does bankruptcy law affect business turnover evidence from new and existing business this study examines how differences in state bankruptcy laws specifically the homestead exemption affect business turnover by studying both new and existing businesses we focus on areas just near state boundaries to control for unobserved local attributes to better isolate the effect of more wealth protection we find that an increase in the homestead exemption attracts new businesses but also has a positive impact on existing businesses suggesting that asset protection through bankruptcy law encourages successful entrepreneurs to incur the risks our results indicate that the personal bankruptcy law is an important policy tool that governments can use to encourage business growth without causing business turnover jel k30 k36 r11 r1

networking off madison avenue known for the key role that networking plays in the operation of agencies where interviews suggest that informal networking among close neighbors is critical to many agencies success networking involves the exchange of ideas and while there is no market place for these ideas exchanges may be more deliberate rather than just marshall s 1890 mysteries of the air type of information spillovers this paper examines the effect on productivity of having more near advertising agency neighborhoods and hence better opportunities for meetings and exchange within manhattan we will show that there is extremely rapid spatial decay in the benefits of having more near neighbors even in the close quarters of southern manhattan a finding that is new to the empirical literature and indicates our understanding of scale externalities is still very limited the finding indicates that having a high density of commercial establishments is important in enhancing local productivity an issue in lucas and rossi hansberg 2002 where within business district spatial decay of spillovers plays a key role we will argue also that in manhattan advertising agencies trade off the higher rent costs of being in bigger clusters nearer centers of action against the lower rent costs of operating on the fringes away from high concentrations of other agencies introducing the idea of trade offs immediately suggests heterogeneity is involved we will show that higher quality agencies are the ones willing to pay more rent to locate in greater size clusters specifically because they benefit more from networking while all 1 the research in this paper was conducted while the authors were census bureau research associates at the boston research data center research results and conclusions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily indicate concurrence by the census bureau the paper has been screened to ensure that no confidential data are revealed we acknowledge helpful comments from andrew foster on aspects of the paper and from participants in seminars at brown university lse and the university of toronto

am i getting a good deal reference dependentdecision making when the reference price is uncertain models of consumer decision making commonly incorporate reference dependent preferences in these models the reference point is typically assumed to be known by the consumer however research on price recall and the reference formation process reveals that the reference price is often uncertain at the time of purchase reference price uncertainty creates ambiguity for the consumer about whether they are getting a good or bad deal this paper develops a model of consumer choice in the presence of reference dependent preferences when the reference price is uncertain data from two empirical studies that vary the product category and order of the elicitation of reference prices show that the new model generally outperforms conventional discrete choice models that either ignore reference prices or treat reference prices as certain the new model provides insights into the effect of reducing reference price uncertainty on consumer choice and reveals that high uncertainty smoothes the kink in the demand curve that is present in traditional reference price demand models

practice prize report an assortmentwide decision support system for dynamic pricing and promotion planning in diy retailing the main objective of this report is to describe a decision support system for dynamic retail pricing and promotion planning our weekly demand model incorporates price reference price effects seasonality article availability information features and discounts building on previous research we quantify demand interdependencies and integrate the resulting profit lifting effects into the optimal pricing model the methodology was developed and implemented at baumax an austrian do it yourself retailer along with the practical requirements an objective function was employed that can be used as a vehicle for implementing a retailer s strategy eight pricing rounds with thousands of different stock keeping units have each served as a testing ground for our approach based on various benchmarking methods a positive impact on profit was reported the currently implemented marketing decision support system increased gross profit on average by 8 1 and sales by 2 1

on the perceived value of money the reference dependence of currency numerosity effects money illusion research shows that the nominal face value of money affects consumer perceptions of its real value recent mixed findings on consumer valuations in different currencies suggest that the underlying anchoring and adjustment processes are complex we develop a framework to identify boundary conditions that specify the direction of anchoring effects on valuations in different currencies consumers anchor on the numerosity of the nominal difference between prices and salient referents e g budgets when evaluating transactions support for our framework comes from a series of experiments that evoke different reference standards we discuss implications and opportunities for future research

geography industrial organization and agglomeration this paper makes two contributions to the empirical literature on agglomeration economies first the paper uses a unique and rich database in conjunction with mapping software to measure the geographic extent of agglomerative externalities previous papers have been forced to assume that agglomeration economies are club goods that operate at a metropolitan scale second the paper tests for the existence of organizational agglomeration economies of the kind studied qualitatively by saxenian 1994 this is a potentially important source of increasing returns that previous empirical work has not considered results indicate that localization economies attenuate rapidly and that industrial organization affects the benefits of agglomeration

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

variable pricing in oligopoly markets behavioral research has found that consumers respond to variability in prices in addition to price levels we show that this finding can explain why some firms vary their prices more frequently than others we examine pricing strategies composed of an average price and price variability and employ logit market share models to analyze equilibrium pricing strategies in an oligopoly two competing logit specifications termed price sensitivity and payoff sensitivity are considered and are shown to yield contradictory implications for pricing policy from three empirical studies on restaurant choice we find that the price sensitivity model is the better model

dynamic pricing strategies with reference effects we consider the dynamic pricing problem of a monopolist firm in a market with repeated interactions where demand is sensitive to the firm s pricing history consumers have memory and are prone to human decision making biases and cognitive limitations as the firm manipulates prices consumers form a reference price that adjusts as an anchoring standard based on price perceptions purchase decisions are made by assessing prices as discounts or surcharges relative to the reference price in the spirit of prospect theory we prove that optimal pricing policies induce a perception of monotonic prices whereby consumers always perceive a discount respectively surcharge relative to their expectations the effect is that of a skimming or penetration strategy the firm s optimal pricing path is monotonic on the long run but not necessarily at the introductory stage if consumers are loss averse we show that optimal prices converge to a constant steady state price characterized by a simple implicit equation otherwise the optimal policy cycles the range of steady states is wider the more loss averse consumers are steady state prices decrease with the strength of the reference effect and with customers memory all else equal offering lower prices to frequent customers may be suboptimal however if these are less sensitive to price changes than occasional buyers if managers ignore such long term implications of their pricing strategy the model indicates that they will systematically price too low and lose revenue our results hold under very general reference dependent demand models

measuring ecological efficiency with data envelopment analysis dea abstract the measurement of ecological efficiency provides some important information for the companies environmental management ecological efficiency is usually measured by comparing environmental performance indicators data envelopment analysis dea shows a high potential to support such comparisons as no explicit weights are needed to aggregate the indicators in general dea assumes that inputs and outputs are goods but from an ecological perspective also bads have to be considered in the literature bads are treated in different and sometimes arbitrarily chosen ways this article aims at the systematic derivation of ecologically extended dea models starting from the assumptions of dea in production theory and activity analysis a generalisation of basic dea models is derived by incorporating a multi dimensional value function f extended preference structures can be considered by different specifications of f e g specifications for ecologically motivated applications of dea

quantity discount dependent consumer preferences and competitive nonlinear pricing abstract producers of consumer packaged goods often offer several package sizes of the same product and charge a lower unit price for a larger size in this article the authors investigate the quantity discount effect or the phenomenon that consumers derive transaction utility from the unit price difference between a small and a large package size of the same product the authors propose a modeling framework composed of a demand side model and a supply side model the empirical results suggest that quantity discount induced gains or losses have a significant impact on consumer buying behavior the authors also find a substantial amount of structural heterogeneity that is some consumers perceive quantity discounts as gains whereas others perceive quantity discounts as losses conversely the supply side analysis suggests that manufacturers in the empirical application do not consider quantity discount effects when setting prices through a series of policy experiments the authors show that by accou

looking for loss aversion in scanner panel data the confounding effect of price response heterogeneity recent work in marketing has drawn on behavioral decision theory to advance the notion that consumers evaluate attributes and therefore choice alternatives not only in absolute terms but asdeviations from a reference point the theory has important substantive and practical implications for the timing and execution of price promotions and other marketing activities choice modelers using scanner panel data have tested for the presence of these reference effects in consumer response to an attribute such as price in applications of the theory of reference dependent choice tversky and kahneman 1991 some modelers report empirical evidence of loss aversion when a consumer encounters a price above his or her established reference point a loss the response is greater than for a price below the reference point a gain researchers have gone so far as to suggest that evidence for the so called reference effect make it an empirical generalization in marketing e g kalyanaram and winer 1995 meyer and johnson 1995 it is our contention that the measurement of loss aversion in empirical applications of the reference dependent choice model is confounded by the presence of unaccounted for heterogeneity in consumer price responsiveness our reasoning is that the kinked price response curve implied by loss aversion is confounded with the slopes of the response curves across segments that are differentially responsive to price a more price responsive consumer with a steeper response function tends to have a lower price level as a reference point this consumer faces a larger proportion of prices above his reference point thus the response curve is steeperin the domain of losses similarly the less price responsive consumer sees a greater proportion of prices below his reference point so the response curve is less steep within the domain of gains as a result any cross sectional estimate of loss aversion that does not take this into account will be biased upward researchers who do not control for heterogeneity in price responsiveness may arrive at incorrect substantive conclusions about the phenomenon it is interesting to note that in this instance failure to control for heterogeneity induces a bias infavor of finding an effect rather than the more typical case of attenuation of the effect toward zero we first test our assertion regarding the referencedependent model using scanner panel data on refrigerated orange juice and subsequently extend this analysis to 11 additional product categories in all cases we find as predicted that accounting for price response heterogeneity leads to lower and frequently nonsignificant estimates of loss aversion we do however find some categories in which the effect does not disappear altogether we also estimate loss aversion using a sticker shock model of brand choice in which the reference prices arebrand specific in line with the results of the majority of prior literature we find smaller and insignificant estimates of loss aversion in this model we show that this is because in the sticker shock model there is no apparent correlation between the price responsiveness of the consumer and the representation of reference effects as losses or gains our findings strongly suggest that loss aversion may not in fact be a universal phenomenon at least in the context of frequently purchased grocery products

note ranking dmus with infeasible super efficiency dea models it has been suggested in the data envelopment analysis dea literature that it is impossible to obtain a full ranking of decision making units dmus when infeasible subproblems arise in the so called super efficiency dea models under different returns to scale rts assumptions other than constant returns to scale crs andconsequently the application of the super efficiency dea models under different rts conditions other than crs should be restricted the implications of the infeasibility in super efficiency dea models with respect to the efficiency ranking of the dmus is explored based on the analysis we show that it is still possible to obtain the full ranking of the entire observation set when infeasibilities arise in super efficiency dea models

share green growth regional evaluation of green output performance in china abstract reducing carbon emissions is much more difficult than reducing other pollutants through current technology promoting the efficiency of energy use and developing clean energy are the only two economically feasible approaches for the future however without low carbon technology pursuing green growth could negatively affect production activities in this study we develop a directional distance function ddf model based on the slacks of the output oriented slack based measure along an endogenously determined directional vector we can calculate the efficiency scores by reducing the undesirable output and expanding desirable output simultaneously the global malmquist index is integrated with the ddf model to capture the dynamic change of output performance based on the output performance of green growth we use counterfactual thinking to evaluate gdp losses caused by limiting carbon emissions the empirical study using the provincial data of china shows that technological progress not efficiency change pushes green growth in china we also find that pursuing green growth in china would lead to a gdp loss of 7 8 furthermore a sub regional analysis shows that the eastern regions were almost immune to the strict carbon control policy while the midwestern regions were affected severely to alleviate the gdp loss we offer suggestion on setting up a green growth sharing mechanism among regions

efficiency evaluation of china s provincial power systems based on the dynamic network slacks based measure model abstract a power system contains generation transmission and distribution divisions policy reforms and management mechanisms may affect the environmental efficiency of certain divisions or the integrated power system this study applied the dynamic network slacks based measure dnsbm model to analyze the environmental efficiency of both the power systems and their divisions of provincial administrative areas in china and investigated the effects of the external environmental factors it employed scenario analysis to further explore the feasibility of separating the distribution from the transmission division the results indicate that 1 the dnsbm model takes the internal structure of the power system into account and provides a new perspective to seek the sources of the system and division efficiencies 2 customer density and energy consumption intensity have significant impacts on the system and division efficiencies while the power generation structure only affects the environmental efficiency of the generation division 3 the scenario analysis shows that the policy of separating power plants from grids improved the system efficiency to which the improvement in generation division is the main contributor and separating distribution from transmission may have great potential for enhancing the efficiencies of power systems

the impact of heterogeneity in purchase timing and price responsiveness on estimates of sticker shock effects the notion that individuals have an internal reference price against which they compare observed prices is well supported by several psychological theories empirically several papers in the marketing literature employing scanner panel data have modeled the impact of reference prices on brand choice via the sticker shock formulation in which consumers evaluate choice alternatives using differences between shelf prices and reference prices most of the studies reported thus far have not accounted for heterogeneity in price response among consumers and have typically imputed reference prices from the shelf prices of brands that a consumer is supposed to have observed on previous purchases in the category since category marketing activity can differentially affect the purchase timing of households we argue that this measure of reference price may follow certain systematic patterns across consumers and when combined with unaccounted for price response heterogeneity may result in a spurious sticker shock effect specifically we show that estimates of sticker shock are biased upward if households that are price sensitive in the brand choice decision are also more responsive to category promotion activity in their purchase timing decision we discuss some general conditions under which the bias occurs and conduct a simulation experiment to confirm our specific hypotheses our simulation results show that changes in purchase timing are a critical determinant of the bias in the sticker shock effect we also show that unaccounted for price response heterogeneity can in itself result in a biased sticker shock parameter however this requires very large differences in price sensitivities across consumers far greater than what is normally observed we develop a hierarchical bayes version of the nested logit model which models heterogeneity via individual level parameters in a continuous random effects framework we estimate the model on scanner panel data from the yogurt and ketchup categories we find in both categories that the 95 probability interval of the posterior distribution of the mean sticker shock coefficient contains the value zero therefore at least for the data used in this study there is no evidence for the sticker shock effect at the aggregate level in contrast the corresponding coefficient from a standard model which ignores this heterogeneity is highly significant and supports the existence of a possibly spurious sticker shock effect consistent with our explanation of the underlying cause of the bias households that are more price sensitive in the choice decision are also found to be more responsive to category promotion activity in their decision to purchase in the category the results highlight the measurement problems associated with imputing reference prices from past prices since the frequency duration and price level of a retailer s promotional program depend on its size and prevalence accurate estimates of the sticker shock effect are essential for formulating optimal promotion strategies an adequate accounting of consumer heterogeneity is critical to this effort

efficiency evaluation and dynamic evolution of china s regional green economy a method based on the super pebm model and dea window analysis abstract given the current circumstances of increasingly serious resource consumption and environmental pollution the development of china s green economy will profoundly impact the nation s future economic prosperity and even global economic development based on panel data from 2008 to 2017 this paper measures the green economic efficiency gee of chinese regions and analyzes its dynamic evolution using time series based on a novel data envelopment analysis dea model using environmental dea techniques this paper introduces the super pebm ebm based on pearson correlation coefficient model which is developed from the epsilon based measure ebm model and combines super pebm with the window analysis method firstly environmental dea technology is used to analyze gee at the regional level in china secondly based on panel data the window analysis method is used to analyze the regional differences of china s regional gee finally the development trend of china s regional gee in different time windows is obtained by combining the super pebm model and window analysis the empirical analysis results using panel data for regions in china from 2008 to 2017 show that 1 the overall gee of china is slowly increasing and the regional differences are still significant and 2 the improvement of gee can help to reduce regional differences

modeling loss aversion and reference dependence effects on brand choice based upon a recently developed multiattribute generalization of prospect theory s value function tversky and kahneman 1991 we argue that consumer choice is influenced by the position of brands relative to multiattribute reference points and that consumers weigh losses from a reference point more than equivalent sized gains loss aversion we sketch implications of this model for understanding brand choice we develop a multinomial logit formulation of a reference dependent choice model calibrating it using scanner data in addition to providing better fit in both estimation and forecast periods than a standard multinomial logit model the model s coefficients demonstrate significant loss aversion as hypothesized we also discuss the implications of a reference dependent view of consumer choice for modeling brand choice demonstrate that loss aversion can account for asymmetric responses to changes in product characteristics and examine other implications for competitive strategy

personal bankruptcy and credit supply and demand this paper examines how personal bankruptcy and bankruptcy exemptions affect the supply and demand for credit while generous state level bankruptcy exemptions are probably viewed by most policy makers as benefiting less well off borrowers our results using data from the 1983 survey of consumer finances suggest that they increase the amount of credit held by high asset households and reduce the availability and amount of credit to low asset households conditioning on observable characteristics thus bankruptcy exemptions redistribute credit toward borrowers with high assets interest rates on automobile loans for low asset households also appear to be higher in high exemption states

when do price thresholds matter in retail categories marketing literature has long recognized that brand price elasticity need not be monotonic and symmetric but has yet to provide generalizable market level insights on threshold based price elasticity asymmetric thresholds and the sign and magnitude of elasticity transitions this paper introduces smooth transition regression models to study threshold based price elasticity of the top 4 brands across 20 fast moving consumer good categories threshold based price elasticity is found for 76 of all brands 29 reflect historical benchmark prices 16 reflect competitive benchmark prices and 31 reflect both types of benchmarks the authors demonstrate asymmetry for gains versus losses on three levels the threshold size and the sign and the magnitude of the elasticity difference interestingly they observe latitude of acceptance for gains compared to the historical benchmark but saturation effects in most other cases moreover category characteristics influence the extent and the nature of threshold based price elasticity while individual brand characteristics impact the size of the price thresholds from a managerial perspective the paper illustrates the sales revenue and margin implications for price changes typically observed in consumer markets

when internal reference prices and price expectations diverge the role of confidence abstract when do internal reference prices differ from articulated price expectations the authors propose that the internal reference price depends not only on the magnitude of the expected price but also on the confidence associated with this expectation four experiments delineate the effects of price expectation and confidence on the internal reference price in experiments 1 and 2 the authors manipulate repetition and examine the effects of repetition induced confidence on price judgments in experiments 3 and 4 they manipulate confidence directly to investigate its effects on judgments the results from all four experiments suggest that consumers with less confidence have higher internal reference prices than more confident consumers even when they do not differ in their articulated price expectations the authors discuss the implications of these results for pricing theory

developing green purchasing relationships for the manufacturing industry an evolutionary game theory perspective abstract green purchasing plays an increasingly significant role in today s supply chain management recycling as a key factor in sustainable development is seriously considered by many manufacturers during the process of procurement in order to establish long term green purchasing relationships between multi stakeholders suppliers and manufacturers in this study the supplier selection concept model suggested by de boer is updated and an evolutionary game model is developed to observe the cooperation tendency of multi stakeholders the newly proposed game model intensively studies the trade behavior which can be realized as strategies and payoff functions of the suppliers and manufacturers in addition a replicator dynamic system is formulated to study evolutionarily stable strategies of multi stakeholders to verify the theoretical results simulation experiments are conducted with meaningful results the manufacturing industry can form the patterns of sustainable development and the recycling capability of suppliers directly determines how green a supply chain is the results can guide stakeholders to make better decisions in the future

research note estimating heterogeneous price thresholds a brand choice model with heterogeneous price threshold parameters is used to investigate a three regime piecewise linear stochastic utility function the model is used to explore the relationships between aspects of consumer price sensitivity and price thresholds using hierarchical bayes modeling with the markov chain monte carlo mcmc method this study contributes to the modeling literature on discontinuous likelihoods in choice models the empirical application using our scanner panel data set shows that the reference effect and loss aversion are more marked after price thresholds are taken into heterogeneous price response models furthermore loss aversion is attenuated by using price thresholds than by an aggregate homogeneity model without price thresholds

specifying price judgments with range frequency theory in models of brand choice abstract to construct a price judgment consumers compare a focal price with one or more reference prices however reference price operationalizations in the brand choice literature use single point summary measures that cannot account for several distributional effects to account for effects beyond the first moment of the reference price distribution the authors specify price judgments in models of brand choice in accordance with range frequency theory the findings indicate that range frequency price judgments provide a more complete specification of reference price effects and become more important with an increase in the second and third moments of a reference price distribution the data also indicate that range effects are stronger for coupon users and frequency effects are stronger for consumers exposed to a trend of prices the results have several implications for choice modeling pricing theory and pricing strategy

multiattribute loss aversion and reference dependence evidence from the performing arts industry we study the prevalence of multiattribute loss aversion and reference effects in a revenue management setting based on data of individual level purchases over a series of concert performances the reference dependence that drives consumer choice is not only based on the price but also on observed sales as a fraction of the seating capacity during their past visits we find that consumers suffer from loss aversion on both prices and seats sold consumers incur significant utility loss when prices are above their references or when the actual seat sales are lower than their references we suggest pricing policies that can address consumer decisions driven by such reference dependence and loss aversion this paper was accepted by vishal gaur operations management

measuring macroeconomic performance in the oecd a comparison of european and non european countries abstract we study the macroeconomic performance of 19 oecd countries over the period 1970 1990 performance is defined in terms of the ability of a country s macroeconomic managers to provide four services to their citizens a high level of real gdp per capita a low rate of inflation a low rate of unemployment and a favorable trade balance we use linear programming techniques to construct a best practice macroeconomic performance frontier and to measure the performance of each country in each year relative to the frontier we then add two environmental disamenities carbon and nitrogen emissions to the service list and repeat the analysis to see if the performance rankings change throughout the analysis emphasis is placed on a comparison of the performance of 14 european oecd countries with that of five non european oecd countries we find that performance rankings do change and that the relative performance of the european countries declines when the environmental disamenities are added to the service list

how does income inequality affect energy efficiency empirical evidence from 33 belt and road initiative countries abstract at present income distribution and environmental pollution are serious issues faced by the belt and road initiative bri countries and exploring the impact of income inequality on energy efficiency is meaningful for the sustainability of bri countries using the panel data of 33 bri countries from 2000 to 2016 we first evaluate the energy efficiency of the countries by dynamic dea model and then adopt the tobit regression model to investigate the nonlinear effect of income inequality on energy efficiency the results suggest that first during 2000 2016 the overall energy efficiency of 33 bri countries is relatively low falling to 0 38 while the overall energy efficiency of high income bri countries is much higher than that of the middle and low income bri countries second the average energy efficiency of the bri countries has declined since year 2013 third there is an inverted u type effect of income inequality on energy efficiency in the whole sample but the impact of income inequality on energy efficiency is heterogeneous for countries at different income levels specifically in high income bri countries income inequality shows a u type effect on energy efficiency while in middle and low income bri countries the relationship between income inequality and energy efficiency is an inverted u type moreover economic growth positively impacts the energy efficiency while industrialization and energy structure negatively influence the energy efficiency

empirical generalizations from reference price research considerable theoretical justification for consumers use of psychological reference points exists from the research literature from a managerial perspective one of the most important applications of this concept is reference price an internal standard against which observed prices are compared in this paper we propose three empirical generalizations that are well supported in the marketing literature first there is ample evidence that consumers use reference prices in making brand choices second the empirical results on reference pricing also support the generalization that consumers rely on past prices as part of the reference price formation process third consistent with other research on loss aversion consumers have been found to be more sensitive to losses i e observed prices higher than reference prices than gains we also propose topics for further research on reference prices

the bright side of loss aversion in dynamic and competitive markets a well established phenomenon of consumer buying behavior is that consumers evaluate prices relative to a reference point and exhibit loss aversion i e their propensity to buy is more negatively affected by prices above the reference point than it is positively affected by prices below the reference point the objective of this paper is to analytically examine how the competitive strategy and profitability of firms are affected by the presence of consumer loss aversion in the price dimension although we assume that consumer loss aversion increases consumer propensity to search for lower prices we find that it does not necessarily lead to lower prices or profits when firms compete over multiple periods and when the consumer reference price in subsequent periods is affected by current prices specifically consumer loss aversion could lead to higher prices and profits when consumer valuation is sufficiently high relative to search costs and the proportion of consumers with positive search costs is in an intermediate range we also show that when forward looking firms incorporate the negative effect of price promotions on future profits the equilibrium range of price promotions may actually increase

the relationship between enterprise efficiency in resource use and energy efficiency practices adoption abstract the purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between enterprise efficiency in resource use and the adoption of energy efficiency practices recommended by the us department of energy doe through the industrial assessment center iac using non parametric techniques such as data envelopment analysis dea and parametric techniques like stochastic frontier analysis sfa and corrected ordinary least square cols to measure the efficiency the regression quantile rq is carried out to test the hypothesis that the most efficient companies have adopted a higher level of practice the main conclusion is that when the enterprise operates at increasing returns to scale rts the impact of efficiency on adoption increases positively inversely when the enterprise operates at decreasing rts the impact of efficiency on adoption increases negatively

the effect of the bankruptcy reform act of 1978 on small business loan pricing abstract the bankruptcy reform act of 1978 contains several provisions that can affect the cost of producing loans for financial intermediaries in a competitive lending market the additional monitoring and expected foreclosure costs imposed by the change in the bankruptcy law should be passed on to the borrower using survey data from a sample of small business loans from commercial banks evidence is presented that the enactment of the new law resulted in higher contract rates of interest

an empirical comparison of the validity of a neural net based multinomial logit choice model to alternative model specifications applications of choice models to brand purchase data as a rule specify a linear deterministic utility function we estimate deterministic utility by means of a neural net able to approximate any continuous multivariate function and its derivatives to a desired level of precision we compare this model to related alternatives both with linear and nonlinear utility functions alternatives with nonlinear utility functions are based on generalized additive modeling and taylor series expansion respectively we analyze purchase data of the six largest brands in terms of market share for two product groups neural choice models outperform the alternative models studied w r t posterior probabilities they also attain the best crossvalidated log likelihood values these results demonstrate that the increase in complexity caused by the neural choice model is justified by higher validity in the empirical study the neural choice models imply elasticities different from those obtained by linear utility multinomial logit models for several predictors neural choice models discover inversely s shaped saturation and interaction effects on utility

an empirical analysis of latitude of price acceptance in consumer package goods scanner panel data analyses for sweetened and unsweetened drink categories with four brands in each support the presence of a region of price insensitivity around a reference price the analyses also suggest that consumers with higher average reference price have a wider latitude of price acceptance consumers with a higher frequency of purchase i e shorter average interpurchase time interval are found to have a narrower latitude of price acceptance because they are more aware of the range of price distributions finally consumers with a higher average brand loyalty have a wider latitude of price acceptance demonstrating greater tolerance of price fluctuations

choice experiments are not conducted in a vacuum the effects of external price information on choice behavior abstract consumers carry a wealth of external knowledge and experience into a study that may affect choices in even the most well crafted experiment we derive a conceptual model showing how the level and variability of price perceptions outside the task at hand might affect choice behavior and we conduct an experiment to test the model by manipulating information provided to respondents in a way to alter the outside the experiment perceptions mixed logit error component models show that reference dependent models best describe the choice data and we find that consumer choice is significantly affected by the experiment manipulations the predictions of the model are borne out in the data as expected price sensitivity is generally higher for price changes above a price reference point than below also as predicted exogenously increasing external reference prices and exogenously reducing the variability in references prices both serve to increase the probability of making a purchase and reduce the probability of choosing none these results have important implications for the design and practice of choice experiments as they show that consumer choice is affected by perceptions of the level and variability of prices outside the experiment more generally the results highlight the need to understand the formation and distribution of reference prices when predicting consumer choice

a comparative study on the production efficiencies of china s oil companies a true fixed effect model considering the unobserved heterogeneity abstract with the promotion of one belt one road obor initiative china s oil companies have speeded up the pace of going global strategy to expand their business internationally the efficiency problems of china national petroleum corporation cnpc and sinopec group which determine the international competitiveness have drawn ever increasing attention from both the general public and from decision makers the wide variation in cultural economic and institutional characteristics of different international oil companies may result in a large amount of unobserved heterogeneity distinguishing the time invariant unobserved heterogeneity from time variant inefficiency could avoid heterogeneity bias and thus ensure consistent efficiency estimates considering that the production efficiencies of the sample oil companies are influenced by various heterogeneous factors this paper evaluates the production efficiencies of the world s 10 biggest oil companies during 2003 2013 based on the stochastic frontier analysis sfa method and the true fixed effect tfe model results suggest that 1 estimation techniques that do not account for unobserved heterogeneity would produce biased efficiency estimates 2 compared with other oil companies the production efficiencies of cnpc and sinopec group were relatively improved after the global financial crisis 3 china s state owned oil companies should be further enhanced with the ability of internationalization management

a comparative analysis of reference price models the effect of reference price on brand choice decisions has been well documented in the literature researchers however have differed in their conceptualizations and therefore in their modeling of reference price in this article we evaluate five alternative models of reference price of which two are stimulus based i e based on information available at the point of purchase and three that are memory based i e based on price history and or other contextual factors we calibrate the models using scanner panel data for peanut butter liquid detergent ground coffee and tissue to account for heterogeneity in model parameters we employ a latent class approach and select the best segmentation scheme for each model the best model of reference price is then selected on the basis of fit and prediction as well as on the basis of parsimony in cases where the fits of the models are not very different in all four categories we find that the best reference price model is a memory based model namely one that is based on the brand s own price history in the liquid detergent category however we find that one of the stimulus based models namely the current price of a previously chosen brand also performs fairly well we discuss the implications of these findings

macroeconomic impacts of climate change mitigation in latin america a cross model comparison abstract in this paper we analyse macroeconomic consequences of greenhouse gas emission mitigation in latin america up to 2050 through a multi model comparison approach undertaken in the context of the climacap lamp research project we compare two carbon tax scenarios with a business as usual scenario of anticipated future energy demand in the short term with carbon prices reaching around 15 tco 2 by 2030 most models agree that the reduction in consumer spending as a proxy for welfare is limited to about 0 3 by 2050 at carbon prices of 165 tco 2 there is much more divergence in the estimated impact on consumer spending as well as gdp across models and regions which reflects uncertainties about technology costs and substitution opportunities between technologies we observe that the consequences of increasingly higher carbon prices in terms of reduced consumer spending and gdp tend to be fairly linear with the carbon price in our cge models however the consequences are divergent and nonlinear in our econometric model that is linked to an energy system model that simulates step changes in technology substitution the results of one model show that climate policy measures can have positive effects on consumer spending and gdp which results from an investment stimulus and the redistribution of carbon price revenues to consumers

cost efficiency of electric grid utilities in china a comparison of estimates from sfa mle sfa bayes and stoned cnls with the purpose of estimating the range of cost efficiency levels of the power grid sector in china we assembled a data set including 23 provincial power grid companies spanning from 2005 to 2009 and conducted an empirical study based on the sfa mle sfa bayes and stoned cnls methodologies empirical results show that the average values of efficiency from different models vary from 0 85 to 0 92 depending especially on the assumptions underlying inefficiency content further results demonstrate that there is exogenous technical progress during the sample period and per capita gdp of the province is negatively related to the costs of the electric grid company located in the corresponding province we hope this empirical study will contribute to the debate on an efficiency based regulation scheme which was introduced to the chinese electric grid sector on a pilot base in 2014

tax uncertainty and business activity abstract we investigate the extent to which uncertainties about tax policies affect business activities we develop a statewide tax uncertainty measure tu measure and show that it captures state corporate tax uncertainty by comparing adjacent counties across state borders we show that increasing tax uncertainty by one standard deviation a 30 increase in the tu measure leads to a 0 17 point per year decrease in the growth rate of establishments over two years the result holds after conducting a variety of robustness checks and is not likely to be driven by general state policy uncertainties

between preferences and references asymmetric price elasticities and the simulation of fiscal policies abstract canonical demand studies and fiscal policy simulations rest on the assumption that consumers react symmetrically to price increases and decreases such assumption has been challenged from both the empirical and theoretical points of view we propose theoretically consistent empirical specifications to estimate discrete choice models random utility dcm and continuous demand systems easi and aids demand systems that allow for reference prices and asymmetric own and cross price demand response our application focuses on the demand for sugar sweetened beverages in great britain using transaction level household purchase data and different product aggregation levels we find substantial evidence of asymmetric consumer response and loss aversion with a stronger response when prices rise above their reference level our results hold for both dcms on highly differentiated products and demand systems on aggregate product categories and are robust to alternative model and reference price specifications simulations of taxes and subsidies on soft drinks shows that ignoring asymmetry may lead to biases especially when predicting price cuts

innovation and diffusion of clean green technology can patent commons help abstract this paper explores the characteristics of 238 patents on 90 inventions contributed by major multinational innovators to the eco patent commons which provides royalty free access to third parties to patented innovations on green technologies we compare the pledged patents to other patents in the same technologies or held by the same multinationals to investigate the motives of the contributing firms as well as the potential for such commons to encourage innovation and diffusion of climate change related technologies we find pledged patents to protect environmentally friendly technologies and to be of similar value as the average patent in a pledging firm s patent portfolio but of lower value than other patents in their class our analysis of the impact of the patent commons on diffusion of patented technologies suggests that making patents accessible royalty free did not result in any significant increase in diffusion as measured by citing patents this study therefore indirectly provides evidence on the role of patents in the development and diffusion of green technologies

a sequential malmquist luenberger productivity index environmentally sensitive productivity growth considering the progressive nature of technology this study proposes an index for measuring environmentally sensitive productivity growth which appropriately considers the nature of technical change the rationale of this methodology is to exclud

evaluating the dynamic performance of energy portfolios empirical evidence from the dea directional distance function abstract in recent years the complex global energy commodity market has led to increased uncertainty for energy investment returns and tremendous challenges for investors to design appropriate energy portfolios therefore we employ four popular portfolio methods to determine energy portfolios based on daily fossil fuel futures prices during 2006 2015 moreover we use the dea window analysis method and dea directional distance function to comprehensively evaluate the dynamic performance of these energy portfolios based on the efficiency perspective the empirical results indicate that first to increase investment returns the mean variance method that exclusively emphasizes the maximization of returns shows the best performance however in order to decrease the volatility and risk of investment returns the mean variance method that aims to resist risk more than make profits and the bootstrap historical simulation value at risk var method have the best performance second when the global financial crisis broke out in the second half of 2008 and energy markets experienced a sharp downturn in the second half of 2014 the dea efficiency of energy portfolios appeared relatively lower than those of their neighboring periods regardless of which portfolio method is employed finally the average dea efficiencies of energy portfolios are all higher than those of single energy investment throughout the sample period except when the equally weighted method and the information entropy comprehensive index method are used meanwhile the mean variance method that prefers profit making to risk resisting possesses the highest average dea efficiency among various methods concerned

decomposition analysis of patenting in renewable energy technologies from an extended lmdi approach perspective based on three five year plan periods in china abstract renewable energy technological innovation is greatly influenced by renewable energy markets and policies in this regard the paper decomposes nine influencing factors of patents of a specific renewable energy technology using the extended logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi method from 2001 to 2015 the differences in a specific renewable energy technological innovation and development during the three five year plan periods is prioritized at the national level the contribution of the increase in patents of renewable energy technologies mainly lies in the patents of solar energy technology and wind energy technology but during the 12th five year plan period the increments of their patent counts significantly decline due to priority given to the development of innovation in a specific renewable energy technology the improvement in the efficiency of r d spending the increases in the share of r d spending and the share of renewable energy low carbon economy concept advocacy and carbon scale expansion the patent counts of a specific renewable energy technology will increase additionally the factors affecting innovation in a specific renewable energy technology at the different economic development levels as well as different resource distribution levels are investigated

dual role of price and myopia in a marketing channel abstract in this paper we study a dynamic two player channel where the manufacturer controls the wholesale price and the investment in quality and the retailer chooses the retail price we consider that the retail price affects both the demand and the perceived quality of the brand and that its variations contribute to the building of an internal reference price one of the model s distinctive features is that it accounts for the two meanings of price i e its classical objective measure of the cost of acquiring a particular quantity of the product and its subjective roles as an assessment of the quality of the product and an evaluation of gains or losses deal vs sacrifice resulting from buying a cheap or an expensive product this dual computation is done with respect to the internal reference price our objective is to investigate the impact of retailer s myopia on the pricing strategies and payoffs of channel members in this context a myopic retailer is an agent that disregards the effects of its pricing strategy on the evolution of the perceived brand quality and the reference price

review on integrated strategies for energy policy planning and evaluation of ghg mitigation alternatives abstract this review paper is devoted to elaborating the status of different energy policy planning studies and the evaluation of various ghg mitigation studies it includes some of the major developments in global energy scenario status of green house gas ghg emissions issues in the implementation of kyoto protocol and ghg mitigation clean development mechanism cdm and energy scenario especially pertaining to the residential industrial and commercial energy sector in the initial sections the later part of this paper highlights the salient contributions in various literatures pertaining to energy demand forecasting in residential commercial and industrial sector ghg estimation methodologies and ghg mitigation studies in various sectors the success and difficulties in implementing various policy planning practices were also discussed in the paper most of the prominent literature in the area of energy demand and consumption analysis towards effective implementation of ghg mitigation is described in the end a comprehensive comments and recommendations based on the study were furnished

an alternative explanation for lower repeat rates after promotion purchases several authors have observed that average repeat rates are lower after a promotion purchase one interpretation of this result is that a media coupon or cents off promotion undermines the consumer

efficient algorithms for the dynamic pricing problem with reference price effect we analyze a finite horizon dynamic pricing model in which demand at each period depends on not only the current price but also past prices through reference prices a unique feature but also a significant challenge in this model is the asymmetry in reference price effect which implies that the underlying optimization problem is nonsmooth and no standard optimization methods can be applied we identify a few key structural properties of the problem which enable us to develop strongly polynomial time algorithms to compute the optimal prices for several plausible scenarios we complement our exact algorithms by proposing an approximation heuristic and provide an upper bound on the optimal objective value finally we conduct numerical experiments to study the optimal price path and demonstrate the value of dynamic pricing when demands are seasonal we further compare numerically one of the exact algorithms with the heuristic and offer managerial suggestions this paper was accepted by yinyu ye optimization

explicit solutions of optimization models and differential games with nonsmooth asymmetric reference price effects models in marketing with asymmetric reference effects lead to nonsmooth optimization problems and differential games which cannot be solved using standard methods in this study we introduce a new method for calculating explicitly optimal strategies open loop equilibria and closed loop equilibria of such nonsmooth problems application of this method to the case of asymmetric reference price effects with loss aversive consumers leads to the following conclusions 1 when the planning horizon is infinite after an introductory stage the optimal price stabilizes at a steady state price which is slightly below the optimal price in the absence of reference price effects 2 the optimal strategy is the same as in the symmetric case but with the loss parameter determined by the initial reference price 3 competition does not change the qualitative behavior of the optimal strategy 4 adopting an appropriate constant price strategy results in a minute decline in profits

technical note dynamic pricing with gain seeking reference price effects we study a dynamic pricing problem of a firm facing reference price effects at an aggregate demand level where demand is more sensitive to gains than losses we find that even the myopic pricing strategy belongs to one type of discontinuous maps which can exhibit complex dynamics over time our numerical examples show that in general the optimal pricing strategies may not admit any simple characterizations and the resulting reference price price dynamics can be very complicated we then show for a special case that a cyclic skimming pricing strategy is optimal and we provide conditions to guarantee the optimality of high low pricing strategies

the impact of reference price effects on the profitability of price promotions this paper investigates the impact of reference price effects on retailer price promotions and describes why these effects can make promoting profitable first we analyze the profit impact of reference price effects generated by a single period of promotion the promotion can increase profit if the gain that these effects create in the promotion period outweighs the loss they create in future periods we then describe how retailers can estimate the optimal strategy of recurring promotions that maximizes profits from reference price effects over a time horizon examples of such strategies are presented for a retailer selling a national brand of peanut butter we obtain insights into how promotion prices timing and profits are affected by changes in costs interest rates consumers reactions to reference price effects and error in estimates used in the model the retailer s optimal reaction to a trade deal is also examined this strategy involves a phase of increased promotion activity sandwiched between phases of decreased activity we explain these results using the effects described in the single period model

green growth degrowth and the commons the concepts of green growth and degrowth occupy central positions in the public debate on the relationship between economic growth and the environment while proponents of the former approach claim that environmental measures can promote growth by for example more efficient use of natural resources proponents of the latter maintain that environmental integrity can only be upheld by slowing down growth this paper argues that both approaches constitute inadequate foundations for public policy as they fail to appropriately conceptualize social welfare we show how policy aimed at social welfare can be understood as managing a portfolio of capital stocks some of which exhibit the characteristics of commons i e common pool resources and public goods we then propose a programme of welfare diagnostics which aims at establishing minimum thresholds for capital stocks essential to welfare as a guide for real world policy formulation and discuss the role of appropriation of natural resource rents for its practical implementation we conclude by highlighting the central role of scientific policy advice in determining how different conceptions of welfare would be reflected in setting targets and choosing the means to achieve them

an empirical analysis of internal and external reference prices using scanner data single source yogurt data are used to examine whether both internal and external reference prices affect purchase decisions internal reference prices are memory resident prices based on actual fair or other price concepts external reference prices are observed stimuli such as regular prices that stores may display along with a sale price for comparability discrete choice models with variables representing the two types of reference prices are estimated and both types of variables are found to have significant effects on purchase probabilities this suggests that consumers may use multiple reference points in evaluating price in purchase decisions in addition a model using an indicator of a sale price discount explains purchase probabilities as well as one that models the actual discount which suggests that consumers may be reacting to the indication of savings rather than to the amount of the discount

reference effects of price and promotion on brand choice behavior when consumers are exposed to pricing and promotional activity by frequently purchased packaged goods they may develop expectations that are used as points of reference in evaluating future activi

differentiated price loss aversion in destination choice the effect of tourists cultural interest abstract this article looks into the differentiated effects of loss aversion depending on whether individuals show cultural interest when choosing a destination based on the fact that perceived value implies not only sacrifices but also the expectations of a certain level of quality and prospects of satisfaction together with the idea the prospect theory applies to tourism prices the article states the hypothesis that interest in culture when choosing a destination lowers people s loss aversion by incorporating the reference dependent model into a multinomial logit model with random parameters which controls for heterogeneity the empirical application shows that culture interested tourists are less loss averse i e the negative effect of finding a higher than expected price diminishes with cultural interest the expectation of enjoyment of these attributes and the more conscious attitude toward maintenance restoration activities of cultural sites are hypothesized to lead prices to be evaluated differently when selecting a destination

an investigation of reference price segments abstract empirical research on reference price has typically assumed that consumers use either an internal reference price irp or an external reference price erp but not both in brand choice decisions in this article the authors assume that consumers use both irp and erp but may consider one of them more salient than the other the authors develop a model that segments consumers on the basis of the differences in the importance they assign to each type of reference price as well as in their brand preferences and responses to marketing mix variables the authors calibrate the model on data for four categories liquid detergents ketchup tissue and yogurt in all four categories the proposed model performs significantly better than the one that assumes that consumers use either irp or erp exclusively the authors discuss the managerial implications of this finding

can state tax policies be used to promote entrepreneurial activity despite a recent flurry of empirical research on the effects of taxes on small business activity state level taxes faced by entrepreneurs have been overlooked by most of the existing literature using a 50 state panel of tax policy information spanning the years 1989 through 2002 our analysis reveals that state tax policies generally do not appear to have quantitatively important effects on entrepreneurial activity when we find statistically important effects we find that higher individual income tax rates the existence of a state level estate inheritance or gift tax and a higher weight on the sales factor in the state corporate income tax apportionment formula all slightly reduce a state s share of the national entrepreneurial stock results also indicate that states with more progressive personal income tax structures and states that have more aggressive corporate income taxes through the imposition of a combined reporting requirement both tend to have slightly higher entrepreneurship rates the composition of state tax portfolios is not found to be a significant determinant of state entrepreneurship

the effects of consumers price expectations on sellers dynamic pricing strategies abstract the authors propose a dynamic market equilibrium model to investigate how consumers form price expectations and how these expectations influence their sequential search behavior and prices in the market they derive a perfect bayesian nash equilibrium and show that whereas higher current period prices induce search consumers who observe higher historical prices form higher price expectations become more pessimistic and search less furthermore the authors show that when prices increase as a result of an increase in marginal costs consumers respond by searching more which then leads to higher prices and instant price adjustment in contrast because consumer search activities decline when prices fall sellers may respond by lowering their prices just enough to dampen consumers search tendencies when costs decrease the authors test their theoretical model and its implications and find support for it in a series of simulated market experiments

are the disabled less loss averse evidence from a natural policy experiment i introduction a large literature points to differences in cognitive bias among diverse populations according to lunn and lyons 2010 lower income less educated and older populations are more prone to decision making that deviates from economic rationality also see mather et al 2012 and tymula et al 2013 however as discussed by lunn and lyons 2010 little is known about the decision making biases of other vulnerable populations notably the physically disabled or implications thereof for their economic well being in this study we examine differences in cognitive bias and behavioral heuristics among nondisabled and physically disabled populations specifically using data from a unique israeli government natural policy experiment we assess loss aversion among nondisabled and disabled populations in the decision to purchase a home our empirical tests are motivated by previous findings in physiology and psychology showing that disabled persons often develop physical and mental mechanisms to help compensate for disabilities according to bishop 2005 disabled persons utilize such coping mechanisms to minimize gaps caused by their impairments as further suggested by devins et al 1983 yoshida 1993 livneh and antonak 1997 and bishop and feist price 2002 such strategies and mechanisms allow disabled persons increased control over their health and environment specifically nirje 1972 sands and wehmeyer 1996 and wehmeyer 1998 suggest that disabled populations seek compensatory mechanisms to enhance autonomy efficacy self reliance and self management among noteworthy examples cattaneo and vecchi 2011 summarize a long series of studies indicating the development of compensatory mechanisms among visually impaired persons results of those analyses indicate enhanced nonvisual perceptual sensorial and cortical level abilities among the visually disabled e g amedi et al 2003 crawford et al 2008 hamilton pascual leone and schlaug 2004 hull and mason 1995 muchnick et al 1991 roder rosier and neville 2001 niemeyer and starlinger 1981 in other recent work keysar hayakawa and an 2012 provide evidence of compensatory cognitive mechanisms among persons with language impairments results of experimental analysis indicate diminished decision biases and reduced loss aversion among non native language speakers the authors hypothesize that use of a foreign language reduces the opportunity for spontaneous response and results in a more consciously measured and considered mode of thinking 1 as with visually or language impaired persons the compensatory mechanisms acquired by physically disabled persons may extend beyond the psychophysiological domain to include cognitive adjustments indeed as discussed by stanovich and west 2000 lower levels of cognitive bias could compensate for physical disability and provide for improved coping prospects over the past decade the israeli government sought to privatize public housing via an offer to sell rental units to tenants at a discount from the market price the algorithms utilized by the government to determine the magnitudes of the price reductions varied over time furthermore the price reductions were not forecastable among targeted program participants tenants had the opportunity to either accept or decline government sales offers extended at each successive program iteration our research employs survival analysis to specify and empirically test whether physically nondisabled and disabled tenants exhibited different degrees of loss aversion behavior in their home purchase decisions 2 as first described by kahneman and tversky 1979 loss aversion pertains to household behavior when the aggravation that one experiences in losing a sum of money appears to be greater than the pleasure associated with gaining the same amount p 279 in experimental work tversky and kahneman 1992 find that under even odds for winning and losing the gain should be at least twice as large as the loss for a prospect to be acceptable whereas putler 1992 finds for example that consumers are two and a half times more responsive to price increases that are in excess of the reference price than they are to comparable price declines

tax avoidance and business location in a state border model abstract previous studies have struggled to demonstrate that higher taxes deter business activity we revisit this issue by estimating the effect of changes over time in cross border differences in state tax conditions on the tendency for new establishments to favor one side of a state border over the other identification is enhanced by taking account of previously overlooked reciprocal agreements that require workers to pay income tax to their state of residence as opposed to their state of employment when reciprocal agreements are in force higher personal income tax rates lure companies from across the border while corporate income tax and sales tax rates have the opposite effect where reciprocal agreements are not in place the results are largely reversed these patterns are amplified in heavily developed locations and differ in anticipated ways by industry and corporate non corporate status of the establishment overall results strengthen the view that state level tax policies do affect the location decisions of entrepreneurs and new business activity but not in a way that lends itself to a one size fits all summary

reference price and price perceptions a comparison of alternative models reference price effects on consumer price perceptions are often explained by helson s adaptation level theory in which the cognitive representation of reference price is the prototype of the relevant category however recent conceptualizations and empirical evidence suggest the possibility of an exemplar model which may be specified using volkmann s range theory or parducci s range frequency theory in two experiments these three contextual models of reference price effects are pitted against one another based on the manova and model fitting range frequency theory accounted for reference price effects that the other theories could not suggesting that consumers compare the target price against specific members of the category rather than the category prototype a third experiment demonstrated that range and frequency effects are moderated by the stimulus presentation condition suggesting that consumers place greater weight on extreme prices anchoring the range for internal reference prices than for external reference prices

hysteresis price acceptance and reference prices the existence of price thresholds in grocery retailing is well documented most authors explain the existence of price thresholds using assimilation contrast theory adaptation level theory or prospect theory however each of these theories is untenable if consumers are believed to behave rationally we offer a theoretical explanation grounded in real options theory rot and economic hysteresis we test the rot hypothesis against three plausible alternatives using a maximum likelihood friction model that we augment for unobserved heterogeneity our findings support the rot hypothesis and suggest that the existence of price thresholds in aggregate data are driven by a common recognition of real option values which do not disappear with the inclusion of consumer heterogeneity

a model of balanced choice behavior in some product categories consumers appear to alternate among items in a consistent and purposeful though not entirely deterministic fashion such alternation occurs even in the absence of any apparent external influences on choice to explain such balanced choice behavior we present a model based upon the premise that past consumption influences the utility of items on subsequent choice occasions individuals may seek variety on certain product attributes and exhibit loyalty toward others the model specification yields a logit choice model which may be calibrated using consumption diary panel data at the individual or cross sectional level

the cross price effect on willingness to pay estimates in open ended contingent valuation abstract previous literature has shown that potential buyers use a reference price or product to form their opinion about the value of a new product therefore the pricing decision is an interactive process we investigate the two generalizations of the cross price effect the neighborhood price effect and the asymmetric price effect on consumer willingness to pay wtp for multiple similar products in an open ended contingent valuation context results show that the cross price effect on wtp is prominent with the neighborhood price effect holding in contingent valuation no conclusions are reached about the asymmetric price effect

understanding reference price shoppers a within and cross category analysis abstract the authors attempt to draw profiles of reference price shoppers specifically the authors study how selected factors that affect brand choice are correlated with consumer sensitivity to gains and losses with respect to internal reference prices they also study the interaction between sociodemographics and gain and loss sensitivity furthermore the authors analyze cross category correlations in gain and loss sensitivity to shed light on their individual and category specific characters in three categories the results show significant heterogeneity in loss sensitivity among consumers and indicate that loss sensitivity is greater and more heterogeneous than gain sensitivity across categories the results show that loss sensitive shoppers are less influenced by past brand use and that both loss and gain sensitive shoppers more sensitive to price display and feature than the average consumer loss sensitive households tend to be larger and their heads are less likely to be fully employed

non parametric frontier approach to modelling the relationships among population gdp energy consumption and co2 emissions abstract in this paper a non parametric approach based in data envelopment analysis dea is proposed as an alternative to the kaya identity a k a impact this frontier method identifies and extends existing best practices population and gdp are considered as input and output respectively both primary energy consumption and greenhouse gas ghg emissions are considered as undesirable outputs several linear programming models are formulated with different aims namely a determine efficiency levels b estimate maximum gdp compatible with given levels of population energy intensity and carbonization intensity and c estimate the minimum level of ghg emissions compatible with given levels of population gdp energy intensity or carbonization index the united states of america case is used as illustration of the proposed approach