alternative preference based method for estimating consumer responses to price changes under these conditions this framework recognizes that commitments to commodities such as pools or outdoor landscaping influence how water consumption responds to price changes as part of the long run consumption adjustments with microdata on household choices this approach could be used to design increasing block rate structures that recognize the differences in water consumption responses with these commitments

the efficiency of german universities some evidence from non parametric and parametric methods due to tight public budget constraints the efficiency of publicly financed universities in germany is receiving increasing attention in the academic as well as in the public discourse against this background we analyse the efficiency of 72 public german universities for the years 1998 2003 applying data envelopment and stochastic frontier analysis contrary to earlier studies we account for the faculty composition of universities which proves to be an essential element in the efficiency of higher education our main finding is that east german universities have performed better in total factor productivity change compared to those in west germany however when looking at mean efficiency scores over the sample period west german universities still appear at the top end of relative efficiency outcomes

does school quality explain the recent black white wage trend around 1980 the trend toward racial wage convergence essentially stopped i ask whether this break in the convergence trend can be explained by school quality department of education surveys provide earnings data for the high school class of 1972 in 1979 and the class of 1980 in 1986 both linked to data from the respondents high schools by several measures differences between schools attended by blacks and whites were already rather small in the 1970s furthermore i find that measurable school inputs generally have little effect on wages thus school quality explains little of the recent black white wage trend

testing for consistent aggregation this paper designs workable empirical procedures for testing or imposing supply demand price aggregators only single equation methods are considered to shift the focus from any particular optimizing paradigm toward the necessities for correctly tabulating firm level supplies demands and aggregate supply demand both macro and micro level tests for consistent aggregation are developed and constructive rules for aggregation based upon empirically observed micro behavior are provided in tabular form empirical tests reveal no support for the aggregate price most commonly reported by usda the constructive rules are then used to develop a new wheat price index consistent with supply aggregation

interfirm diversity organizational learning and longevity in global strategic alliances organizational theorists have correctly argued that the emergence and maintenance of robust cooperation between global strategic alliance partners is related to the diversity in the partners characteristics yet previous research has failed to systematically delineate the important dimensions of interfirm diversity and integrate the dimensions into a unified framework of analysis this paper develops a multilevel typology of interfirm diversity and focuses on organizational learning and adaptation as critical processes that dynamically moderate diversity s impact on alliance longevity and effectiveness

measuring and decomposing economies of diversification an application to biogas fuelled cogeneration plants in austria abstract this paper investigates the existence and the degree of economies of diversification for small scaled renewable fuelled cogeneration systems using 2014 cross sectional data from 67 austrian biogas plants it is the first study applying the recently introduced concept of economies of diversification proposed by chavas and kim 2010 which is a generalization and decomposition of economies of scope economies of diversification are decomposed into three additive parts a part measuring complementarity among outputs a part reflecting economies of scale a part reflecting convexity in addition this paper extends the decomposition introduced by chavas and kim 2010 in such a way that the contribution of each input to economies of diversification and its components can be investigated the results indicate substantial cost savings from diversification for very small scaled plants 100 kwel most of the cost savings come from scale economies for larger plants 250 kwel positive complementarity and convexity effects are the main source of economies of diversification and outweigh the negative effect from scale diseconomies in addition to substantial fuel feedstock cost reductions significant costs saving effects from the jointness in labour and other inputs positively contribute to the complementarity effect while on average capital and labour costs positively contribute to economies of scale feedstock costs work in the direction of diseconomies of scale

the role of theoretical restrictions in forecasting with inverse demand models in recent years the theoretical restrictions of consumer demand have been examined in post sample forecasting exercises however this work has uniformly ignored the concavity restrictions of consumer demand in this paper we evaluate a series of normalized quadratic inverse demand system nqids specifications using rolling windows and generating one to four step ahead forecasts to estimate the models eleven categories of south atlantic fish are used from 1980 through 2001 in addition to the nqids we also examine the forecasting performance of a purely time series model we find that the best predictions are achieved using a composite forecast

the governance and performance of universities evidence from europe and the us we test the hypothesis that universities are more productive when they are both more autonomous and face more competition using survey data we construct indices of university autonomy and competition for both europe and the united states we show that there are strong positive correlations between these indices and multiple measures of university output to obtain causal evidence we investigate exogenous shocks to us universities expenditures over three decades these shocks arise through the political appointment process which we use to generate instrumental variables we find that an exogenous increase in a university s expenditure generates more output measured by either patents or publications if the university is more autonomous and faces more competition exploiting variation over time in the stakes of competitions for us federal research grants we also find that universities generate more output for a given expenditure when research competitions are high stakes we draw lessons arguing that european universities could benefit from a combination of greater autonomy and greater accountability greater accountability might come through increased reliance on competitive grants enhanced competition for students and faculty promoted by reforms that increase mobility and yardstick competitions which often take the form of assessment exercises philippe aghion mathias dewatripont caroline hoxby andreu mas colell and andre sapir

an applied analysis of brand demand structure the demand literature is concerned with the optimal allocation of expenditure at varied but usually high levels of commodity aggregation much less aggregation however is required for business applications in applied business settings interest centres upon the different brands of the same commodity because policy formulation takes place at the level of the individual brand this paper considers application of formal demand analysis to brand demand data a theoretically plausible demand system is invoked to describe inter brand allocation of expenditure test restrictions imposed by economic theory and yield empirically determined insights into brand demand structure

an empirical comparison of soviet and american business negotiations fifty six soviet businesspeople and 160 american businesspeople participated in simulated intracultural one on one buyer seller negotiations all participants completed questionnaires after the negotiation sessions and six negotiators from each cultural group were videotaped during the interactions analysis of the questionnaire data indicated that soviet negotiators achieved higher individual profits when using a competitive approach in negotiations this result is in contrast to a more cooperative approach associated with higher profits for the american participants analysis of the videotapes suggests both similarities and differences in observed bargaining behaviors across the two cultural groups

advertising in demand systems testing a galbraithian hypothesis in this paper we argue that the influence of advertising upon the inter product distribution of demand is a system wide phenomenon which is investigated better through a demand equation system rather than through single equation methods attention is focused upon a dynamic version of deaton muellbauer s aids model modified to include advertising terms within this framework using data on consumer s non durable expenditure in the uk we carry out a preliminary test of galbraith hypothesis that advertising may affect the composition of aggregate consumer demand

interactions between workers and the technology of production evidence from professional baseball this paper examines how the effort choices of workers within the same firm interact with each other in contrast to the existing literature we show that workers can affect the productivity of their co workers based on income maximization considerations rather than relying on behavioral considerations such as peer pressure social norms and shame theoretically we show that a worker s effort has a positive effect on the effort of co workers if they are complements in production and a negative effect if they are substitutes the theory is tested using panel data on the performance of baseball players from 1970 to 2003 the empirical analysis shows that a player s batting average significantly increases with the batting performance of his peers but decreases with the quality of the team s pitching furthermore a pitcher s performance increases with the pitching quality of his teammates but is unaffected by the batting output of the team these results are inconsistent with behavioral explanations which predict that shirking by any kind of worker will increase shirking by all fellow workers the results are consistent with the idea that the effort choices of workers interact in ways that are dependent on the technology of production these findings are robust to controlling for individual fixed effects and to using changes in the composition of one s co workers in order to produce exogenous variation in the performance of one s peers

a two stage analysis of the effectiveness of promotion programs for u s apples export promotion programs are intended to help u s exporters enter maintain and expand foreign markets but little is known of their success in achieving each of these goals in this paper we attempt to determine the effectiveness of export promotion in increasing both u s market share and total import consumption using apple imports by singapore and the united kingdom as case studies estimates of a two stage linear expenditure system les almost ideal demand system aids model show that promotion increases consumption of apples in both the united kingdom and singapore but increases u s market share only in the united kingdom the results suggest that free riding on u s promotion can be significant

allocative efficiency in public research funding can bibliometrics help abstract the use of outcome control modes of research evaluation exercises is ever more frequent they are conceived as tools to stimulate increased levels of research productivity and to guide choices in allocating components of government research budgets for publicly funded institutions there are several contributions in the literature that compare the different methodological approaches that policy makers could adopt for these exercises however the comparisons are limited to only a few disciplines this work examining the case of the whole of the hard sciences of the italian academic system makes a comparison between results obtained from peer review type of evaluations as adopted by the ministry of universities and research and those possible from a bibliometric approach as developed by the authors the aim is to understand to what extent bibliometric methodology which is noted as relatively inexpensive time saving and exhaustive can complement and integrate peer review methodology in research evaluation

a regional analysis of food consumption in spain abstract working s model of the engel curve is applied to food and staple food expenditures with two years spanish provincial data the functional form of working s model is tested against two other specifications and cannot be rejected the estimation results are quite comparable with those obtained by other authors we also find that spain has experienced a substantial change in the pattern of food consumption during the 1970s

intergenerational correlation and social interactions in education we propose a dynastic model where individuals are born into an educated or uneducated environment that they inherit from their parents we study the impact of social interactions on the correlation in parent child educational status independently of any parent child interaction when the level of social interactions is decided by a social planner we show that the correlation in education status between generations decreases very fast as social interactions increase in turn when the level of social interactions is decided by the individuals themselves we show that the intergenerational correlation still decreases although less rapidly than with exogenous social interactions

estimating economies of scope and scale under price risk and risk aversion this study uses duality to examine the effects of excluding output price risk and risk aversion on cost structures using data for kansas wheat and beef cow operations a dual risk model was used to determine multi product and product specific scale economies and economies of scope estimates for these measures were compared with those obtained from a deterministic model the results show that product specific scale economies are over estimated and economies of scope and multi product scale economies are under estimated for the deterministic model compared to the risk model

saving money vs investing money do energy ratings influence consumer demand for energy efficient goods abstract the article analyses economic barriers leading to the energy efficiency gap in the market for energy using products by observing several million transactions in the uk over two years the empirical exercise estimates aids models for refrigerators washing machines tvs and light bulbs results indicate that market barriers are crucial in the demand for energy efficient options and consumer response to changes in appliance prices total expenditures and energy prices depends on the possibility of behavioural adjustments in consumption in contrast with the induced innovation hypothesis current electricity prices can fail to induce innovation because of their short term impact on disposable income while consumers invest in energy efficiency when expecting electricity prices to rise in the future

testing restrictions on a model of japanese meat demand tests for quasi separability net substitutability and perfect substitutability are developed and implemented on an almost ideal demand system model of the japanese meat sector the data set satisfies both symmetry and homogeneity there is evidence of net complimentarity between chicken and dairy beef and chicken and pork the tests indicate that japanese wagyu beef is considered a separate commodity to both imported beef and dairy beef the results also indicate that fish can be treated as separable in the japanese meat demand system

social interactions and habit formation in a model of female labour supply this paper investigates the influence of habit formation and preference interdependence on labour supply behaviour of married females a novelty of the paper is that we incorporate direct survey information on reference groups of individuals in a neoclassical labour supply model for that purpose we first estimate a latent variables model relating the direct information to the true but unobserved reference groups one of the most interesting features of the model is that the presence of young children becomes an insignificant factor in the hours equation while it remains a significant factor in the participation decision in addition the labour supply curve is much flatter in a model with habit formation and preference interdependence than in a model without it both habit formation and preference interdependence contribute significantly to the explanation of female labour supply 1998 elsevier science s a all rights reserved

brazilian japanese and american business negotiations the determinants of the outcomes of business negotiations in 3 cultures are investigated in a laboratory experiment the outcomes of negotiations between japanese businessmen result primarily from a situational constraint the role of the negotiator buyer or seller representational problem solving oriented bargaining strategies a measure of the process of the interaction is the most important variable in american negotiations in negotiations between brazilian business people deceptive bargaining strategies also a process measure is the key variable affecting outcomes

desegregation and black dropout rates in 1954 the united states supreme court ruled that separate schools for black and white children were inherently unequal this paper studies whether the desegregation plans of the next 30 years benefited black and white students in desegregated school districts data from the 1970 and 1980 censuses suggest desegregation plans of the 1970 s reduced high school dropout rates of blacks by two to three percentage points during this decade no significant change is observed among whites the results are robust to controls for family income parental education and state and region specific trends as well as to tests for selective migration

engel s law and linear in moments aggregation aggregation of individual engel curves is considered such that aggregate food demand depends on the moments of the distribution of income across individuals given that aggregate demand is the sum of individual demands consistent aggregation imposes a structure called the linear in moments form this form is used to test whether the mean and second moment of income must be used to capture aggregate food demand empirical analysis strongly supports the proposition that both the mean and variance of income are required hence our results show that aggregate food demand under consistent aggregation is inherently sensitive to changes in the distribution of income

market structure and innovation a survey economics we all recite deals with allocation of limited resources towards satisfaction of unlimited wants resources are typically identified as land labor and capital plus a technology that determines their transformation into consumer goods disparity between the available goods and services and the desired gives rise to scarcity and the question of what how and for whom to produce the focus then shifts to description and evaluation of alternative resource allocation mechanisms for making the choices the pareto criterion by which an allocation of resources is deemed efficient if any reallocation improving the position of some individual worsens the position of others is a commonly employed gauge of a mechanism s performance in the absence of externalities increasing returns to scale and uncertainty a perfectly competitive market system yields a pareto optimal allocation of resources this underlies the view that individual self interest is compatible with society s interest the further conclusion that pareto optimality may not be achieved via the market system in the presence of monopoly elements provides an economic rationale for antitrust laws the objective of a resource allocation mechanism appears to be according to the analysis described above to make the best of available resources the alternative objective of relaxing constraints through expanding the resource base or developing new technology seems to be beyond its scope thus until rather recently technical advance had been regarded in the mainstream of economic theory as unmotivated by the quest for profits and substantially unaffected by resource allocation instead as j schmookler observed technology had been viewed as a parameter like the weather affecting the outcome of resource allocations but itself unaffected by them 84 1965 evidence that technological progress has significantly contributed to growth in productivity together with a substantial increase in research and development activity largely financed by government and carried out by industry see f machlup 51 1962 may have spurred reconsideration of this view once technical advance is regarded as an economic variable it is natural to in

elasticities in aids models in the literature a variety of approaches have been used to calculate demand elasticities in almost ideal demand system aids models of demand it is common to estimate the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids instead of the aids when the la aids is estimated all of the previously reported approaches to compute elasticities are theoretically incorrect this paper presents correct formulas for la aids elasticities and illustrates the potential errors from using incorrect computing the almost ideal demand system aids of deaton and muellbauer 1980a b has become popular in recent years anderson and blundell blanciforti and green 1983a b blanciforti green and king chalfant eales and unnevehr fujii khaled and mak fulponi heien and willett murray parsons ray a variety of approaches to computing elasticities has been used and some of the approaches may lead to significant errors this paper clarifies the differences between alternative approaches to estimating demand elasticities in aids models

accounting for changes in tastes health concerns are thought by many to have shifted consumption away from red meats though econometric evidence is mixed testing for structural change is difficult especially when one time series is used for both estimating demand equations and testing their stability specification errors may suggest a shift where none has occurred using nonparametric demand analysis we find that meat consumption patterns in the united states and australia can be explained using only relative prices and expenditures only imposing particular functional forms can reverse the conclusion suggesting that specification errors in econometric demand studies can account for findings of taste changes

panel and pseudo panel estimation of cross sectional and time series elasticities of food consumption the case of american and polish data the problem addressed in this article is the bias to income and expenditure elasticities estimated on pseudo panel data caused by measurement error and unobserved heterogeneity we gauge empirically these biases by comparing cross sectional pseudo panel and true panel data from both polish and american expenditure surveys our results suggest that unobserved heterogeneity imparts a downward bias to cross section estimates of income elasticities of at home food expenditures and an upward bias to estimates of income elasticities of away from home food expenditures within and first difference estimators suffer less bias but only if the effects of measurement error are accounted for with instrumental variables

does head start improve children s life chances evidence from a regression discontinuity design this paper exploits a new source of variation in head start funding to identify the program s effects on health and schooling in 1965 the office of economic opportunity oeo provided technical assistance to the 300 poorest counties to develop head start proposals the result was a large and lasting discontinuity in head start funding rates at the oeo cutoff for grant writing assistance we find evidence of a large drop at the oeo cutoff in mortality rates for children from causes that could be affected by head start as well as suggestive evidence for a positive effect on educational attainment i introduction head start was established in 1965 as part of the war on poverty to provide preschool health and other social services to poor children age three to five and their families and currently serves over 900 000 children each year at a cost of around 7 billion hhs 2006 this paper provides new evidence on the effects of the head start program on schooling and health by drawing on a new source of variation in program funding spe

whither armington trade models the armington trade model distinguishes commodities by country of origin and import demand is determined in a separable two step procedure this framework has been applied to numerous international agricultural markets with the objective of modeling import demand in addition computable general equilibrium cge models commonly employ the armington formulation in the trade linkage equations the purpose of this paper is to test the armington assumptions of homotheticity and separability with data from the international cotton and wheat markets both parametric and nonparametric tests were performed and the empirical results reject the armington assumptions this has important implications for international trade modeling and cge modeling

group characteristics evolution arising from asymmetric information in asymmetric information problems agents with less information principals or contractors usually take as given the preferences of agents with more information agents or contractees moreover the distribution of characteristics of contractees is supposed to be invariant in this article we consider a mixed framework of asymmetric information adverse selection followed by moral hazard where those two assumptions are excluded specifically the contractor only knows the current distribution of characteristics and the contractees may change them after signing the contract if this improves their welfare thus we find that the asymmetric information problem leads to a group eect changes of characteristics this feedback defines a sequence of temporary equilibria we provide conditions for the convergence of that sequence to a stationary long run equilibrium we also prove that both temporary equilibrium and long run equilibrium coincide with the equilibrium in classical models of adverse selection and the moral hazard problem vanishes in the long run

is school segregation good or bad it has been well documented that segregation across schools denying access to resources inferior educational production functions and so on exacerbates racial differences in achievement using an individual measure of social connections within schools we have shown that this form of segregation asian kids sitting together in the cafeteria has a substantively unimportant relationship with academic achievement or social behavior in school or later in life there are important caveats to our analysis a our estimates of the relationship between within school segregation and outcomes are not causal and b friendships may not be the only relevant cross race social interaction that occurs within a school

the effect of court ordered hiring quotas on the composition and quality of police arguably the most aggressive armative action program ever implemented in the united states was a series of court ordered racial hiring quotas imposed on municipal police departments my best estimate of the eect of court ordered armative action on workforce composition is a 14

identification of habit in japanese food consumption abstract demand models were estimated for five commodities using annual retail level japanese data estimates were made with the houthakker taylor houthakker h s taylor l d 1970 consumer demand in the united states analysis and projections harvard university press new york ma state adjustment model significant lags were found for meat and cereal which means that habit is important for these commodities some habit affects were also found for seafood

price and income elasticities of demand for passenger transport fuels in spain implications for public policies abstract the significant increase in passenger transport activity cars experienced by spain and its associated increase in energy consumption have several associated negative aspects including a greater dependence on foreign energy sources and higher ghg emissions therefore reducing the level of transport activity would bring important socioeconomic and environmental benefits the aim of this paper which focuses on energy consumption in the passenger transport is fourfold 1 to provide a diagnostic of energy consumption in the spanish passenger transport system and the related problems 2 to develop a model to calculate price and income elasticities of demand for transport fuel 3 to apply this model to the spanish passenger transport sector 4 to infer policy recommendations derived from the results of the diagnostic and the model it is claimed that in view of those low price elasticities and high income elasticities and if a reduction in the scale of transport activity is deemed socially desirable a combination of instruments is necessary fuel taxes play an important role within this combination apart from their long term effects the low price elasticity of demand for transport fuel would allow the collection of a significant amount of revenues which could eventually be earmarked to encourage reductions in private transport demand and modal shifts with other instruments

the impact of degree programmes on university expenditure this research examines the impact of the number and mix of academic degree programmes on university operating expenditure in the united states statistical results are based on data for doctoral and research institutions without medical schools after controlling for other factors influencing expenditure additional degree programmes are associated with significant increases in expenditure with doctoral programmes having a 40 higher marginal impact on total expenditure than baccalaureate programmes most institutions are found to be smaller than the expenditure minimizing size and to have higher expenditure per full time equivalent student as specified the models explain a large amount of the variation in expenditure across the institutions

rickety numbers volatility of university rankings and policy implications abstract the most popular world university rankings are routinely taken at face value by media and social actors while these rankings are politically influential they are sensitive to both the conceptual framework the set of indicators and the modelling choices made in their construction e g weighting or type of aggregation a robustness analysis based on a multi modelling approach aims to test the validity of the inference about the rankings produced in the academic ranking of world universities arwu of shanghai jiao tong university and those produced by the uk s times higher education supplement thes conclusions are drawn on the reliability of individual university ranks and on relative country or macro regional performance e g europe versus usa versus china in terms of the number of top performing institutions we find that while university and country level statistical inferences are unsound the inference on macro regions is more robust the paper also aims to propose an alternative ranking which is more dependant on the framework than on the methodological choices

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