an extended production recycling model with stationary demand and return rates abstract a production recycling system is investigated a constant demand can be satisfied with production and recycling the used items are bought back and then recycled the non recycled products are disposed of two types of models will be analyzed the first model examines the eoq related costs and minimizes the relevant costs the second model generalizes the first model with the introduction of the cost function with linear waste disposal recycling production and buyback costs it is asked whether the pure either production or recycling or mixed strategies are optimal and it will be shown that under these circumstances the mixed strategies are dominated by the pure strategies the paper generalizes a former model proposed by the authors for the case of one recycling and one production batch to the case of arbitrary batch numbers

economic analysis of coal price electricity price adjustment in china based on the cge model in recent years coal price has risen rapidly which has also brought a sharp increase in the expenditures of thermal power plants in china meantime the power production price and power retail price have not been adjusted accordingly and a large number of thermal power plants have incurred losses the power industry is a key industry in the national economy as such a thorough analysis and evaluation of the economic influence of the electricity price should be conducted before electricity price adjustment is carried out this paper analyses the influence of coal price adjustment on the electric power industry and the influence of electricity price adjustment on the macroeconomy in china based on computable general equilibrium models the conclusions are as follows 1 a coal price increase causes a rise in the cost of the electric power industry but the influence gradually descends with increase in coal price and 2 an electricity price increase has an adverse influence on the total output gross domestic product gdp and the consumer price index cpi electricity price increases have a contractionary effect on economic development and consequently electricity price policy making must consequently consider all factors to minimize their adverse influence

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

price discrimination through offers to match price in this paper a firm discriminates between two classes of customer who have a different cost of information by coupling a list price with an offer to match the pr ice of any other shop if the list price elsewhere is lower the firm will be successful in discrimination the list price of each firm is increasing in the number of sellers and the total sales are decreasi ng in the number of sellers furthermore if sellers coordinate they discriminate more efficaciously and increase their profits by increa sing their total sales copyright 1987 by the university of chicago

economies of scale and barriers to entry dixit has recently presented a model in which established firms select capacity to discourage entry but cannot employ threats they would not rationally execute after entry entry deterrence in a slight modification of this model involves the classical limit price output under linear or concave demand however the capital cost of a firm of minimum efficient scale is an upper bound on the present value of the monopoly profit stream that can be shielded from entry it is argued that this suggests the general unimportance of entry barriers erected by scale economies

economic analysis of paper recycling vis a vis wood as raw material abstract concerns for the environment has forced many firms define policies that protect the environment within which they operate this paper presents a linear optimization model for paper industry to compare total system cost of wood as a raw material with recycling of waste paper objective of the proposed model is to minimize the cost of paper in the supply chain costs included in the objective functions are costs for collection of raw material transportation inventory manufacturing segregation and disposal during recycling the model also includes the economic implications of using these alternative material sources on environment as well as quality of final product to gain further insights into system behavior sensitivity analysis shortage analysis and indifference curve analysis have been performed the analysis clearly reveals that the paper recycling is an economical option compared to wood as a raw material the paper analysis highlights various strategies that could be followed under different market conditions

a decomposition of profit loss under output price uncertainty in this paper firm profit loss is decomposed as the sum of two terms related to the output price uncertainty price expectation error and risk preference plus one extra term expressing technical inefficiency we then describe the implementation of our theoretical model in a robust data envelopment analysis dea framework which allows an effective and separate estimation of each term of the decomposition in addition we offer an operational tool to reveal producers risk preferences a 2009 database of french fattening pig farms is used as an illustration our results indicate that risk preference and technical inefficiency are the main sources of profit loss

testing the rational expectations hypothesis in a secondary materials market abstract in the context of a supply demand model for wastepaper in the united states it is demonstrated that the estimated low adjustment rate associated with the hypothesis of adaptive expectations on price changes translates into an almost instantaneous adjustment in terms of price levels further it is shown that the rational expectations hypothesis is an acceptable framework to analyze this market and that using this hypothesis the price elasticity of supply is estimated to be 0 23 which is nearly twice the value obtained using adaptive expectations

international effects of national regulations external reference pricing and price controls under external reference pricing erp the price that a government permits a firm to charge in its market depends upon the firm s prices in other countries in a two country home and foreign model where demand is asymmetric across countries we show that home s unilaterally optimal erp policy permits the home firm to engage in a threshold level of international price discrimination above which it is just willing to export if the firm faces a price control abroad or bargains over price with the foreign government an erp policy can even yield higher home welfare than a direct price control

price discrimination in cournot competition abstract we examine the average equilibrium price when quantity setting oligopolies price discriminate it is known that for the price discrimination extension of cournot competition the average price is independent of the extent of price discrimination whenever the demand is linear we show that this result holds under a larger class of demand functions

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

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

third degree price discrimination under economies of scale there has long been a controversy in economics about whether or not a firm with monopoly power should be allowed to exploit its monopoly power by engaging in third degree price discrimination the effect of third degree price discrimination on welfare is two fold 1 output under price discrimination is misallocated because different groups are charged different prices but 2 if total output is different under price discrimination than under uniform pricing this will also affect welfare 2 schmalensee 8 varian 11 12 and schwartz 9 have shown that price discrimination must decrease welfare if output under price discrimination is the same or less than output under uniform pricing this fundamental result is quite robust and holds regardless of the number of sub markets or the behavior of marginal cost rising constant or falling it also holds even if the sub market demands are interdependent a necessary but not sufficient condition for price discrimination to be beneficial is that it increase total output perhaps the most common situation in which price discrimination will be beneficial is the case where only one sub market is served under uniform pricing but two or more sub markets are served under price discrimination in this case hausman and mackie mason 3 have pointed out that price discrimination will result in a pareto welfare improvement if marginal cost is constant or falling even when price discrimination does not open up new markets hausman and mackie mason 3 and nahata ostaszewski and sahoo 5 have shown that price discrimination can result in a pareto improvement by lowering prices in all sub markets hausman and mackie mason 3 257 argue that price discrimination is most likely to be beneficial when economies of scale are present 3

does climate policy make the eu economy more resilient to oil price rises a cge analysis abstract the european union has committed itself to reduce greenhouse gas ghg emissions by 20 in 2020 compared with 1990 levels this paper investigates whether this policy has an additional benefit in terms of economic resilience by protecting the eu from the macroeconomic consequences due to an oil price rise we use the gem e3 computable general equilibrium model to analyse the results of three scenarios the first one refers to the impact of an increase in the oil price the second scenario analyses the european climate policy and the third scenario analyses the oil price rise when the european climate policy is implemented unilateral eu climate policy implies a cost on the eu of around 1 0 of gdp an oil price rise in the presence of eu climate policy does imply an additional cost on the eu of 1 5 of gdp making a total loss of 2 5 of gdp but this is less than the 2 2 of gdp that the eu would lose from the oil price rise in the absence of climate policy this is evidence that even unilateral climate policy does offer some economic protection for the eu

is there persistence in the growth of manufactured exports evidence from newly industrializing countries abstract applying cointegration techniques in a panel data setting we document persistent growth of manufactured exports from certain developing countries to complement the investigation of persistence measured by the country fixed effects we analyze asymmetries in income elasticities for all developing countries the decline in exports with world income contraction is sharper than is the rise on the upswing the decline is however especially pronounced for countries with low or negative persistence the results are consistent with long term buyer supplier relationships that create insiders and outsiders in manufactured goods trading exports are also influenced by the transactional infrastructure proxied by telecommunications penetration

on the welfare effects of anti discrimination regulations in the ec car market abstract cross country price discrimination in an oligopolistic setting is examined in the context of the market for cars in the european community two types of regulation aimed at limiting price discrimination are considered in one constraints are imposed on absolute cross country price differentials in the other constraints are imposed on price ratios the first rule turns out to be uniformly better than the second in a way that we make precise when a country with no domestic producer of cars is introduced it seems that the redistributional effects of antidiscrimination regulation may be more important than any possible gains in efficiency

on the life cycle metaphor where ecology and economics diverge abstract there is an attractive analogy between nature and industry based on the similarity of natural functions and certain industrial activities for instance animals ingest eat and digest food finally there are metabolic wastes firms are analogous to organisms in several respects insofar as they consume material resources process digest them and produce output products and excrete wastes firms like organisms also compete with each other for resources curiously enough one of the apparent differences between natural and man made systems is actually not one like the industrial system the natural system does not recycle everything however there are at least four real and important differences between the biosphere ecology and the technosphere economy first there is no primary producer in the economic system analogous to what photosynthesizers play in the biosphere inputs to the economy are mostly natural resources capital services and labor second in the economic system output is a heterogeneous mix of manufactured products and services labor in economics is an input but not an output the economic system recycles much less than the ecological system but utilizes a far greater suite of elements in the biosphere there are no products as such growth is tantamount to accumulation of embodied solar exergy in the form of cellulose sugars lipids and proteins the biosphere produces only wastes and more of itself plus dead matter third in the biosphere there are no markets there is no medium of exchange like money and there is nothing analogous to paid labor exchanges are involuntary i e by predation parasitism or theft fourth evolution in nature is driven by differentiation by random mutations of the genome and darwinian selection based on reproductive success in economics differentiation is based on discovery invention and innovation by intelligent economic agents and selection is based on competition at the individual or firm level either way the economic system is not closely analogous to an ecosystem attempts to use ecological concepts in an economic context are often misleading and unjustified the paper discusses the implications of the eco eco mismatch for resource accounting and life cycle analysis

impacts of shifting china s final energy consumption to electricity on co2 emission reduction abstract electrification is advocated by both academics and the chinese government to control air pollution and promote productivity however the problem remains to be solved of how to achieve the trade off between reducing co 2 emissions and maintaining economic growth when switching from various fuels to electricity under the policy support in view of this after analyzing the effects of exogenous shocks in various fuel demands based on impulse response functions of several vector autoregression models this paper measures the current and long term impacts of electrification on gdp and co 2 emissions finally some typical cases of replacement of fossil fueled appliances by electrical counterparts encouraged by the government are assessed the main findings are 1 almost all of the exogenous shocks in fuel demands have positive effects on both gdp and co 2 emissions while the gas shock has a slightly negative effect on gdp 2 carbon intensity decreases and even co 2 emission reductions with increased gdp are potentially achieved in both current and permanent periods for coal electricity and oil electricity switching while gas electricity switching is not a wise choice in view of co 2 emission reduction in the long run 3 the alternative electric appliances for electrification have very different impacts on co 2 emission reduction

a post consumer waste management model for determining optimal levels of recycling and landfilling the present study examines the optimal recycling rate for municipal solid waste first an optimal control model is developed to account for the physical costs of recycling the social costs of landfilling and consumers environmental preferences second an optimal solution is simulated using waste disposal data from the helsinki region in finland the benefits from recycling are included in the simulation using the results of a recent contingent valuation study the results of the present research suggest that mandates for achieving 50 recycling in municipalities are not far fetched and are both economically and environmentally justified

modeling the supply of wastepaper abstract utilizing a price expectations model of wastepaper supplies edwards j environ econ manag 6 332 334 1979 claims to be able to explain certain anomalies in earlier empirical work while reaffirming the view that wastepaper supply is generally price inelastic this paper presents evidence to show that the price expectations model does not offer an adequate explanation of the state of affairs in the u k wastepaper market the low price elasticity of supply findings are however confirmed

the concept of joint production and ecological economics joint production is suggested as one of the conceptual foundations of ecological economics the notion of joint production springs immediately from the application of thermodynamics and has a long history in economic analysis considerations of joint production give rise to philosophical concerns relating to responsibility and knowledge the concept of joint production is easily comprehensible and is also constitutive and supportive of a range of concepts current in ecological economic thought 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

markets technology and environmental regulation price ambivalence of waste paper in germany abstract we examine the price ambivalence of low quality waste paper grades 1 02 and 1 04 on the german market since 1990 the price of these grades is at times positive and at times negative the underlying reason is the combination of three institutional and technical characteristics of the market i as a result of waste management legislation the supply of waste paper is mostly independent of its price and its demand supply is bounded from below by collection and utilization quotas fixed by the regulation on packaging waste enacted in 1991 ii the only alternative to costly disposal of waste paper by dumping or incineration is its use as a secondary resource in the production of new paper as only the paper industry is capable of using waste paper in a productive manner in significant amount iii yet its use as a substitute for primary inputs is technically limited in this article we describe the technical and institutional conditions leading to price ambivalence and discuss the consequences for supply demand and trade of waste paper

pareto price discrimination abstract as the collection of consumer data becomes more common online merchants are better equipped to price discriminate now more than ever before while standard first degree price discrimination benefits merchants and harms consumers relative to uniform pricing i derive an alternative first degree pricing strategy that achieves efficiency and pareto improves upon the uniform pricing equilibrium furthermore i show that price ceilings can enforce these pareto price discrimination strategies making pareto price discrimination a viable option for merchants and policy makers

insider trading 2 0 the ethics of information sales the sale of faster access to financial market data has recently generated public controversy ny attorney general eric schneiderman has referred to such fast data feeds as insider trading 2 0 for example thomson reuters sold the university of michigan s consumer sentiment index to computerized trading firms 2 seconds before releasing its data to its other paying clients this paper explores the ethical issues involved in the sale of such information is selling faster access ethically the same as traditional insider trading which generally involves a breach of fiduciary duty or the use of misappropriated information such practices are extremely different from traditional insider trading as there is neither a breach of fiduciary duty nor misappropriation of inside information the ethical issues are similar to other market segmentation and price discrimination issues in which different prices are charged to different customers the ability to price discriminate across segments can actually benefit large segments of the population who may receive lower prices because others such as the high speed traders are paying more the sale of faster access to information especially by exchanges raises additional ethical issues there may be adverse effects on market quality that must be addressed the moral distaste for the practice expressed by some stems from the seeming unfairness of a modern market structure that provides advantages to a small group of computerized traders

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

an assessment of optimal gas pricing in russia a cge approach domestic gas prices in russia are administratively regulated and they are substantially lower than export netback prices the administrative price regulation operates as an implicit subsidy on domestic gas consumption the russian government aims to liberalise domestic wholesale gas prices in the long term while the export netback parity is defined as a political objective it seems not to be a necessary target anymore the export netback parity is not economically rational for russia because the average export netback price of gas is higher than the marginal cost due to gazprom s market power in export gas markets an optimal domestic gas price is still not well defined this paper addresses this question by employing a comparative static single country multi sector computable generation equilibrium model cge the administrative regulation of domestic gas prices is explicitly modelled the main findings are as follows an increase in the domestic gas price provides economic efficiency gains the more elastic the export and domestic demand for gas the larger the welfare gains the optimal domestic gas price should be approximately 55 of the export netback price increasing the domestic gas price provides additional government revenues which can be used to reduce distortionary taxes on sectoral effects the structure of the russian economy shifts from energy toward non energy intensive sectors in response to an increase in the domestic gas price there is an increase in the export supply of gas furthermore an increase in the domestic gas price leads to a reduction in total co2 emissions

modeling undesirable factors in efficiency evaluation abstract data envelopment analysis dea measures the relative efficiency of decision making units dmus with multiple performance factors which are grouped into outputs and inputs once the efficient frontier is determined inefficient dmus can improve their performance to reach the efficient frontier by either increasing their current output levels or decreasing their current input levels however both desirable good and undesirable bad factors may be present for example if inefficiency exists in production processes where final products are manufactured with a production of wastes and pollutants the outputs of wastes and pollutants are undesirable and should be reduced to improve the performance using the classification invariance property we show that the standard dea model can be used to improve the performance via increasing the desirable outputs and decreasing the undesirable outputs the method can also be applied to situations when some inputs need to be increased to improve the performance the linearity and convexity of dea are preserved through our proposal

the price and income elasticity of china s natural gas demand a multi sectoral perspective abstract natural gas as a clean low carbon energy will play an important role in the world s low carbon energy transformation in this paper research on the elasticity of natural gas demand is surveyed and it is found that the price and income elasticities of natural gas demand in different sectors are distinctive in particular this paper constructs an autoregressive distribution lag model to study the elasticity of natural gas demand in various sectors of china the results show that except for the residents sector the long run price elasticity of natural gas demand in other sectors is greater than 0 which is contrary to the estimates of developed countries the demand for natural gas is complementary to coal in industrial and power generation sectors which is also different from developed countries the elasticity of natural gas demand in residents sector is lack in price elasticity but abundant in income elasticity which is similar to the developed countries the results also shows that natural gas and oil are substitutes for each other in the transportation sector and natural gas and coal are substitutes for each other in service sector

does international harmonization of environmental policy instruments make economic sense harmonization of the instruments used in environmental policy has beenconsidered necessary to guarantee fair competition in internationalmarkets we examine the economic costs of harmonizing paper recyclingstandards in countries where the urgency of the waste disposal problemsdiffer using data of seven european countries we estimate thetechnologically feasible input combinations of pulp and waste paper forpaper production short term effects of two environmental policy measures minimum content requirement and utilization rate target are analyzed bytranslating the two administrative instruments into taxes and subsidies weshow that the shadow costs of the harmonization vary considerably betweencountries the difference in the domestic availability of waste may explainthe variation and a modification of the policy measures to incorporate thisaspect is suggested

multilateral productivity comparisons when some outputs are undesirable a nonparametric approach multilateral productivity comparisons of firms producing multiple outputs some of which are undesirable are obtained by making two modifications to the standard farrell approach to efficiency measurement the restriction that production technology satisfy strong disposability of outputs is relaxed to allow for the fact that undesirable outputs may be freely disposable and the efficiency measures are modified to allow for an asymmetric treatment of desirable and undesirable outputs performance measures that satisfy these requirements are calculated as solutions to programming problems the methodology is applied to a sample of mills producing paper and pollutants

price discrimination and social welfare studies the effect of price discrimination on social welfare using methods from duality theory features of the reservation model presented quasi linear utility and consumers surplus upper and lower bounds on welfare change bounds on welfare change with optimal price discrimination from ebsco

the theory of warranty contracts abstract this paper surveys theories of the existence and design of warranty contracts insurance signalling and incentive motives are used to explain the existence of warranties the incorporation of imperfections that prevent warranties from serving their basic purposes in a first best way describes actual warranty practices

product warranty management iii a review of mathematical models a variety of mathematical models have been developed to study different aspects of warranty in this paper we carry out a comprehensive review of these models by classifying them into three categories based on consumer manufacturer and public policy decision maker perspectives

natural gas pricing reform in china getting closer to a market system the authros are thankful to industry representatives in china shell cnpc for their valuable contribution regarding natural gas information the mit joint program on the science and policy of global change where the authors are affiliated is supported by the u s department of energy office of science under grants de fg02 94er61937 de fg02 08er64597 de fg02 93er61677 de sc0003906 de sc0007114 xeu 0 9920 01 the u s department of energy oak ridge national laboratory under subcontract 4000109855 the u s environmental protection agency under grants xa 83240101 pi 83412601 0 rd 83427901 0 xa 83505101 0 xa 83600001 1 and subcontract uta12 000624 the u s national science foundation under grants ags 0944121 efri 0835414 iis 1028163 eccs 1128147 arc 1203526 ef 1137306 ags 1216707 and ses 0825915 the u s national aeronautics and space administration under grants nnx06ac30a nnx07ai49g nnx11an72g and sub agreement no 08 sfws 209365 mit the u s federal aviation administration under grants 06 c ne mit 09 c ne mit agmt no 4103 30368 the u s department of transportation under grant dtrt57 10 c 10015 the electric power research institute under grant ep p32616 c15124 ep p8154 c4106 the u s department of agriculture under grant 58 6000 2 0099 58 0111 9 001 and a consortium of 35 industrial and foundation sponsors for the complete list see http globalchange mit edu sponsors all

output and welfare effects of optimal price discrimination in markets segmented at the initiative of the seller abstract this paper investigates the output and welfare effects of optimal price discrimination in markets segmented at the initiative of the seller a market with n segments and prices is compared to a noncooperative cournot nash oligopoly with n competitors output and welfare are greater than less than equal to cournot nash levels when the demand function is concave convex linear from below

the pass through effects of oil price shocks on china s inflation a time varying analysis abstract using a time varying parameter structural vector autoregression with stochastic volatility tvp svar sv model we decompose the structural shocks of oil price fluctuations into four types oil supply shocks global demand shocks domestic demand shocks and oil specific demand shocks we then analyze the time varying effects of these oil price shocks on china s inflation at the import production and consumption stages using monthly data from january 1999 to december 2016 the results show that the pass through effects of the four types of oil price shocks on china s inflation at each stage are time varying and that there are significant differences at different time horizons and points in time the analysis of the variance decomposition shows that the effects of oil price shocks on china s inflation at each stage are incomplete and decrease along the price chain the increase in oil prices driven by oil specific demand shocks is the most important cause of china s inflation at the import and production stages during the full sample period while china s inflation at the consumption stage is mainly affected by domestic demand shocks in addition the inflationary effects of oil price shocks have been dramatically weaker since the international financial crisis compared with before the crisis

product design and efficient management of recycling and waste treatment abstract using a general equilibrium model where material is first extracted then used for producing a consumption good recycled and finally treated to reduce environmental damage we study efficiency restoring policies when one or more of the constituent markets are inactive the material is modeled as being embodied in the output and forms an important aspect of green product design if all markets for embodied material per unit output fail and if recycling benefit exceeds environmental damage the policy instruments needed for green design are a tax on the consumption good supply and a subsidy on the demand for material input

the impacts of nonferrous metal price shocks on the macroeconomy in china from the perspective of resource security abstract in recent years the price of international nonferrous metals has undergone drastic fluctuations which could exert significant shock effects on macroeconomic variables based on the perspective of resource security this paper reveals the relationship between the nonferrous metal price shocks and china s macroeconomic variables by establishing a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge model embedded with nonferrous metal consumption and means of production blocks the model is based on the optimal decision making behaviours of three departments that satisfy multiple constraints to realize optimal policy making furthermore the structural vector autoregression svar method is applied to verify the shock effects of nonferrous metal price and obtain more robust results the bayesian results show that there is consistency among nonferrous metal price shocks consumer reference shocks wage bonus shocks technical shocks and price adjusted shocks the impulse response function results indicate that the stimulation of an international nonferrous metal price increase would have significant positive impacts on the macroeconomic variables of investment money supply consumption and total output but negative effects on labour demand in addition the impulse responses of wage levels and the rate of inflation to nonferrous metal price shocks present obvious lagging effects

progressive pricing the ethical case for price personalization price discrimination is widely considered unethical unfair by consumers as has been borne out by decades of psychological research and mainstream press reporting however little academic work has been done to investigate the ethics of price discrimination the work that has been done to date concludes that while price discrimination is not unethical despite widespread lay perceptions it is at best morally neutral we argue price discrimination is more ethical than unitary pricing when done progressively meaning firms charge customers as a function of their willingness to pay we introduce this specific kind of price discrimination as progressive pricing and demonstrate it ethically outperforms a unitary pricing scheme where everyone pays the same price regardless of their willingness to pay at least within a broadly consequentialist framework we do this by comparing a unitary pricing scheme to a progressive one analyzing them through the lenses of four different consequentialist social welfare functions utilitarian egalitarian prioritarian and leximin which are used by welfare economists and philosophers to rank the distributions of different social outcomes concluding that progressive pricing is preferred regardless of which social welfare function s one finds most plausible

the relationship between waste paper and other inputs in the swedish paper industry a number of life cycle assessment studies havecompared the environmental impacts of materialrecycling and incineration of waste paper theyhave shown that in most cases a recyclingscenario results in lower total energy use butgreater use of fossil fuels if waste paper andfossil fuels are complements parts of theenvironmental argument for recycling isabolished this paper estimates a cost functionfor the swedish paper industry if the costshares are co integrated an error correctionmodel will be used to model the dynamics short and long run elasticities are thencalculated to address the relationship betweenwaste paper and the other inputs capital labor purchased pulp fiber fossil fuels andelectricity contrary to the life cycleassessment studies the results show that wastepaper and fossil fuels are substitutes andthat waste paper and electricity arecomplements

interrelated factor demands for manufacturing a dynamic translog cost function approach abstract in this paper we report the results of estimating a joint model for labour capital and energy using the transcendental logarithmic cost function of christensen jorgenson and lau 1973 this allows us to determine both the own price and cross elasticities of substitution between labour capital and energy we combine a model of factor shares with a dynamic adjustment process for each factor we also impose on the cross equation restrictions necessary to provide additivity homogeneity and symmetry since the covariance matrix in systems of share relationships is singular we follow the suggestions of anderson and blundell 1982 and employ a mullivariate error corrrection model the results suggest that additivity symmetry and homogeneity restrictions do hold and that there are short run increasing returns to scale

durable goods monopoly with limited choice of commitment strategy when should the monopolist precommit consider a firm a monopolist offering a unique product to a fixed number of potential customers suppose that no consumer desires more than one unit of the good within a given period or across periods that is there is no value to repeat purchases in addition suppose that customers vary with respect to their initial reservation prices which decline over time a natural interpretation is that the monopolist is selling a good that is durable alternatively the firm is providing an entertainment or fashion good consumers may place a premium on obtaining the product quickly before it becomes less useful less stylish or less novel coase 7 conjectured that this firm s ability to extract surplus is limited because the firm has to compete with itself across time periods high valuation customers would be unwilling to pay a high initial price because they would anticipate that over time the firm will be reducing the price in order to sell to lower valuation customers subsequent literature formalizes this as a time inconsistency problem faced by a monopolist unable to make intertemporal commitments a separate strand of the literature proceeds from the polar assumption that the monopolist can precommit to any multiperiod pricing strategy comparison to coase s monopolist is simple higher profits are obtainable under precommitment because more surplus is extracted from high valuation customers an important proposition due to stokey 22 is that it will be optimal for the monopolist to precommit to a declining intertemporal price schedule if consumers with higher initial valuations have a higher rate of time preference 2 otherwise the optimal strategy is to hold price constant at the static monopoly level and to sell no more than the static monopoly quantity 3

quality uncertainty and guarantee this paper presents a monopoly model with product quality uncertainty in which optional quality guarantee is used to effectively segment the monopolist s potential market and price discriminate among consumers having different incomes the optional guarantee pricing is seen to dominate pure monopoly pricing either with tied in guarantee or no guarantee in terms of maximum expected profits in the optional guarantee equilibrium the monopolist captures a larger part of his potential market by charging a lower price for an unguaranteed product and a higher price for a guaranteed product than does either of the pure monopoly solutions

cyclical dumping and correlated business cycles in imperfect markets empirical applications to the canadian pulp and paper industry this paper deals with theoretical and empirical aspects of firm behaviour under imperfect competition and uncertainty it contains an analysis of the behaviour of a firm facing a stochastic demand

the welfare effects of third degree price discrimination in intermediate good markets the case of bargaining this article examines the welfare effects of third degree price discrimination by a monopolist selling to downstream firms with bargaining power one of the downstream firms the chain store can integrate backward at lower cost than rivals bargaining powers also depend on disagreement profits bargaining weights and concession costs if the chain s integration threat is not credible price discrimination reduces the input price charged symmetric downstream firms and often reduces the average input price charged asymmetric downstream firms

defects in disneyland quality control as a two part tariff this paper shows that firms endowed with monopoly power can utilize an optional service contract form of guarantee as an instrument for effecting a surplus extracting two part tariff the monopolist finds it optimal to produce guarantee and replace defective units even if a zero defect rate could be achieved at no additional production cost it is also shown that the price per unit is greater than the effective marginal cost it may even be higher than the pure monopoly price moreover the monopolist is unable to extract all of the consumers surplus thus that optional service contract policy can provide an effective yet defensible form of price discrimination as an alternative to possible illegal tie ins quantity discounts and simple two part tariffs a guarantee is a risk sharing insurance contract tailored to the risky or uncertain flow of consumption services from a commodity see heal 1976 guarantees provide for full or partial replacement repair or refund for expected and unexpected short falls in service indeed appelbaum and scheffman 1978 have provided an example in which the refund exceeds the purchase price the guarantee may come into force in a variety of circumstances ranging from specifically named contingencies to general promises of satisfaction guaranteed or your money back guarantees may be offered as a mandatory tie in with purchase or may be optional we refer to the latter as service contracts they may be priced on a per unit basis or offered at a fixed fee invariant of number of units purchased

trade reform uncertainty and export promotion mexico 1982 88 abstract this paper uses a simple portfolio optimization framework to analyze both the direct impact of liberalization measures and the impact of reduced relative riskiness of exporting vs producing for the domestic market arising from a commitment to an outward orientation we allow for uncertainty in both the domestic and foreign markets and examine the very counterintuitive implications of the covariance for export behavior we use firm level export data in a dynamic panel context bi variate garch techniques and the levin and lin tests for unit root stationarity in panel data to examine the mexican liberalization from 1983 88

industrial ecology and the rediscovery of inter firm recycling linkages historical evidence and policy implications industrial ecology is one of the most influential perspectives to have emerged in recent years in the wider discourse on sustainable development the vast majority of industrial ecologists believe that past economic development was characterized by a linear system of extraction use and disposal one of their main goals is therefore to find ways to make modern industrial economies mimic ecosystems by transforming the waste of one firm into the valuable input of another historical evidence presented in this article however demonstrates that inter firm recycling linkages were a dominant characteristic of past economic development if this was the case why do most writers on sustainability believe otherwise i suggest two broad categories of explanation a lack of research into the spontaneous formation of inter firm recycling linkages and the progressive and cumulative implementation of market distortions and regulatory barriers to resource recovery over the last century one implication of these findings is that the most important task facing industrial ecologists is probably not the technical challenge of planning resource recovery between firms but the development of an institutional framework that forces firms to internalize their externalities while leaving them the necessary freedom to develop new and profitable uses for by products copyright 2002 oxford university press

procompetitive gains from trade and comparative advantage having made the concepts of pro or anticompetitive output changes precise necessary and sufficient conditions for trade gains are derived under conditions of increasing returns to scale and imperfect competition in a general equilibrium model with any finite number of goods and factors these conditions yield generalizations of the theorems of comparative advantage in goods and implicit factor trade the factor content version of the h o theorem other generalizations can be obtained if one assumes quasihomothetic preferences and that welfare effects are dominated by price rather than income effects copyright 1996 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

innovation incentives through third degree price discrimination in a model of patent breadth abstract in a model of patent breadth generating linear demand functions it is shown that if a potential inventor has to be given an innovation incentive this is better done by permitting him to price discriminate than requiring uniform prices

evolutionary policies for sustainable development adaptive flexibility and risk minimising abstract an evolutionary perspective on policies to foster sustainable development is presented it is argued that policies suggested by the traditional economic theory of environmental policy can stimulate unsustainable socio economic structures and patterns in addition they are unable to remove undesired locked in systems and technologies drawing on evolutionary thinking characterised by diversity selection innovation path dependence and bounded rationality an alternative partly complementary theory of environmental policy is suggested specific attention is given to the role of strategies that are aimed at increasing diversity and adaptive flexibility and at reducing risk

customer coalitions monopoly price discrimination and generic entry deterrence abstract this paper analyzes the interplay between a profit maximizing monopolist and a set of consumers who are able to form coalitions that bargain with the monopolist and or integrate into production we show that the monopolist will deter the formation of these countervailing coalitions through strategic selection of generic limit price offers to each consumer these limit prices are derived as subgame perfect equilibria in two alternative models of customer monopoly interplay in both models price discrimination emerges in environments wherein it has previously been considered unprofitable welfare analysis of the equilibria demonstrates the procompetitive effects of potential customer coalitions and generally provides an efficiency based motivation for a government ban on price discrimination

intertemporal emission trading with a dominant agent how does a restriction on borrowing affect efficiency in this paper we analyze how restricting intertemporal trading by prohibiting borrowing of emissions permits affects the ability of a dominant agent to exploit its market power we show that the monopolist could take advantage of the constraint on borrowing by not distributing the sale of permits cost effectively across periods furthermore we show that a constant present value price over time does not imply a cost effective distribution of abatement permit sales across periods

welfare increasing third degree price discrimination when demand functions in different markets are derived from distributions of reservation prices that differ only in their means conditions exist such that third degree price discrimination leads to greater total output and greater total welfare welfare is higher with discrimination than with a uniform price when demand functions are derived from logistic distributions with different means welfare and consumer surplus are higher with discrimination for demands derived from a distribution related to the pareto in general whether discrimination increases total output depends on demand being more convex in markets in which prices fall with discrimination than in those in which prices rise

market opening under third degree price discrimination there are frequently regulatory and antitrust pressures for firms to cease price discrimination and practice uniform pricing such pressures however generally have negative welfare consequences when they lead to weaker markets not being served this paper derives conditions that determine when price discrimination will induce service to a market market opening that would not be served under a regime of price uniformity the factors that favor market opening under price discrimination are a large market share for the strong market profit margins in the two markets that are far apart and concave rather than convex demand curves copyright 1994 by blackwell publishing ltd

recent evolutionary theorizing about economic change this famous passage from marshall s principles of economics it first appeared in the fifth edition which came out in 1907 nicely brings out two issues which are as germane to economics today as they were when marshall wrote the first is the heavy reliance by economists in their formal theorizing on the notion of equilibrium the other is the appeal that biological conceptions3x201d have for many economists particularly when their focus is on economic change

industrial electricity demand and energy efficiency policy the role of price changes and private r d in the swedish pulp and paper industry abstract the objective of this paper is to analyze electricity demand behaviour in the swedish pulp and paper industry in the context of the increased interest in so called voluntary energy efficiency programs in these programs tax exemptions are granted if the participating firms carry out energy efficiency measures following an energy audit we employ a panel data set of 19 pulp and paper firms and estimate both the own and cross price elasticities of electricity demand as well as the impact of knowledge accumulation following private r d on electricity use the empirical results show that electricity use in the swedish pulp and paper industry is relatively own price insensitive and the self reported electricity savings following the voluntary so called pfe program support the notion of important information asymmetries at the company level however the results display that already in a baseline setting pulp and paper firms tend to invest in private r d that have electricity saving impacts and our model simulations suggest that up to about one third of the industry sector s self reported electricity savings in pfe could be attributable to pure baseline effects future evaluations of voluntary energy efficiency programs must increasingly recognize the already existing incentives to reduce energy use in energy intensive industries

unraveling effects of coal output cut policy on air pollution abatement in china using a cge model abstract recently frequent hazy weather in china caused by pm2 5 is mainly attributed to irrational energy consumption structure so the policies cutting coal output and promoting electric power substitution were initiated facing some resistance in the policy implementation what the proper target of cutting coal output is or whether there is a need to cut electricity prices for electric power substitution are still unknown or debatable to exploring this knowledge gap this paper set the eight action plan policy scenarios in which the coal output cut is set from 3 to 10 respectively further in order to observe whether the policy of cutting electric price will reduce the negative effects of action plan policy scenarios the eight enhanced action plan policy scenarios were also set in which the coal output cut is set from 3 to 10 respectively with the hypothetical electric price cut 3 by using the developed computable general equilibrium cge model the policy scenarios are simulated and the economic and environmental effects are tested the results showed that first in most policy scenarios the environmental and economic effects were changing synchronously in inverted u shapes but the policy to cut coal output would lead to positive environmental effects and negative economic effects second cutting electricity price could contribute to promoting electricity substitution though it couldn t be conducive to improving the electricity structure third the reduction of electricity price could also help to reduce the resistance in policy implementation consequently for optimal environmental effects and economic resistance it is recommended to set the policy target of cutting coal output as 6 while the moderate reduction of electricity price is needed and set as 3

input price discrimination with downstream cournot competitors abstract this paper addresses third degree price discrimination in input markets i decompose the upstream monopolist s profit into two parts one that depends on average input prices and one that depends on their distribution this decomposition is useful in comparing the welfare properties of price discrimination against uniform pricing under reasonable assumptions input price discrimination negatively affects both consumer surplus and total welfare

the effects of third degree price discrimination in oligopoly retail firms and restaurants commonly offer senior citizen discounts i suspect this practice is not motivated by altruism rather the behavior can be better explained as profit maximizing price discrimination these firms are setting a low price in a market which probably has high elasticity of demand but why should the demand of senior citizens be more elastic than average one possibility is that elderly people have below average income and they would not eat out if restaurant prices were high perhaps a more plausible explanation is that retired people simply have more time on their hands to spend commuting across town to take advantage of discounts the purpose of these discounts may then be to lure senior citizens away from other restaurants rather than to get them out of the house the analysis of third degree price discrimination has a long history a c pigou 1920 joan robinson 1933 and two articles on the subject have recently appeared in this review richard schmalensee 1981 hal varian 1985 the industry structure in these analyses is monopoly but an explicit model of some form of competition is obviously needed to study discriminatory discounts meant to attract customers from rival firms and even discounts meant to get people out of the house may have an oligopoly analysis which is qualitatively different from their monopoly anlysis in this paper i present a simple duopoly model of a differentiated products industry i show that a firm s price elasticity of demand in a market can be expressed as the sum of two parts the industry demand elasticity and the cross price elasticity the first measures the tendency of consumers in a market to stay home when the price goes up the second the tendency to switch suppliers in the monopoly case in which the crossprice elasticity is zero and the collusive case in which the cross price elasticity is irrelevant discrimination between markets is due to differences in industry demand elasticity in the noncooperative oligopoly case equilibrium price differentials can be accounted for both by differences in cross price elasticity as well as differences in industry demand elasticity total industry output when the firms can discriminate between two markets is compared to what it would be if discrimination were impossible which regime has larger output depends on the sum of the adjustedconcavity condition and the elasticity ratio condition the first predominates when the rival products are poor substitutes and the firms have approximate monopoly power while the second predominates at the other extreme where the products are close substitutes and the firms have almost no market power the adjusted concavity condition compares the relative curvature of demands in the two markets and was originally discovered by robinson 1933 in her analysis of monopoly price discrimination the elasticity ratio condition compares the relative difference in industry demand elasticity between the two markets with the relative difference in cross price elasticity according to the elasticity ratio condition a discriminatory discount due to high industry elasticity of demand would be more likely to increase total output than one due to high cross price elasticity the effect of discrimination on profit is also discussed the distinction made here department of economics university of wisconsin madison madison wi 53706 this paper is a revision of part of my doctoral dissertation i am grateful to steve matthews ken judd and john panzar for guidance in this research i also thank seminar participants at wisconsin the justice department and the 1986 econometric society meetings in new orleans and the discussant martin perry the excellent comments of the referees improved the exposition of the paper

estimating the electricity prices generation costs and co2 emissions of large scale wind energy exports from ireland to great britain abstract the share of wind generation in the irish and british electricity markets is set to increase by 2020 due to renewable energy re targets the united kingdom uk and ireland have set ambitious targets which require 30 and 40 of electricity demand to come from re mainly wind by 2020 respectively ireland has sufficient indigenous onshore wind energy resources to exceed the re target while the uk faces uncertainty in achieving its target a possible solution for the uk is to import re directly from large scale onshore and offshore wind energy projects in ireland this possibility has recently been explored by both governments but is currently on hold thus the aim of this paper is to estimate the effects of large scale wind energy in the irish and british electricity markets in terms of wholesale system marginal prices total generation costs and co2 emissions the results indicate when the large scale irish based wind energy projects are connected directly to the uk there is a decrease of 0 6 and 2 in the irish and british wholesale system marginal prices under the uk national grid slow progression scenario respectively

the geopolitical impact of the shale revolution exploring consequences on energy prices and rentier states while the shale revolution was largely a us affair it affects the global energy system in this paper we look at the effects of this spectacular increase in natural gas and oil extraction capacity can have on the mix of primary energy sources on energy prices and through that on internal political stability of rentier states we use two exploratory simulation models to investigate the consequences of the combination of both complexity and uncertainty in relation to the global energy system and state stability our simulations show that shale developments could be seen as part of a long term hog cycle with a short term drop in oil prices if unconventional supply substitutes demand for oil these lower oil prices may lead to instability in rentier states neighbouring the eu especially when dependence on oil and gas income is high youth bulges are present or buffers like sovereign wealth funds are too limited to bridge the negative economic effects of temporary low oil prices

an empirical investigation of the welfare effects of banning wholesale price discrimination rand 054 rand2007 cls 1994 07 13 v1 2u standard latex document class rand rand 054 dispatch 12 7 2008 ce n a journal msp no no of pages 26 pe sharon rand journal of economics vol 40 no 1 spring 2009 pp 20 45 an empirical investigation of the welfare effects of banning wholesale price discrimination sofia berto villas boas economic theory does not provide sharp predictions on the welfare effects of banning wholesale price discrimination if downstream cost differences exist then discrimination shifts production inefficiently toward high cost retailers so a ban increases welfare if differences in price elasticity of demand across retailers exist discrimination may increase welfare if quantity sold increases so a ban reduces welfare using retail prices and quantities of coffee brands sold by german retailers i estimate a model of demand and supply and separate cost and demand differences simulating a ban on wholesale price discrimination has positive welfare effects in this market and less if downstream cost differences shrink or with less competition introduction wholesale price discrimination means that an upstream firm sets different prices for the same product for various downstream retailers wholesale price discrimination is commonly practiced in many markets examples include markets such as petroleum distribution steel heavy trucking tobacco and pharmaceuticals in several countries milk and other dairy products are sold using government administered or sanctioned discriminatory pricing schemes wholesale price discrimination practices are also used for services such as loans insurance and advertising 1 competition authorities have been concerned with wholesale price discrimination the european union treaty s article 82 c prohibits practices where a dominant firm would place trading partners at a competitive disadvantage the u s robinson patman act forbids discriminat ing in price between different purchasers where the effect may be to lessen competition unless the university of california berkeley sberto are berkeley edu i thank the editor igal hendel and two anonymous referees for many helpful comments and max auffhammer cyndi berck peter berck gal hochman silke januszewski forbes george judge kai uwe k uhn diana lazo mark muendler aviv nevo ariel pakes jeff perloff andrew sweeting miguel villas boas and participants at uc san diego university of michigan the inra idei conference in toulouse and the university of british columbia summer conference in industrial organization for their suggestions i thank daniel klapper for letting me have access to the data support from the giannini foundation and from an aes grant are gratefully appreciated see for gasoline markets texaco v hasbrouck 496 us 543 no 87 2048 1990 and the new york state motor fuel marketing practices act for steel chan hall and rust 2003 for heavy trucking volvo trucks north america inc v reeder simco gmc inc docket no 04 905 for tobacco brooke group ltd v brown and williamson tobacco corp 509 us 209 no 92 466 1993 for wholesale pharmaceuticals see http www datcp state wi us trade business unfair comp drug price jsp for dairy markets see for example gardner 1984 and for services see givens 1983 c 2009 rand copyright

on the welfare effects of regulating price discrimination in a model with linear demands and constant variable costs it is shown that a welfare gain is made by restricting the relative rather than absolute prices that a monopolist can charge for a range of products the nature of this class of restrictions is considered one application might occur if cost levels are unknown to the regulatory authority but costs are known to be linear functions of product characteristics copyright 1992 by blackwell publishing ltd

rational inefficiency adjustment costs and sequential technologies abstract in this paper we propose a novel approach to estimate the rational inefficiency of decision making units in the presence of adjustment costs using sequential definitions of the production technology we show how cost inefficiency can be decomposed into rational and residual inefficiency as well as inefficiency caused by technical change furthermore we estimate lower bounds for the unobserved adjustment costs based on unexploited cost reductions due to rational inefficiency these adjustment costs are used to evaluate the feasibility of exploiting cost reductions caused by residual inefficiency we demonstrate the empirical applicability of our model by estimating and decomposing the cost inefficiency of u s coal fired power plants using panel data which cover the period between 1994 and 2009

how does coal price drive up inflation reexamining the relationship between coal price and general price level in china abstract due to the coal dominated energy structure china is currently facing significant economic uncertainties brought forward by instability of coal price by separating the asymmetric effects that how upward and downward coal price changes pass through to the economy this paper reexamines the relationship between coal price and general price level in china the asymmetric effects are investigated via vector autoregression models granger causality tests and impulse response function analyses using the monthly time series data from jun 98 to sep 14 results show negative coal price change presents more significant impact on inflation than positive one the inflation responses very abruptly to coal price shock in the short run but the impact regresses rapidly along time accumulatively a 1 increase of coal price will push cpi and ppi up by 0 04 and 0 12 while a 1 decrease of coal price will pull them down by 0 08 and 0 17 respectively the linkage among coal price change ppi and cpi is demonstrated as the main transmission channel of price shock the inflationary effect is strong in the initial stage but will be weakened in the later stage since the pass through effect from ppi to cpi is tiny which confirms ppi is more responsive than cpi to coal price change for policy implications how to avoid extreme volatility in general price level is a major concern of recent agendas such as reforming energy market and building green fiscal system

welfare and output in third degree price discrimination a note abstract one main result on the welfare effects of third degree price discrimination by a monopolist is that an increase in total output is a necessary condition for welfare improvement this note provides two examples showing that this proposition does not generalize to an oligopoly with heterogenous firms in these examples price discrimination makes competition more favorable to the low cost firm this induces a cost saving that overcomes the welfare loss associated with price discrimination

third degree price discrimination in linear demand markets effects on number of markets served and social welfare author affiliation victor kaftal department of mathematical sciences 839 c old chemistry building university of cincinnati cincinnati oh 45221 usa victor kaftal uc edudebashis pal department of economics 1204 crosley tower university of cincinnati cincinnati oh 45221 debashis pal uc edu corresponding author acknowledgment we are grateful to rick harbaugh laura razzolini david sappington and two anonymous reviewers debashis pal is also grateful to taft research center for financial support 1 introductiondoes monopolistic third degree price discrimination reduce social welfare the question has continued to intrigue economists and policy makers for more than half a century the seminal work of robinson 1933 shows that if a monopolist with a constant marginal cost sells in two distinct and independent markets having linear demands then welfare falls with third degree price discrimination almost half a century later schmalensee 1981 reexamines robinson s result and demonstrates that for any number of markets with linear demands third degree price discrimination lowers welfare schmalensee 1981 also establishes more generally that price discrimination increases welfare only if it increases aggregate output subsequently using ingenious duality approaches varian 1985 and schwartz 1990 generalize the results for correlated demands and nonlinear marginal costs 1it is therefore well known that for linear market demands and constant marginal costs monopolistic third degree price discrimination indeed lowers welfare it is important to note however that the welfare reducing effect of third degree price discrimination is derived under a crucial assumption it is assumed that if the monopolist is forced to charge the same price in all markets uniform pricing the monopolist would sell a positive quantity in each market in a recent article cowan 2007 considers various forms of nonlinear demands and presents the necessary and sufficient and or sufficient conditions for price discrimination to reduce welfare cowan 2007 however also assumes that all markets are served under uniform pricing yet when this assumption does not hold the welfare effects of monopolistic third degree price discrimination turn out to be significantly more intricate observe that when all markets are not served under uniform pricing price discrimination may increase welfare because price discrimination may serve markets that would not be served under uniform pricing thus relative to uniform pricing price discrimination has two countervailing effects on welfare aggregate welfare goes down in those markets that are originally served under uniform pricing whereas welfare goes up in those markets that are not served under uniform pricing therefore the additional welfare from the new markets under price discrimination may offset any loss of welfare in the markets that are originally served under uniform pricing the point is strongly emphasized in schmalensee s 1981 seminal work in the context of prescription drugs an identical sentiment is recently echoed in varian 2000 in the context of two markets the possibility of price discrimination opening up new markets is first analyzed graphically by battalio and ekelund 1972 layson 1994 also considers two markets but includes nonlinear demands and presents conditions for opening of new markets based on endogenous features such as elasticities in the context of patent policy opening of new markets by price discrimination is explicitly incorporated by hausman and mackie mason 1988 using two markets they show that price discrimination by a patent holder is socially desirable in many cases because it allows the patent holder to open new markets there is a related literature in spatial economics beginning with greenhut and ohta 1972 and holahan 1975 that deals with spatial price discrimination and market opening with linear demand

wasted waste an evolutionary perspective on industrial by products abstract every production process gives rise to unintended outputs we argue that whether an output is desired or undesired is not given per se but depends on the economic circumstances which change over time as a result by products of one industry first perceived as non marketable wastes may become desired inputs into other production processes by adopting an evolutionary perspective on economic dynamics in particular by exploiting the concept of niche exclusion we identify favorable circumstances for undesired outputs to become marketable to cope with the pace and unpredictability of economic evolution we argue for a flexible policy system which favors outcome over process oriented waste management policies and balances the responsibility between consumers and producers on the one side and the society as a whole on the other side

monopolistic third degree price discrimination under vertical product differentiation this paper shows in a vertical product differentiation model with variable costs of quality that monopolistic third degree price discrimination always reduces welfare regardless of whether the quality is fixed or is endogenous the results provide rich implications for antitrust policy

unit root tests on real wage panel data for the g7 abstract using a unit root test for panel data we find that real wage innovations in most g7 economies are temporary rapidly mean reverting and have no permanent component results are sensitive to an identical cross equation restriction on all series

direct welfare analysis of relative price regulation abstract the paper synthesizes and develops the welfare analysis of regulating relative prices for example price differences of which banning price discrimination is a special case welfare results are derived directly by convexity arguments using functions of welfare levels the method is also used to obtain results about e ects on consumer surplus

gender based price discrimination in matching markets this paper develops a new model to analyze price discrimination in matching markets where agents have private information about their respective qualities on the basis of signals car clothing club membership etc purchased from profit maximizing firms men and women form beliefs about each other s qualities the matching must then be stable in the following sense there cannot be a man and woman who are unmatched and who both believe they would be better off if they were matched with one another the model enables an analysis of the impact of third degree or gender based price discrimination on welfare when third degree price discrimination is not feasible the cost of eliciting private information is higher but a monopoly intermediary may have stronger incentives to implement an efficient allocation i show that gender based price discrimination is more likely to have a positive impact the more symmetric the matching environment is

storable good monopoly the role of commitment we study dynamic monopoly pricing of storable goods in an environment where demand changes over time the literature on durables has focused on incentives to delay purchases our analysis focuses on a different intertemporal demand incentive for consumers the key force on the consumer side is advance purchases or stockpiling this stockpiling motive can be present in the case of standard durables as well in environments unmodeled in the prior literature we show that if the monopolist cannot commit then prices are higher in all periods and social welfare is lower than in the case in which the monopolist can commit this is in contrast with the durable goods analysis in the literature on the coase conjecture

natural gas price effects in china based on the cge model abstract natural gas is a clean energy source with many benefits and its proportion in the energy consumption structure in china has been gradually increasing over the recent years since the price of natural gas in china has been controlled and maintained at a relatively low level by the government reforming the natural gas industry in china has been the matter of much attention in light of its macroeconomic effects on the overall economy using the computable general equilibrium model and the 2012 social accounting matrix the results show increases in natural gas prices lead to an increase in the consumer price index cpi and lead to reductions in gdp the chemical industry sector is strongly influenced by a natural gas price increase furthermore chemical fertilizer manufacturing industry and chemical products manufacturing have very significant effects in china therefore the government may gradually establish and improve the management of natural gas price to avoid negative effects and implement a differential price as the industries exhibit different levels of resistance in response to natural gas price changes