a problem with the decomposition of technical inefficiency into scale and congestion components in 1988 byrnes fare grosskopf and lovell define a decomposition of inefficiency differentials into scale and congestion components this note shows that the decomposition may be sensitive to the order in which the two components are calculated and consequently use of the decomposition may result in misleading signals being given to management

allocative efficiency of technically inefficient production units we discuss how to measure allocative efficiency without presuming technical efficiency this is relevant when it is easier to introduce reallocations than improvements of technical efficiency we compare the approach to the traditional one of assuming technical efficiency before measuring allocative efficiency in particular we develop necessary and sufficient conditions in the technology to ensure consistent measures we suggest alternative interpretations of the approaches and we relate them to motivational and organizational change perspectives

a non expected utility model and its application in practical auctions this article presents a non expected utility decision model which is nonlinear in the winning probabilities the model not only explicitly expresses bidders attitudes to risk but also addresses t

emotional bidders an analytical and experimental examination of consumers behavior in a priceline like reverse auction e commerce has proved to be fertile ground for new business models which may be patented for up to 20 years and have potentially far reaching impact on the e commerce landscape one such electronic market is the reverse auction model popularized by priceline com there is still uncertainty surrounding the survival of such new electronic markets currently available on the internet understanding user behavior is necessary for better assessment of these sites survival this paper adds to economic analysis a formal representation of the emotions evoked by the auction process specifically the excitement of winning if a bid is accepted and the frustration of losing if it is not we generate and empirically test a number of insights related to 1 the impact of expected excitement at winning and frustration at losing on bids across consumers and biddings scenarios and 2 the dynamic nature of the bidding behavior that is how winning and losing in previous bids influence their future bidding behavior

inferred and stated attribute non attendance in food choice experiments we review the current literature on attribute non attendance in stated choice and use data from beef and chicken choice experiments using both inference and the respondents own statements inference is based on panel data analysis by mixed logit models of choice with both discrete and continuous mixtures of coefficients and is conditional on the observed pattern of choice information from respondent statements on non attendance is directly embedded in the specification of the indirect utility function results show no clear winner between the inferential approaches but the inference based on constrained latent class panel models better matches the observed data

partnerships and double auctions with interdependent valuations in a symmetric independent private values setting a sealed bid double auction dissolves a partnership efficiently this well known result remains valid in a model with interdependent valuations however if common values components are large agents might prefer not to participate in a double auction therefore a simple extention of the rules of double auctions is suggested that ensures participation even though these modified double auctions are not incentive efficient they still realize gains from trade and can be implemented without knowledge about the specifications of the model

auction guarantees for works of art abstract this paper addresses the question of whether auction guarantees change the bidding environment and whether they cause a change in price once the value of an item is taken into account we analyze both the cases of third party guarantees and in house guarantees we use two datasets one of christie s and sotheby s contemporary and impressionist evening sales from january 2010 to february 2012 and another larger dataset consisting of all items auctioned at christie s from 2001 to may 2011 while more expensive items are more likely to have guarantees we find little empirical evidence to suggest an effect on price from the guarantee itself once the value of the item is taken into account

decomposing technical inefficiency using the principle of least action abstract in for profit organizations profit efficiency decomposition is considered important since estimates on profit drivers are of practical use to managers in their decision making profit efficiency is traditionally due to two sources technical efficiency and allocative efficiency the contribution of this paper is a novel decomposition of technical efficiency that could be more practical to use if the firm under evaluation really wants to achieve technical efficiency as soon as possible for this purpose we show how a new version of the measure of inefficiency proportions mip which seeks the minimization of the total technical effort by the assessed firm is a lower bound of the value of technical inefficiency associated with the directional distance function the targets provided by the new mip could be beneficial for firms since it specifies how firms may become technically efficient simply by decreasing one input or increasing one output suggesting that each firm should focus its effort on a specific dimension input or output this approach is operationalized in a data envelopment analysis framework and applied to a dataset of airlines

takeover contests toeholds and deterrence we consider a setting in which two potential buyers one with a prior toehold and one without compete in a takeover modeled as an ascending auction with participating costs the toeholder is more aggressive during the takeover process because she is also a seller of her own shares the non toeholder anticipates this extra aggressiveness of the toeholder thus he is deterred from participating unless he has a high valuation for the target company this leads to large inefficiency losses for many configurations expected target returns are first increasing then decreasing in the size of the toehold

on the technical in efficiency of a profit maximum abstract in general production theoretical analysis aims at identifying an enterprise s technically efficient production alternatives according to the principles of economy achieving technical efficiency is considered as a prerequisite for a producer s further optimization behaviour and therefore as a matter of rationality we will show in our article however that it might be economically unfounded to focus only on technically efficient production alternatives using a nonlinear inequality constrained optimization framework we demonstrate that a profit maximizing production may imply technical inefficiency i e in graphical terms depending on the topology of the profit function the optimal input output combination may be located in the interior of the producer s production possibilities set in order to show this we establish mathematical and economic conditions for the profit maximization approach to yield a technically efficient or inefficient solution respectively in fact inefficient solutions emerge when input or output prices are not strictly positive over the entire domain and or the objective function is non monotonic we highlight some non pathological economic situations that are likely to set the stage for technically inefficient profit maxima and provide an example that illustrates how an enterprise can make use of this approach in order to improve profits by choosing technically inefficient production points in spite of those optimal inefficiencies economic environments with positive prices and technical efficiency of the optimum shall remain the normal case

incorporating discontinuous preferences into the analysis of discrete choice experiments data from a discrete choice experiment on improvements of rural landscape attributes are used to investigate the implications of discontinuous preferences on willingness to pay estimates using a multinomial error component logit model we explore differences in scale and unexplained variance between respondents with discontinuous and continuous preferences and condition taste intensities on whether or not each attribute was considered by the respondent during the evaluation of alternatives results suggest that significant improvements in model performance can be achieved when discontinuous preferences are accommodated in the econometric specification and that the magnitude and robustness of the willingness to pay estimates are sensitive to discontinuous preferences

public and expert preference divergence evidence from a choice experiment of marine reserves in australia this study investigates whether public and expert preferences diverge in a valuation of two marine reserves in western australia identical choice experiments are applied to a sample of marine scientists and the western australian community evidence of both divergence and convergence between public and expert values is found with public awareness factors helping to explain differences of opinion this result implies that in instances of divergence it may be preferable to support potential environmental policies through community awareness campaigns rather than using uninformed public preferences in policy design

asymmetric price benefits auctions abstract this paper studies the performance of two auction procedures for allocating the assets of a dissolving partnership when partners valuations for the assets are independent and asymmetrically distributed with one partner reputed to be more interested in the assets to be divided we provide results on existence and uniqueness of the equilibrium induced by these auctions comparative statics are developed especially the differences between relative efficiency and revenue from the two auctions journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 d39 d44 d52 d74 d82

cultivating disaster donors using data analytics nonprofit organizations use direct mail marketing to cultivate one time donors and convert them into recurring contributors cultivated donors generate much more revenue than new donors but also lapse with time making it important to steadily draw in new cultivations the direct mail budget is limited but better designed mailings can improve success rates without increasing costs we propose an empirical model to analyze the effectiveness of several design approaches used in practice based on a massive data set covering 8 6 million direct mail communications with donors to the american red cross during 2009 2011 we find evidence that mailed appeals are more effective when they emphasize disaster preparedness and training efforts over post disaster cleanup including small cards that affirm donors identity as red cross supporters is an effective strategy whereas including gift items such as address labels is not finally very recent acquisitions are more likely to respond to appeals that ask them t

a stated preference valuation of the non market benefits of pollination services in the uk using a choice experiment survey this study examines the uk public s willingness to pay to conserve insect pollinators in relation to the levels of two pollination service benefits maintaining local produce supplies and the aesthetic benefits of diverse wildflower assemblages willingness to pay was estimated using a bayesian mixed logit with two contrasting controls for attribute non attendance exclusion and shrinkage the results suggest that the uk public have an extremely strong preference to avoid a status quo scenario where pollinator populations and pollination services decline total willingness to pay was high and did not significantly vary between the two pollination service outputs producing a conservative total of 379m over a sample of the tax paying population of the uk equivalent to 13 4 per uk taxpayer using a basic production function approach the marginal value of pollination services to these attributes is also extrapolated the study discusses the implications of these findings and directions for related future research into the non market value of pollination and other ecosystem services

hurdle and latent class approaches to serial non participation in choice models in repeated choice modelling studies it is often the case that individuals always select the status quo option although this pattern may reflect considered choices they may also be the result of alternative decisions about whether to participate in the choice process at all alternative methods of dealing with this behaviour each with associated implications for estimates of economic values are presented in particular we consider the alternative strategies of excluding such individuals from the data using hurdle models to explicitly model this group and propose the use of latent class models to endogenously allow for different preference structures an advantage of the latent class approach is that the form of the non participation need not be defined in advance these approaches are considered using uk choice experiment data on food choices where the attributes include genetic modification of food the latent class approach reveals the presence of two forms of non participation in the data

incentive plans for productive efficiency innovation and learning in many industries where production or sales is delegated to a number of subunits the central management faces the classical problem how to induce continuous efficiency improvements organizational learning and transfer of knowledge with a minimum of control exercised this paper draws on recent results regarding regulatory frameworks to construct simple yet powerful incentive schemes for decentralized production under asymmetric information the theoretical foundation is based on principal agent theory cf laffont and tirole econometrica 56 1986 614 641 and extensions to production theory by bogetoft management science 40 1994 959 968 the proposed incentive system is operational and makes use of available information to provide positive incentives for participation in the dynamic development of the entire organization

how to properly decompose economic efficiency using technical and allocative criteria with non homothetic dea technologies abstract we discuss how to properly decompose economic efficiency when the underlying technology is non homothetic using alternative allocative and technical efficiency criteria we first show that only under the production of one output and assuming the particular case of constant returns to scale homotheticity we may claim that the standard radial models correctly measure pure technical efficiency otherwise when non homotheticity is assumed we then show that these traditional estimations would measure an undetermined mix of technical and allocative efficiency to restore a consistent measure of technical efficiency in the non homothetic case we introduce a new methodology that takes as reference for the economic efficiency decomposition the preservation of the allocative efficiency of firms producing in the interior of the technology this builds upon the so called reversed approach recently introduced by bogetoft et al 2006 that allows estimating allocative efficiency without presuming that technical efficiency has been already accomplished we illustrate our methodology within the data envelopment analysis framework adopting the most simple non homothetic bcc model and a numerical application in this application we show that there are significant differences in the allocative and technical efficiency scores depending on the approach

a theory of impact philanthropy this article develops a new model of altruism called impact philanthropy an impact philanthropist is someone who wants to personally make a difference while that motive is straightforward its logical implications are significantly different from other models of philanthropy for example the contributions of other donors can reduce an impact philanthropist s charitable fulfillment as a result cooperation among impact philanthropists can reduce aggregate giving in addition impact philanthropy can lead to a codependent relationship between givers and receivers in which both benefit from the other finally the model suggests a conflict between charitable organizations and its donors concerning the allocation of charitable gifts in particular a charitable organization prefers to spread a donor s contribution across many goods whereas a donor prefers to target his or her contribution at a specific good d 2003 elsevier b v all rights reserved

addressing preference heterogeneity multiple scales and attribute attendance with a correlated finite mixing model of tap water choice unobserved heterogeneity of error scale in choice models is a recent extension of the better investigated issue of heterogeneity of taste intensity it is achieved by fitting choice panel data with specifications that simultaneously handle inter personal variation in scale and taste the aim is to separate differences in preference intensities across respondents from differences in the degree of consistency in choice behaviour or preference discrimination while accounting for correlation between the two another recent substantive issue in choice data analysis is attribute non attendance we develop a finite mixing model to address simultaneously the three issues above we empirically prove the concept on stated preference data related to tap water attributes in a study for industry regulation

the impact of discrete bidding and bidder aggressiveness on sellers strategies in open english auctions reserves and covert shilling in practice the rules in most open english auctions require participants to raise bids by a sizeable discrete amount furthermore some bidders are typically more aggressive in seeking to become the current bidder during competitive bidding most auction theory however has assumed bidders can place any tiny continuous bid increase and recommend as optimal the tiniest possible increase this article examines how incorporating discrete bidding and bidder aggressiveness affect optimal strategies for an important decision for auction sellers which is setting the lowest acceptable bid at which to sell the property we investigate two alternative methods sellers often use to enforce this decision these are setting an irrevocable reserve before the auction and covert shilling where the seller or confederates pose as bona fide bidders and raise bona fide bids unsuspected by bidders these optimal strategies interest auction participants especially sellers who must recognize the bidding rules and bidder aggressiveness they will encounter in actual auctions we also examine how these strategies change with the auction context such as the number of bidders and how they differ from corresponding strategies already identified for continuous bidding our model examines open english auctions where bidders have independent private valuations we find that discrete bidding does affect these strategies as does the aggressiveness of the bidder with the highest valuation relative to the average aggressiveness of all other remaining bidders we identify the seller s optimal discrete reserve and show that if the highest valuator is relatively more less aggressive this increases decreases from the optimal continuous reserve and also increases decreases as the number of bidders increases with continuous bidding by contrast this reserve is invariant to the number of bidders as this bidder becomes relatively more aggressive for a given number of bidders the optimal discrete reserve increases while as he or she becomes less aggressive the seller s expected auction utility increases which increases the set of auctions where discrete bidding generates higher seller welfare than continuous we propose a covert shilling model that requires shilling sellers and any confederates and auctioneers to outwardly act no differently than with reserves to avoid detection we identify cases where the seller optimally shills once the bona fide bidding has stopped and identify the corresponding optimal point to stop shilling and accept the next bona fide bid if offered this stopping point does not depend on where bona fide bidding stops or aggressiveness or the number of bidders or on whether shill bids alternate with bona fide bids or are consecutively entered we also find that the optimal lowest acceptable bid with shilling can be higher lower than that with reserves if the highest valuator is sufficiently unaggressive aggressive by comparison in continuous bidding shilling and reserves yield identical lowest acceptable bids sometimes the seller using a shilling strategy optimally should not shill at all and instead accept the bid where bona fide bidding stops this can occur when that bid or the number of bidders is sufficiently high or when the highest valuator is as or less aggressive than other bidders optimal shilling can be as practical to implement as reserves because it does not require sellers to have any information beyond that needed in a reserve auction if sellers shill optimally they can never be worse off compared to using a reserve and can be better off shilling can make bidders worse off but can also make them better off when the seller using a shilling strategy optimally accepts bids below the optimal reserve in these latter cases shilling pareto dominates reserves ex ante we provide numerical examples to illustrate these results we discuss how our results might be affected if shilling is not covert or bidders valuations have a common value component rather than being independent or by the rules used in many discrete bid internet auctions

parameters measuring bank risk and their estimation the paper develops estimation of three parameters of banking risk based on an explicit model of expected utility maximization by financial institutions subject to the classical technology restrictions of neoclassical production theory the parameters are risk aversion prudence or downside risk aversion and generalized risk resulting from a factor model of loan prices the model can be estimated using standard econometric techniques like gmm for dynamic panel data and latent factor analysis for the estimation of covariance matrices an explicit functional form for the utility function is not needed and we show how measures of risk aversion and prudence downside risk aversion can be derived and estimated from the model the model is estimated using data for eurozone countries and we focus particularly on i the use of the modeling approach as a device close to an early warning mechanism ii the bank and country specific estimates of risk aversion and prudence downside risk aversion and iii the derivation of a generalized measure of risk that relies on loan price uncertainty moreover the model provides estimates of loan price distortions and thus allocative efficiency

endogenous participation in charity auctions abstract data from a recent field experiment suggests that differences in participation rates are responsible for much of the variations in charity auction revenues across formats we provide a theoretical framework for the analysis of this and other related results the model illustrates the limits of previous results that assume full participation and introduces some new considerations to the choice of auction mechanism it also implies however that the data cannot be explained in terms of participation costs alone there must exist mechanism specific obstacles to participation

data envelopment analysis on a relaxed set of assumptions data envelopment analysis is a procedure for evaluation of the relative efficiency of units in a production system dea involves construction of composite units as convex combinations of other units inputs and outputs under various conditions related to returns to scale the assumption of convexity is inconsistent with increasing returns to scale and not implied by constant or non increasing returns to scale an alternative dea approach which does not invoke the assumption of a convex production possibility set is developed in this paper it is implemented in two stages stage one is concerned with the spanning of isoquants and stage two with an evaluation of the position of an observed input output combination compared to the isoquants both stages involve linear programming techniques solely

static efficiency decompositions and capacity utilisation integrating economic and technical capacity notions starting from existing static decompositions of overall economic efficiency on nonparametric production and cost frontiers this article proposes more comprehensive decompositions including several cost based notions of capacity utilization furthermore in case prices are lacking we develop additional decompositions of overall technical efficiency integrating a technical concept of capacity utilization these new efficiency decompositions provide a link between short and long run economic analysis and in empirical work avoid conflating inefficiency and differences in capacity utilization an empirical analysis using a monthly panel of chilean hydro electric power plants illustrates the potential of these decomposition proposals

visual attention and attribute attendance in multi attribute choice experiments summary decision strategies in multi attribute choice experiments are investigated using eye tracking the visual attention towards and attendance of attributes is examined stated attendance is found to diverge substantively from visual attendance of attributes however stated and visual attendance are shown to be informative non overlapping sources of information about respondent utility functions when incorporated into model estimation eye tracking also reveals systematic nonattendance of attributes only by a minority of respondents most respondents visually attend most attributes most of the time we find no compelling evidence that the level of attention is related to respondent certainty or that higher or lower value attributes receive more or less attention copyright 2014 john wiley sons ltd

how not to raise money we show that standard winner pay auctions are inept fund raising mechanisms because of the positive externality bidders forgo if they top another s high bid revenues are suppressed as a result and remain finite even when bidders value a dollar donated the same as a dollar kept this problem does not occur in lotteries and all pay auctions where bidders pay irrespective of whether they win we introduce a general class of all pay auctions rank their revenues and illustrate how they dominate lotteries and winner pay formats the optimal fund raising mechanism is an all pay auction augmented with an entry fee and reserve price

on optimal reservation prices in auctions the theory of auction design examines how various factors affect the outcome of an auction most of the existing literature focuses on how varying the amount of information available to each bidder affects the bid taker s expected revenue when all other factors remain constant this paper studies how the bid taker s expected revenue varies with changes in the auction format when such changes affect the number of bidders and in turn the bidders maximum value for the object being sold specifically we examine how varying the reservation price or screening level affects the bid taker s expected revenue though its effect on the number of bidders for two simple examples the losses associated with a reduced number of bidders outweighs any benefits that nontrivial reservation prices might have had in models with an exogonously set number of bidders

model selection for the mixed logit with bayesian estimation in this paper the mixed logit ml using bayesian methods was employed to examine willingness to pay wtp to consume bread produced with reduced levels of pesticides so as to ameliorate environmental quality from data generated by a choice experiment model comparison used the marginal likelihood which is preferable for bayesian model comparison and testing models containing constant and random parameters for a number of distributions were considered along with models in preference space and wtp space as well as those allowing for misreporting we found strong support for the ml estimated in wtp space little support for fixing the price coefficient a common practice advocated and adopted in the environmental economics literature and weak evidence for misreporting

auctions with price proportional benefits to bidders after some auctions including amish estate sales and buyer rings knockout auctions each bidder receives a share of the revenue generated by the auction we show that in the symmetric case equilibrium bids in both first price sealed bid auctions and oral auctions increase as each bidder s share increases in the case of independent signals oral auctions result in higher expected equilibrium prices than do first price sealed bid auctions journal of economic literature classification number d44

a measure of price advantage and its decomposition into output and input specific effects abstract in this paper we develop a price advantage measure obtained as the difference between efficiency scores computed with quantity based and value based data this measure is interpreted as an increase in the firm s profit rate due to a favourable input and output price environment compared to traditional allocative efficiency measure which uses only the evaluated firm s prices price advantage measure considers prices of peers in the market our main contribution is to show that total price advantage decomposes into the sum of output and input specific price advantages the application of the measure to a french farm s dataset in the context of the successive common agricultural policy reforms aiming at the liberalization of agricultural prices 1992 2013 illustrates our theoretical model

private information and altruism in bidding roscas this article studies how altruism improves allocations in a private information environment where strategic behaviour reduces economic welfare a theoretical analysis establishes that in an environment characterised by uncertainty and private information outcomes of auctions in rotating savings and credit associations roscas are more efficient when bidders preferences are altruistic rather than selfish a semi parametric structural estimation technique for rosca auctions is presented a parametric structural estimation identifies interactions between group characteristics and bidder altruism it is found that effective leadership and intra group diversity are associated with a greater extent of bidder altruism and thus more efficient intra rosca allocations

attending to the reasons for attribute non attendance in choice experiments this paper focuses on behavioural reasons underlying stated attribute non attendance in choice experiments in order to identify and incorporate procedures for dealing with heterogeneous attribute processing strategies we ask respondents follow up questions regarding their reasons for ignoring attributes based on these statements we conclude that the standard way of assigning a zero impact of ignored attributes on the likelihood is inappropriate we find that some respondents act in accordance with the passive bounded rationality assumption since they ignore an attribute simply because it does not affect their utility excluding these genuine zero preferences as the standard approach essentially does might bias results other respondents claim to have ignored attributes to simplify choices however we find that these respondents have actually not completely ignored attributes we argue along the rationally adaptive behavioural model that valid preference information may indeed be elicited in these cases and we illustrate how recoding of non attendance statements conditional on stated reasons may be a more appropriate solution than the current standard way of taking stated non attendance into account

optimal auctions with asymmetric financial externalities abstract this paper studies optimal auction design with asymmetric linear financial externalities among bidders when the matrix that relates bidders payoffs to their payments is nonsingular the payment related component in the design objective must equal a unique linear combination of its counterparts in bidder s payoffs if all multipliers of the linear combination are nonnegative a modified myerson procedure is discovered for deriving the optimal design if any multiplier is negative an arbitrarily high value can be achieved for design objective by setting proper fixed transfers to bidders when the matrix is singular the unbounded optimum result typically prevails we applied our method to auctions with cross shareholdings and charity auctions for revenue maximizing and efficient designs

incentive efficient production frontiers an agency perspective on dea in this paper we examine how empirical production frontiers may contribute to the incentives of production units we consider a series of data envelopment analysis dea frontiers and we show when these may be incentive efficient in the sense that they contain all the information that are relevant for optimal incentive provision the frontiers considered include the so called constant decreasing and varying return to scale models the free disposability and the free replicability models as well as the increasing and decreasing return to scale models based on a relaxed set of assumptions also we illustrate how to design optimal incentive schemes based on such frontiers contents 1 introduction 2 the incentive problem 3 production frontiers and productivity measures 4 incentive efficient production frontiers 5 extensions 6 an example 7 final remarks mathematical appendix references

mixed logit model performance and distributional assumptions preferences and gm foods using mixed logit models to analyse choice data is common but requires ex ante specification of the functional forms of preference distributions we make the case for greater use of bounded functional forms and propose the use of the marginal likelihood calculated using bayesian techniques as a single measure of model performance across non nested mixed logit specifications using this measure leads to very different rankings of model specifications compared to alternative rule of thumb measures the approach is illustrated using data from a choice experiment regarding gm food types which provides insights regarding the recent wto dispute between the eu and the us canada and argentina and whether labelling and trade regimes should be based on the production process or product composition

silent auctions in the field and in the laboratory we analyze data from hundreds of auctions from three field silent auction sessions we focus on the descriptive statistics and on a parametric model of jump bidding we then report data from six laboratory sessions of silent auctions as a controlled environment this allows us to evaluate the auctions in ways not available within the field the laboratory experiments capture essential features of the field sessions and thus comprise a credible laboratory testbed for further examination of institutional perturbations in the silent auction jel d44 h41

the self selection of complexity in choice experiments we investigate whether individuals will voluntarily increase the complexity of the tasks they complete within a discrete choice experiment dce we do this via a self selection of complexity design in which respondents choose whether to face choice sets comprising 3 4 or 6 alternatives we link this approach with the emerging excessive choice effect ece literature we find that 30 of the sample opt for the largest sets we test whether this choice of complexity reveals information about respondents capability commitment we find that it does since those with lowest initial error variance levels are most likely to later select the highest level of task complexity we argue that this result offers insights regarding the design of more cognitively efficient dce designs we consider the matching of respondents to the appropriate level of task complexity as analogous to the principal agent problem with asymmetric information rather than trying to understand respondents cognitive capability or commitment ex ante we propose that participants self select designs that achieve the researcher s objective of minimizing error variance copyright 2012 oxford university press

skew and attribute non attendance within the bayesian mixed logit model abstract we investigate non attendance to choice set attributes and the accommodation of preference heterogeneity within the mixed logit model we propose a generalisation of the mixed logit enabling the degree of skew of marginal utility distributions to be estimated the implementation is bayesian with the marginal likelihood used as an arbiter of model performance we find strong evidence of skew in the distributions of marginal utilities for most attributes models incorporating skew are preferred in all cases the irrelevance of an attribute to significant numbers of respondents is a possible cause of such skew we test alternative empirical accommodations of self reported attribute non attendance ana and continue to find strong evidence of skew in the distributions of marginal utilities even having accounted for ana we find that contrary to some recent findings respondents who report having ignored an attribute typically do indeed have a zero marginal utility for that attribute

charitable motives and bidding in charity auctions research on bidding in auctions has generally relied on the assumption of self interested bidders this work relaxes that assumption in the context of charity auctions because understanding charitable motives has important implications for auction design and charities fundraising strategies this study investigates bidders specific types of charitable motives and the strength of these motives we carry out three controlled field experiments consisting of real life auctions conducted on a local internet auction site we use a novel design in which we simultaneously run charity and noncharity auctions for identical products and vary the percentage donated to charity results show that auctions with proceeds donated to charity lead to significantly higher selling prices a result due to a higher bidding by bidders with charitable motives rather than to increased bidder entry we also find that increased prices only occur when the charitable donation is a percentage of the auction revenue and that a fixed charitable donation associated with each auction has no effect on prices furthermore we find that prices are increasing in the percentage donated to charity we find considerable support for a model of voluntary shill like bidding where charitable bidders try to increase proceeds in charity auctions we also find that auctions with 25 of revenue donated to charity had higher net revenue than noncharity auctions hence companies may be able to use charity auctions as part of a corporate social responsibility strategy and at the same time increase profitability even though they donate part of the proceeds to charity

models for heterogeneous variable selection abstract preference heterogeneity is a major research stream in marketing aimed at quantifying and understanding the diversity of demand for product attributes and attribute levels in experimental settings in which consumers are presented with simple descriptions of product offerings continuous distributions of heterogeneity such as the multivariate normal provide a useful representation of preference however in more complex cases in which respondents have value for only a few of the benefits associated with an offering or cognitive constraints that result in selective attention to a subset of the information available continuous distributions of heterogeneity do not reflect the possibility that a subset of the variables has nonzero effect sizes for different respondents identifying which attributes are used in a brand choice decision is closely related to the statistical procedure of variable selection this article extends variable selection methods to accommodate heterogeneity across consumers

rotating savings and credit associations when participants are risk averse we model rotating savings and credit associations roscas among risk averse participants who experience privately observed income shocks a random rosca is not advantageous whereas a bidding rosca is if temporal risk aversion is less pronounced than static risk aversion the payoff scheme of a bidding rosca facilitates risk sharing in the presence of information asymmetries the risk sharing performance of a simple arrangement where a group of homogenous individuals runs several bidding roscas simultaneously is as good as that of a linear risk sharing contract and is more enforceable because it carries a fixed rather than a variable contribution

charity auctions with multiple goods bidding behavior and revenue abstract in a charity auction with multiple goods we show that the highest losing bid uniform price auction revenue dominates its lowest winning bid counterpart only in the highest losing bid uniform price auction is bidding independent of the number of goods and players and revenue increasing in the number of goods

auctions versus negotiations which is the more profitable way to sell a company an auction with no reserve price or an optimally structured negotiation with one less bidder we show under reasonable assumptions that the auction is always preferable when bidders signals are independent for affiliated signals the result holds under certain restrictions on the seller s choice of negotiating mechanism the result suggests that the value of negotiating skill is small relative to the value of additional competition the paper also shows how the analogies between monopoly theory and auction theory can help derive new results in auction theory jel d44 g34 there are close analogies between standard price theory and the theory of auctions in an absolute english auction in which the price rises continuously until only one bidder remains and the seller is required to accept the final bid the sale price equals the lowest competitive price at which supply equals demand in the theory of optimal auctions the seller is treated as a monopolist who can choose any

monitoring choice task attribute attendance in nonmarket valuation of multiple park management services does it matter land management in alpine parks provides multifunctional services to separate groups of users choice experiments can be used to derive estimates of value for different management attri butes however little research has been conducted on how frequently respondents ignore attributes used to describe policy management scenarios we fill this gap using an approach that identifies and compares both serial and choice task attribute nonattendance addressing five different visitor types our results indicate that accounting for choice task nonatten dance significantly improves model fit and yield estimates of marginal willingness to pay with a more plausible pattern of signs and greater efficiency jel q24 q51 i introduction the effects of park management policies on outdoor recreation are increasingly coming under public scrutiny alpine park land is among the most valuable land in terms of outdoor recreation park manage ment decisions are often controversial be cause of differences between objectives pursued by conservationists and the tourist industry parkland management agencies find it increasingly difficult to fund all the services needed to facilitate the ever broad ening variety of outdoor recreation activi ties this is further exacerbated by the increasing expectations for high quality recreational experiences by a population of recreationists with a heightened sensitivity to environmental and conservation issues such a situation widens the scope for multiattribute nonmarket valuation meth ods especially for those methods capable of capturing and modeling the preferences of heterogeneous visitors who seek to pursue a variety of activities in the land under study our research reports the results of a study designed to address attribute nonattendance henceforth abbreviated as an a which despite being quite a common decision heuristic has only recently begun to be explored by analysts with this decision heuristic respondents ignore some of the described attributes in their evaluation of alternatives within a given choice task they hence act as if a zero weight were assigned to the ignored attributes in the utility of the respective alternatives we study this issue by using a well known statistical model of discrete choice the multinomial logit mnl model this random utility model is often used for the purpose of multi attribute nonmarket valuation but the effects of accounting for an a are still rela tively unexplored information on an a is commonly collected by questioning each respondent at the end of the sequence of choice tasks respondents are asked to list those attributes that they feel they have

accounting for slacks to measure and decompose revenue efficiency in the spanish designation of origin wines with dea abstract in this paper we show how data envelopment analysis dea may be used to measure and decompose revenue inefficiency taking into account all sources of technical waste in the context of an application to assess the spanish quality wine sector in particular designation of origin do wines we try to go beyond the standard approaches which use shephard distance functions or directional distance functions to provide decomposition that incorporates slacks as a source of technical inefficiency to accomplish this we will base our analysis on a recent approach introduced in cooper et al 2011a in particular we show how an output oriented version of the weighted additive model can be used to properly identify revenue technical and allocative inefficiencies in spanish dos in the application we conclude that the main source of revenue inefficiency in this sector is technical waste and that cava can be highlighted as the do that performs as a benchmark for more numbers of units

erratumauction guarantees for works of art this paper addresses the question of whether auction guarantees change the bidding environment and whether they cause a change in price once the value of an item is taken into account we analyze both the cases of third party guarantees and in house guarantees we use two datasets one of christie s and sotheby s contemporary and impressionist evening sales from january 2010 to february 2012 and another larger dataset consisting of all items auctioned at christie s from 2001 to may 2011 while more expensive items are more likely to have guarantees we find little empirical evidence to suggest an effect on price from the guarantee itself once the value of the item is taken into account