not all rivals look alike estimating an equilibrium model of the release date timing game a very serious game of strategy is at work a cross between chess and chicken which studio distribution chiefs play year round but with increasing intensity during the summer and holiday release period new york times december 6 1999 hubris hubris if you only think about your own business you think i ve got a good story department i ve got a good marketing department we re going to go out and do this and you don t think that everybody else is thinking the same way in a given weekend in a year you ll have five movies open and there s certainly not enough people to go around joe roth chairman of walt disney studios answering a question about the large number of major movies opening within days of each other los angeles times december 31 1996 i introduction the number of americans who go to the movies varies dramatically over the course of the year and sometimes more than doubles within a period of two weeks at the same time the first week accounts for almost 40 of the box office revenues of the average movie the combination of these two facts makes the timing of launching a new movie a major focus of attention for distributors of movies with virtually no subsequent price competition the movie s release date is one of the main short run vehicles by which studios compete with each other in this paper i develop and estimate a model of discrete games which allows me to analyze this release date timing game most empirical industry studies focus on price and quantity competition taking other product characteristics as given in many industries however prices play a very small role and competition is channeled through other product attributes the entertainment industry is a prime example competition among movies television programs or broadway shows is on nonmonetary product attributes such as content advertising and time therefore understanding competition in such industries requires a model that endogenizes some of these product attributes especially those that can be changed in the short run this paper provides a framework in which release decisions can be endogenized and nonprice competition can be analyzed the absence of price competition is useful because it allows the focus of the analysis to be on the timing dimension without relying on assumptions about the nature of the postrelease price competition 1 together with the frequent timing decisions associated with different movies this makes the motion picture industry quite attractive for empirical analysis of the timing game this industry however is not the only example in which timing decisions play a central role similar timing considerations are also important in the release decisions of books compact disks and other new products as well as in the scheduling decisions of major events television programs flight schedules and promotional sales 2 when taking on a new project distributors of movies typically plan for a friday release which falls within a relatively short window of time carefully chosen to match the type of the movie this makes the choice of the release date a very discrete one the exact friday within the season is generally determined by a strategic timing game played among distributors before each release season distributors scramble to release their movies on big holiday weekends when demand is high when doing so each distributor tries to release on the attractive holiday weekend and at the same time to deter competitors from doing the same the extent to which distributors are successful in doing so largely depends on the quality of the movies at their disposal and on the way they can compete with movies released by other studios thus modeling this timing game must account for the asymmetries among movies and for the variation in these asymmetries across release seasons specifically i develop and estimate a sequential move game with private information i assume that the observed release date decisions are the equilibrium outcome of such a game

nonparametric estimation of sample selection models sample selection models provide an important way of accounting for economic decisions that combine discrete and continuous choices and of correcting for nonrandom sampling nonparametric estimators for these models are developed in this paper these can be used for estimating shapes and important economic quantities as in standard nonparametnc regression endogeneity of regressors of interest is allowed for series estimators for these models are developed which are useful for imposing additivity restnctions that arise from selection corrections convergence rates and asymptotic normality results are derived an application to returns to schooling among australian young females is given

the contingent governance of teams analysis of institutional complementarity the first purpose of this paper is to design a model of governance structure called the contingent governance which can control the free riding problem in teams in the second best manner the second is to show by a new method of comparative static analysis that the effectiveness of the contingent governance may be enhanced by complementary institutional arrangements of the imperfect labor market and bank centered financial system the paper discusses the implications of such institutional complementarity for the dynamic change of the japanese main bank system and financial system design of transitional economies copyright 1994 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

on the equilibrium properties of locational sorting models abstract important to many models of location choice is the role of local interactions or spillovers whereby the payoffs from choosing a location depend in part on the number or attributes of other individuals or firms that choose the same or nearby locations in equilibrium this paper develops the equilibrium properties of a broadly applicable and readily estimable class of sorting models that allow location decisions to depend on both fixed local attributes including unobserved attributes and local interactions describes the conditions under which equilibria exist and are unique and provides a test for uniqueness in empirical analyses of sorting equilibrium

peer pressure and partnerships partnerships and profit sharing are often claimed to motivate workers by giving them a share of the pie but in organizations of any significant size the free rider effects would seem to choke off

returning to new orleans after hurricane katrina hurricane katrina displaced approximately 650 000 people and destroyed or severely damaged 217 000 homes along the gulf coast damage was especially severe in new orleans and the return of displaced residents to this city has been slow the fraction of households receiving mail which in the absence of reliable population estimates is a good indicator for returns was 49 5 percent in august 2006 and 66 0 percent in june 2007 greater new orleans community data center 2007 low income minority families appear to have been slower than others to return william h frey and audrey singer 2006 in this paper we examine the determinants of returning to new orleans in the 18 months after the hurricane the data come from a study of low income parents mainly african american women who were enrolled in a community college intervention prior to the hurricane although the sample is not representative of the pre katrina population of the city it nonetheless is of great interest the relatively slow return of low income primarily african american residents is a politically charged issue one extreme view is that the redevelopment plans are designed to discourage low income minority residents from returning a quite different view is that members of this group have found better opportunities outside of new orleans and do not want to return because few data sets trace individuals from before to after the hurricane this debate has taken place largely without the benefit of evidence

the unequal geographic burden of federal taxation in the united states workers in cities offering above average wages cities with high productivity low quality of life or inefficient housing sectors pay 27 percent more in federal taxes than otherwise identical workers in cities offering below average wages according to simulation results taxes lower long run employment levels in high wage areas by 13 percent and land and housing prices by 21 and 5 percent causing locational inefficiencies costing 0 23 percent of income or 28 billion in 2008 employment is shifted from north to south and from urban to rural areas tax deductions index taxes partially to local cost of living improving locational efficiency

macroeconomic adjustment and human nutrition abstract the macroeconomic adjustments made by most developing countries over the past decade to cope with economic crises have in many cases had severe effects on the poor these effects have often been ignored in planning but it is important to address them both to avoid human suffering and to facilitate economic growth this article provides a brief synthesis of current knowledge about the short term effects of macroeconomic adjustment policies on the nutritional status of the poor and proposes action to improve the nutrition effects of future adjustment programmes

cash crop production food price volatility and rural market integration in the third world large farmers in the third world often devote to cash crops a larger share of their land than do small farmers this paper suggests a possible explanation even in the presence of food markets third world farmers food security is best assured by food self sufficiency a model of crop portfolio choice under multivariate risk is used to show that reasonable assumptions regarding risk and preferences reproduce the observed pattern simulations further indicate that food market integration reduces the need for food self sufficiency policy implications are drawn regarding domestic trade liberalization and agricultural technology

interactions neighborhood selection and housing demand abstract this paper contributes to the growing literature that aims at identifying and measuring the impact of social context on individual economic behavior we develop a model of housing structure demand with neighborhood effects and neighborhood choice modeling neighborhood choice is of fundamental importance in estimating and understanding endogenous and contextual neighborhood effects controlling for non random sorting into neighborhoods allows for unbiased estimates and provides a means for identifying endogenous neighborhood effects estimation of the model exploits a household level data set that has been augmented with contextual information at two different levels scales of aggregation one is at the neighborhood level consisting of about ten neighbors with the data coming from the neighborhood clusters sub sample of the american housing survey a second level is the census tract to which these dwelling units belong these data were geocoded by means of privileged access to confidential us census data our results for the neighborhood choice model indicate that individuals prefer to live near others like themselves our estimates of the housing structure demand equation confirm that neighborhood effects are important in particular one s demand for housing depends on the mean of neighbors demand for housing

food marketing and pricing policy in eastern and southern africa a survey abstract this article surveys the empirical record of grain marketing and pricing policy in eastern and southern africa over 1930 1995 the paper addresses five key issues with major implications for food policy throughout africa a why the anticipated supply response to market liberalization has not yet occurred b why the common assumption of state taxation of farmers to support a cheap food policy does not apply in most of the countries in the region c why the temporary successes of the state led approach to stimulating smallholder grain production were unsustainable d why the elimination of government food subsidies associated with market reform has not adversely affected consumers and e why the fiscal cost of the marketing systems at least initially worsened rather than improved after the reforms were implemented in most countries the key future challenges for marketing policy are how to develop coordinated and financially sustainable input finance and commodity marketing systems for raising productivity growth in smallholder agriculture while overcoming inherited agricultural dualism and how to mitigate the effects of food price instability in a cost effective manner

interjurisdictional sorting and majority rule an empirical analysis the goal of this paper is to provide a comprehensive empirical analysis of majority rule and tiebout sorting within a system of local jurisdictions the idea behind the estimation procedure is to investigate whether observed levels of public expenditures satisfy necessary conditions implied by majority rule in a general equilibrium model of residential choice the estimator controls for observed and unobserved heterogeneity among households observed and unobserved characteristics of communities and the potential endogeneity of prices and expenditures as well as the self selection of households into communities of their choice we estimate the structural parameters of the model using data from the boston metropolitan area the empirical findings reject myopic voting models more sophisticated voting models based on utility taking provide a potential explanation of the main empirical regularities

consumer response to maize market liberalization in urban kenya abstract the elimination of consumer food subsidies associated with structural adjustment in africa has been widely thought to exacerbate food insecurity for low income consumers this article determines how urban maize consumption and expenditure patterns have responded to the liberalization of the maize and maize meal markets in kenya the article decomposes changes in maize meal prices attributable to changes in maize grain prices and maize milling margins results are obtained through two random household surveys in nairobi the first having been conducted before and the second after liberalization the main finding of the study is that maize market liberalization has conferred substantial benefits to urban consumers the combined saving to nairobi consumers from lower maize milling costs has been roughly us 10 1 million each year about the same amount that the government of kenya allocates annually to agricultural research results also indicate that the former consumer subsidies conferred through the official marketing channel were untargeted and actually inversely related to household income the subsidies on sifted meal also served to entrench a non competitive market structure that inhibited the development of a lower cost informal milling system these findings are consistent with research results from other eastern and southern african countries showing that the negative effects of eliminating food subsidies in the state marketing system have been largely compensated by relaxing controls on private grain trade which has increased consumers access to less expensive grain products distributed through informal markets

putting the 2007 2008 global food crisis in longer term perspective trends in staple food affordability in urban zambia and kenya abstract staple food prices in cities in eastern and southern africa rose sharply between late 2007 and early 2009 leading to estimates of massive increases in food insecurity and hunger however in assessing the impacts of soaring food prices on urban consumers access to food it is important to consider food price changes relative to changes in per capita incomes in this study we use the case studies of zambia and kenya where data are available on food prices wage rates incomes and other indicators of urban purchasing power to answer two main questions i how did staple food purchasing power at the height of the food price crisis compare to levels over the last 15 years and ii did the food price crisis exacerbate an already declining trend in staple food purchasing power or did it reverse a trend of stable or improving staple food affordability results indicate that staple food purchasing power in urban zambia and kenya improved markedly in the 10 12 years prior to the food price crisis most measures of bread and maize meal affordability at the start of the crisis in 2007 were at levels 1 0 4 3 times higher than in the mid 1990s these gains for urban consumers were slashed but not completely reversed during the food crisis between 2007 and 2009 maize meal and bread were still more affordable in urban zambia than all periods between 1994 and 2003 in urban kenya staple food purchasing power as of 2008 2009 was comparable to levels in 2000 2001 2004 2005 according to some indicators while other measures suggest that the food price crisis reduced staple food purchasing power to levels lower than any other year in the period 1994 1995 2007 2008

coordination and motivation in flat hierarchies the impact of the adjudication culture this paper considers a variation of the partnership game with imperfect public information in which teams are semi autonomous the only hierarchical intervention in teamwork is when a superior is called in by a team member to adjudicate alleged cases of free riding or unjustified lateral punishment flat hierarchy according to publicly known adjudicative rules adjudication culture using for statistical inference a publicly known organizational norm for teamwork cooperation it is shown that it is advantageous to set a non elitist organizational teamwork norm furthermore fairness in adjudication is valuable for economic reasons alone

the folk theorem with imperfect public information the authors study repeated games in which players observe a public outcome that imperfectly signals the actions played they provide conditions guaranteeing that any feasible individually rational payoff vector of the stage game can arise as a perfect equilibrium of the repeated game with sufficiently little discounting the central condition requires that there exist action profiles with the property that for any two players no two deviations one by either player give rise to the same probability distribution over public outcomes the results apply to principal agent partnership oligopoly and mechanism design models and to one shot games with transferable utilities copyright 1994 by the econometric society

choice of technology in small and large firms grain milling in tanzania abstract it is not uncommon to find many production units in low income labor abundant and capital scarce economies such as tanzania employing sophisticated and capital intensive production techniques in such circumstances a technology choice problem exists in the sense that the technologies in use and more often the products being produced are not compatible with the resource endowment of the economy and the income levels of the majority of the population this paper evaluates the relative performance of small and large scale grain milling techniques in tanzania to identify appropriate ones and explain why some firms select inappropriate techniques and products the consequences of technology choice are then discussed within the context of employment creation output expansion surplus generation skill formation economies of scale and overall resource use

interlinked markets and the cash crop food crop debate in land abundant tropical agriculture the purpose of this article is to illustrate how such institutions do arise in the african context under certain preconditions it is argued that the lack of a land market due largely to a non capitalist conception of property rights over land 3 along with other conditions to be examined below leads to the failure of labor and private sector credit markets in response indigenous institutions have evolved to cope with the market failures

wages rents and the quality of life this study focuses on the role of wages and rents in allocating workers to locations with various quantities of amenities the theory demonstrates that if the amenity is also productive then the sign of the wage gradient is unclear while the rent gradient is positive the theory is extended to include the housing market and nontraded goods these extensions require little modification of the conclusion the empirical work on wages shows that the regional wage differences can be explained largely by these local attributes with the use of site price data implicit prices are estimated and quality of life rankings for the cities are computed

the effects of price deregulation on maize marketing margins in south africa abstract there has been continuous controversy over the impact of food market reforms on food security in africa in south africa the government and media have often questioned the effects of price deregulation of maize meal the major staple food on consumers this article determines the effect of retail price deregulation on the size of maize milling retail margins in south africa regression models of monthly milling retail margins are run from the period may 1976 to december 2004 to assess the robustness of our findings we estimate several different models of structural change vary the sample period to examine the sensitivity of findings to unusual weather and market conditions in the region during episodes between 2001 and 2004 and run the models using different estimation techniques ols with newey west robust estimators and feasible general least squares in virtually all models the results indicate that real maize milling retailing margins in south africa have increased by at least 20 since the deregulation of retail prices in 1991 moreover there is evidence of trend growth in the size of the milling margin over time simulations indicate that the deregulation of maize meal prices has entailed a transfer of at least us 179 million year from consumers to agents in the marketing system further study is needed to understand why this outcome in south africa differs from findings in other countries in the region concerning the effects of reform on food marketing margins

kenya s cereal sector reform programme managing the politics of reform abstract the political aspects of reform have been underplayed in structural adjustment programmes the problematic and inconsistent implementation of kenya s cereal sector reform programme csrp it is argued here is substantially the result of failing to manage the politics of reform good political management of the reform process would have included ensuring a clear understanding by interest groups of the likely consequences of liberalisation and full involvement of the president and cabinet from the outset in order to create an ongoing reform culture

discrete choice with social interactions this paper provides an analysis of aggregate behavioural outcomes when individual utility exhibits social interaction effects we study generalized logistic models of individual choice which incorporate terms reflecting the desire of individuals to conform to the behaviour of others in an environment of noncooperative decisionmaking laws of large numbers are generated in such environments multiplicity of equilibria in these models which are equivalent to the existence of multiple self consistent means for average choice behaviour will exist when the social interactions exceed a particular threshold local stability of these multiple equilibria is also studied the properties of the noncooperative economy are contrasted with the properties of an economy in which a social planner determines the set of individual choices finally a likelihood function based on the theoretical model is given and conditions for the econometric identifiability of the model are established

the role of warehouse receipt systems in enhanced commodity marketing and rural livelihoods in africa most african countries have since the 1980s liberalised agriculture without experiencing food crisis as feared by sceptics but the outcome of reforms has been rather disappointing and agricultural markets remain underdeveloped and inefficient one means to improve agricultural marketing which is the focus of this paper is to develop regulated warehouse receipt wr systems the system will curtail cheating on weights and measures ease access to finance at all levels in the marketing chain moderate seasonal price variability and promote instruments to mitigate price risks it will also reduce the need for the government to intervene in agricultural markets and reduce the cost of such interventions if needed the major problem in establishing wr systems in africa is disabling elements in the policy environment drawing on experience from projects implemented in africa during the last decade 1 the authors outline how this challenge can be addressed the most crucial being to build strong stakeholder support behind the initiative 2002 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

poverty and distorted industrialization in the brazilian northeast abstract dramaric federal intervention and extensive industrialization in the brazilian northeast have not overcome its stagnant economy and society after centuries of isolation and dependence on sugar exports the northeast was integrated economicallu into brazil during 1930 1960 and since then it has been partially industrialized the regional economy however is weakly integrated and highly unequal leaving local markets small industrial growth remains keyed to other parts of brazil and dependent politics distort the region s relations with brasilia social inequality is extreme prospects for the future are bleak

the many faces of adjustment the 1980s was a decade of adjustment for much of the third world at an early stage unicef drew attention to the serious human costs of the recession and subsequently to the impact of stabilisation and adjustment measures on vulnerable groups and the need for special policies to counter these costs jolly and cornia 1984 cornia jolly and stewart 1987 in the latter half of the decade there were apparently very major changes in the international financial institutions in these matters in their recognition of the social costs of adjustment and of the need for changes in policies

estimating consumer willingness to pay for food quality with experimental auctions the case of yellow versus fortified maize meal in kenya biofortification of maize with provitamin a carotenoids is a new approach to the alleviation of vitamin a deficiencies in africa unfortunately these varieties are yellow or orange while consumers generally prefer white consumer willingness to pay for yellow and fortified maize was compared in experimental auctions in three regions in kenya the premium that consumers are willing pay for fortified maize 24 was higher than the discount they require to buy yellow maize 11 and in one zone consumers prefer yellow yellow color is therefore not an impossible obstacle for biofortified maize although it would clearly be easier to introduce this maize first in regions where yellow maize is currently grown

interactive property valuations this paper estimates models of social interactions within residential neighborhoods using data on neighborhood clusters for standard metropolitan areas in the united states from the american housing survey for 1985 and 1989 it examines eects of social interactions in the form of reaction functions for homeowners valuation of their properties at the level of the immediate residential neighborhood with neighborhoods consisting of a randomly chosen dwelling unit and about ten nearest neighbors the paper identifies the eect of endogenous social interactions to be significant and large ranging from 0 587 to 0 770 and much more important then the dynamic autoregressive structure of the model when both variables are present and both are significant the interactive regressions that it reports improve upon commonly used hedonic regressions as well the paper provides empirical support for the notion common in the real estate world of the importance of neighboring properties in property valuations

exploring the logic behind southern africa s food crises summary government action during food crises in southern africa frequently exacerbates the problems driving food staple prices well beyond import parity we argue that an inability to make credible commitments due largely to a lack of trust between public and private sectors contributes to this dynamic empirical policy analysis can facilitate resolution only within a consultative process involving a broad range of stakeholders the policies emerging from such a process are not likely to approximate first best recommendations yet the precise policies may be less important than the fact that they exist and that main stakeholders find them credible

maize milling market reform and urban food security the case of zimbabwe abstract government policy in much of eastern and southern africa has encouraged the development of highly centralized large scale milling facilities which has in turn promoted the consumption of highly refined and expensive maize meal compared to that produced by small scale hammer mills policies to develop competitive small scale milling facilities in urban areas are apparently neglected because of the conventional perception in eastern and southern africa that urban consumers strongly prefer the refined industrially milled meals and are not responsive to price differences between various types of maize meals results of consumer and miller surveys in zimbabwe call into question the validity of these perceptions simulation analysis also indicates that the elimination of policy constraints that block small scale millers access to grain would reduce overall marketing costs thereby allowing higher producer prices lower consumer prices and or lower government subsidies the case of zimbabwe suggests that market reform may considerably reduce the magnitude of the tradeoff between governments food security and budget minimization objectives

estimation of an equilibrium model with externalities post disaster neighborhood rebuilding we study the optimal design of subsidies in an equilibrium setting where the decisions of individual recipients impose externalities on one another we apply the model to the case of post katrina rebuilding in new orleans under the louisiana road home rebuilding grant program rh we estimate the structural model via indirect inference exploiting a discontinuity in the formula for determining the size of grants which helps isolate the causal effect of neighbors rebuilding on one s own rebuilding choices we find that the additional rebuilding induced by rh generated positive externalities equivalent to 4950 to each inframarginal household whose rebuilding choice was not affected by the program counterfactual policy experiments find that optimal subsidy policies bias grant offers against relocation with an inverse u shaped relationship between the degree of bias and the severity of damages from the disaster

estimating equilibrium models of sorting across locations while there is growing interest in measuring the size and scope of local spillovers it is well understood that such spillovers cannot be distinguished from unobservable local attributes using solely the observed location decisions of individuals or firms we propose an empirical strategy for recovering estimates of spillovers in the presence of unobserved local attributes for a broadly applicable class of equilibrium sorting models our approach relies on an iv strategy derived from the internal logic of the sorting model itself we show practically how the strategy is implemented provide intuition for our instruments discuss the role of effective choice set variation in identifying the model and carry out a series of monte carlo simulations to demonstrate performance in small samples

you get what you pay for the link between price and food safety in kenya the lack of a reliably safe food supply in developing countries imposes both health and economic costs food safety is one of several dimensions of food quality that are typically unobservable at the time of purchase branding can overcome this information problem by allowing firms to build reputations based on the quality of their products if a reputation for food safety is valued directly by consumers or if food safety is correlated with other valued attributes firms producing safer food should be able to use their brand equity to charge higher prices in addition firms with stronger brand equity have stronger incentives to meet food safety standards in order to maintain that equity using data from more than 900 maize flour samples representing 23 distinct brands in eastern and central kenya we explore the relationship between price and contamination with aflatoxin aflatoxin is a fungal toxin common in maize groundnuts and other crops around the world we find a strong negative correlation between price and contamination at the brand level consistent with the hypothesized positive relationship between brand equity and food quality