equilibrium price dispersion with heterogeneous searchers abstract firms simultaneously set prices in a homogeneous product market where uninformed consumers search for price information some uninformed consumers are local searchers who visit only one seller whereas others search sequentially with an optimal reservation price equilibrium prices may follow a mixture distribution with clusters of high and low prices separated by a zero density gap when the exogenous reservation price of local searchers depart from that of the optimizing sequential searchers by a relatively small amount the presence of local searchers either has no effect on market outcomes or benefits all consumers a reduction in search cost sometimes leads to higher equilibrium prices

are household production decisions cooperative evidence on pastoral migration and milk sales from northern kenya market based development efforts frequently create opportunities to generate income from goods previously produced and consumed within the household production within the household is often characterized by a gender and age division of labor market development efforts to improve wellbeing may lead to unanticipated outcomes if household production decisions are noncooperative we develop and test models of household decision making to investigate intrahousehold decision making in a nomadic pastoral setting from kenya our results suggest that household decisions are contested with husbands using migration decisions to resist wives ability to market milk

frictionless commerce a comparison of internet and conventional retailers there have been many claims that the internet represents a new nearly frictionless market our research empirically analyzes the characteristics of the internet as a channel for two categories of homogeneous products books and cds using a data set of over 8 500 price observations collected over a period of 15 months we compare pricing behavior at 41 internet and conventional retail outlets we find that prices on the internet are 9 16 lower than prices in conventional outlets depending on whether taxes shipping and shopping costs are included in the price additionally we find that internet retailers price adjustments over time are up to 100 times smaller than conventional retailers price adjustments presumably reflecting lower menu costs in internet channels we also find that levels of price dispersion depend importantly on the measures employed when we compare the prices posted by different internet retailers we find substantial dispersion internet retailer prices differ by an average of 33 for books and 25 for cds however when we weight these prices by proxies for market share we find dispersion is lower in internet channels than in conventional channels reflecting the dominance of certain heavily branded retailers we conclude that while there is lower friction in many dimensions of internet competition branding awareness and trust remain important sources of heterogeneity among internet retailers

national and organizational culture differences and international joint venture performance this study examines the effect of dimensions of national and organizational culture differences on international joint venture ijv performance based on data from a survey of executives from joint ventures between indian partners and partners from other countries we found that the presumed negative effect from culture distance on ijv performance originates more from differences in organizational culture than from differences in national culture

tension and trust in international business negotiations american executives negotiating with chinese executives the purpose of the study is to shed light on the antecedents and consequences of tension felt during international business negotiations a total of 176 american and chinese executives participated in simulated international business buyer seller negotiations the negotiations were videotaped and the participants completed questionnaires each participant was also asked to review his her videotaped negotiation rate the tension felt on a videotape review form and briefly describe the antecedents of the tension felt the data collected were then analyzed using first a structural equations approach and then a more exploratory content analysis both chinese and american executives felt tension during the negotiations for the chinese greater levels of tension led to an increased likelihood of agreement but also led to lower levels of interpersonal attraction and in turn lower trust for their american counterparts for the americans tension felt decreased marginally the likelihood of an agreement did not affect interpersonal attraction but did have a direct negative effect on trust a series of other cultural differences are also reported the measure of tension felt developed in the study appears to be useful methodologically theoretically and practically

ownership based entry mode strategies and international performance this study examines the relationship between ownership entry modes and performance the ownership entry modes examined are the wholly owned modes of acquisition and new venture entry and the non wholly owned mode of joint venture entry a theoretical relationship is developed for international entry modes that is based on the contingency characteristics of resource requirements and organizational control factors this model suggests that different entry modes have different performance outcomes based upon their resource and organizational control demands the theoretical model although developed using the eclectic theoretical approach is based largely on concepts and relationships previously delineated in contingency theory our hypotheses suggest that new ventures should outperform joint ventures and joint ventures should outperform acquisitions an empirical test using a sample of 321 japanese firms entering the north american market provides supporting evidence

the economy wide impacts and risks of malawi s farm input subsidy program we estimate the impact of malawi farm input subsidy programme using an economywide approach we find potentially substantial net benefits with indirect benefits accounting for about two fifths of total benefits due to these indirect benefits the cut off

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

prices and price dispersion on the web evidence from the online book industry using data collected between august 1999 and january 2000 covering 399 books we examine pricing by thirty two online united states based bookstores at the aggregate level we find that both advertising and competitive structure had the predicted effects more competition led to lower prices and to lower price dispersion holding competitive structure constant more widely advertised items also had lower prices at the firm level we observe considerable heterogeneity in behavior firms had differentiated or attempted to differentiate on dimensions such as brand price and selection

political economic context and sensitivity to equity differences between the united states and the transition economies of central and eastern europe recent labor economics studies suggest that low enterprise productivity in former socialist economies can be corrected by adopting reward systems emphasizing compensation for performance we used t

retail strategies on the web price and non price competition in the online book industry two conflicting predictions have emerged regarding the effect of low cost information on price the first states that all internet retailers will charge the same low price for mass produced goods the second states that internet retailers will differentiate to avoid intense price competition using data collected in april 1999 on the prices of 107 books in thirteen online and two physical bookstores we find similar average prices online and in physical stores and substantial price dispersion online analysis of product differentiation yields no clear results the substantial premium charged by amazon provides indirect evidence of product differentiation

theory and evidence on pricing by asymmetric oligopolies we present an analysis of markets with many asymmetrically positioned retailers that compete for the business of both informed and uninformed customers for a homogenous good such as software music book or a brand name appliance we show that two forms of asymmetry one related to loyal segment sizes of retailers and one related to the positioning of firms completely explain the observed price dispersion in such markets and the multitude of asymmetrical strategies adopted by retailers the stochastic dominance of empirical mixed strategy measures is used to test the theory with data on 968 books from 10 online retailers

patterns of retail price variation we examine retail price variation across a range of goods and regions of the united states we find that the typical grocery product has a regular price and stays at that price at least 50 of the time and that most deviations from that regular price are downward temporary discounts or sales while infrequent account for 20 to 50 of the annual variation in retail prices for most product categories although existing models of retail sales yield predictions consistent with some aspects of the retail pricing distributions all of these models fail to explain other important aspects of retail pricing identified here

differences in managerial values a study of u s hong kong and prc managers in this study of convergence divergence of managerial values four western developed measures machiavellianism locus of control intolerance of ambiguity and dogmatism and the four dimensions of the eastern developed chinese value survey confucian dynamism human heartedness integration and moral discipline were the measures used the findings indicate that often times both culture and the business environment interact to create a unique set of managerial values in a country

caught in a productivity trap a distributional perspective on gender differences in malawian agriculture in targeting poverty gains sub saharan african governments have emphasized the alleviation of gender differences in agricultural productivity the empirical studies on the gender gap however have frequently used data that were limited regarding geographic and topical coverage and or details on intra household dynamics the study provides a nationally representative analysis of the gender gap in malawi and decomposes it for the first time at the mean and at selected points of the agricultural productivity distribution into i a portion driven by gender differences in levels of observable attributes the endowment effect and ii a portion driven by gender differences in returns to the same set of observables the structure effect sequentially the authors unpack the relative contributions of different factors towards the gender gap and suggest future research priorities to inform policy interventions the authors find that while female managed plots are on average 25 percent less productive 82 percent of this differential is explained by differences in endowments mainly due to high value crop cultivation and levels of household adult male labor inputs the factors driving the structure effect include child dependency ratio and effectiveness of household adult male labor and inorganic fertilizer the gender gap increases across the productivity distribution ranging from 22 percent at the 10th percentile to 37 percent at the 90th percentile while it is explained predominantly by the endowment effect in the first half of the distribution the contribution of the structure effect towards the gender gap increases steadily above the median standing at 34 percent at the 90th percentile

economic efficiency and supply response of women as farm managers comparative evidence from western kenya summary this paper assessed the relative economic efficiency and output supply and input demand responses of women farmers in western kenya the results showed that women are as technically and allocatively efficient as men however neither men nor women have absolute allocative efficiency women farmers are equally responsive to price incentives in terms of output supply and input demand while education and extension contact have significant effects on overall maize supply and input demand only extension contact has significant effects among women farmers the paper discusses a number of significant results and concludes with implications for policy

buyer seller negotiations around the pacific rim differences in fundamental exchange processes the determinants of buyer seller negotiations in four cultures are investigated in a laboratory simulation one hundred thirty eight american 54 chinese 42 japanese and 38 korean business people participated in a two person buyer seller intracultural negotiation simulation in negotiations between americans the use of more problem solving bargaining strategies positively influenced negotiation outcomes in negotiations between chinese more competitive strategies led to better results in japanese and korean negotiations buyers achieved higher economic rewards than sellers in all four cultures bargainers were more satisfied with negotiation outcomes when partners were rated more attractive

conflict management style accounting for cross national differences a problem in joint ventures between u s and asian firms is that cultural differences impede the smooth resolution of conflicts between managers in a survey of young managers in the u s china philippines and india we find support for two hypotheses about cultural differences in conflict style and the cultural values that account for these differences chinese managers rely more on an avoiding style because of their relatively high value on conformity and tradition u s managers rely more on a competing style because of their relatively high value on individual achievement

gender norms and intrahousehold allocation of labor in mozambique a cge application to household and agricultural economics we model intrahousehold dynamics in two rural provinces of mozambique through the lens of computable general equilibrium cge methods the main features of our modeling framework are as follows a a household social accounting matrix that captures allocation of labor and resources and transfers among household members b the explicit use of social norms in labor allocation across gender c a mechanism that links agricultural production to time poverty d identification of leisure as a commodity that is being produced simulation results and sensitivity analyses show how social norms interact with the allocation of labor and resources at the household level to impact farm production or limit the gains from technological improvements

a framework for culture assessment understanding the nature and influences of culture is central to international business such inquiry presupposes knowing that the cultural grouping s of a study is a valid unit of analysis which is critical in that the estimation of culture effects can vary based on the unit definition unfortunately perhaps out of convenience international studies often simply use a country based definition of culture in a desire to facilitate further development in understanding culture effects in this paper we propose a framework by which valid cultural groupings may be assessed

u s china trade negotiations practices procedures and outcomes this study sought to examine and identify 1 the mechanics of u s china trade negotiations 2 how a company prepares for such negotiations 3 the factors that contribute to the success or failure of such negotiations and 4 the outcomes of such negotiations data pertaining to these characteristics were collected from 138 u s firms engaged in china trade relationships between certain variables such as extent of preparation for the negotiations type of programs used and incidences of success were examined based on these results implications for management were drawn

male female differences in agricultural productivity methodological issues and empirical evidence abstract most estimates of male female differences in technical efficiency from production function studies show that male and female farmers are equally efficient farm managers controlling for levels of inputs and human capital there is some evidence however of allocative inefficiency within households marginal products of labor depend on the relative scarcities of labor and the gender division of labor in specific farming systems many of these studies however are methodologically flawed greater attention needs to be given to appropriate estimation methods endogenous input choice the use of headship as a stratifying variable and the implications of intrahousehold resource allocation

price promotions limiting competitive encroachment in this paper we explore equilibrium pricing strategies in an infinite horizon repeated game for an oligopoly we model the interactions between three firms in a market of switchers and loyals our analysis shows that if there are sufficiently large number of switchers in the market the demand parameter is within an acceptable range and the firms have a sufficiently low discount rate alternating promotions between national firms can be an outcome of a perfect nash equilibrium between competing firms this equilibrium results in an implicit collusion between national firms and therefore suggests that price promotions can be interpreted as a long run strategy pursued by national firms to defend their market shares from possible encroachments of a third firm in this way we attempt to provide an explanation for the patterns of promotion observed in some industries and in particular the beverage industry

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

can agricultural input subsidies reduce the gender gap in modern maize adoption evidence from malawi abstract nationally representative data for malawi were used to measure the gender gap in adoption of modern maize and to investigate how if at all malawi s farm input subsidy program fisp has impacted the gap regression results show the probability of adopting modern maize was 12 lower for wives in male headed households and 11 lower for female household heads than for male farmers receipt of subsidized input coupons had no discernible effect on modern maize adoption for male farmers receiving a subsidy for both seed and fertilizer increased the probability of modern maize cultivation by 222 for female household heads suggesting the fisp has likely reduced the gender gap in adoption of modern maize in malawi

a typology of management studies involving culture as a methodological review this paper delineates 6 approaches to researching cross cultural management issues parochial ethnocentric polycentric comparative geocentric and synergistic for each approach assumptions are discussed concerning the similarity and difference across cultures and the extent to which management phenomena are or are not universal the primary types of management questions which can be addressed using each approach are clarified main methodological issues which must be addressed are listed

consumer search with asymmetric price sampling we explore asymmetries in the way consumers sample prices in a simple sequential search framework in equilibrium the price distribution of a firm catering to more local consumers first order stochastically dominates that of its rival prices rise in the degree of asymmetry

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

oligopolistic pricing with heterogeneous consumer search abstract a finite number of identical stores sell a homogeneous good to consumers with heterogeneous search costs who search sequentially with perfect recall and without replacement consumers search rules are optimal with respect to the stores pricing strategies and consumers must visit a store to obtain information about its actual price a symmetric nash equilibrium sne always exists the model exhibits a variety of equilibrium behaviors between monopoly pricing and marginal cost pricing the competitiveness of a market depends crucially on the shape of the search cost distribution moreso than on the number of competing firms

intercultural influence a study of japanese expatriate managers in canada this study explored the nature of intercultural influence by examining the influence strategies of japanese managers in canada with their canadian and japanese subordinates theories of inter group behavior and cultural differences were used to predict the influence strategies used by japanese managers with subordinates from their own and another culture there were significant differences in their strategies which were associated with the national culture of their subordinates japanese managers used significantly more influence with canadian than with japanese subordinates including strategies of assertiveness reason sanctions upward appeal and reciprocity the structure of japanese influence differed from that found in prior research we discuss the implications of these differences for managers influencing subordinates across cultures

methodological and theoretical issues and advancements in cross cultural research this paper summarizes the issues and concerns of critics of cross cultural research and discusses how they are being addressed by researchers given the state of the art and the complexity of this field of research the author recommends more inductive research and the pursuit of appropriate but not overambitious sampling designs so as to increase our understanding of cultures and encourage the building of richer theory bases taking an optimistic view of the field the author predicts useful contributions by researchers which will enrich the art and science of cross cultural management

the profits of power land rights and agricultural investment in ghana we examine the impact of ambiguous and contested land rights on investment and productivity in agriculture in akwapim ghana we show that individuals who hold powerful positions in a local political hierarchy have more secure tenure rights and that as a consequence they invest more in land fertility and have substantially higher output the intensity of investments on different plots cultivated by a given individual corresponds to that individual s security of tenure over those specific plots and in turn to the individual s position in the political hierarchy relevant to those specific plots

cultural stability or change among managers in indonesia in this study we directly measure culture along two of hofstede s 1980 dimensions individualism collectivism and power distance which we argue are potentially more malleable than stable at least within the developing nation of interest indonesia we compare these direct measures from indonesia with those from a developed country the united states to gauge the degree to which the culture of this emerging economy remains stable despite strong foreign influences utilizing english and back translated indonesian language versions of the 1994 values survey module we find statistically significant support for a narrowing of the differences in these two cultural dimensions between indonesian and u s managers compared to earlier findings by hofstede 1991

oligopolistic pricing with sequential consumer search n identical stores compete by choosing prices for a homogeneous good with constant marginal costs consumers search sequentially with perfect recall for the lowest price one class of consumers called shoppers have zero search costs while all other consumers have a positive search cost c there is a unique symmetric nash equilibrium price distribution with the property that it changes smoothly from marginal cost pricing when all consumers are shoppers and or c 0 and monopoly pricing when no consumers are shoppers remarkably as the number of stores increases the nash equilibrium becomes more monopolistic copyright 1989 by american economic association

a behavioral perspective on negotiating international alliance this study examines the influence tactics of senior u s executives in negotiating international business alliances the strategy literature on alliances and the behavioral literature on negotiations were incorporated into a behavioral model of alliance negotiations constructs identified from transaction cost power dependence and game theories were integrated and linked to hypotheses describing negotiators influence tactics in alliance negotiations in examining eighty three alliance negotiations negotiator trust perception of a partner firm s alternatives conflict frame time horizon and cultural distance were found to affect negotiators tactics

academic and professional communities of discourse generating knowledge on transnational human resource management increasing global competition is changing the nature of knowledge needed for international human resource management this article assesses the publishing trends in international organizational behaviour and human resource management ob hrm and interprets their implications for conducting transnational business a review of over 28 000 articles in seventy three academic and professional journals identified three important trends in international ob hrm first the focus has shifted from single country and comparative research to studies on international interaction second culture s impact on managerial behaviour has become well recognized and third the community of discourse uniting academics and professionals leads in generating knowledge relevant to transnational firms the first two trends bode well for the relevance of international management research to practising managers the third trend delineates the domain in which the majority of rigorous and relevant research is published and therefore the domain in which knowledge is advancing most rapidly

conceptions of self and performance related feedback in the u s japan and china effective international management requires knowledge of culturally patterned self concepts and concomitant feedback desires this paper argues that the cultural forces of individualism versus collectivism shape the self concept and by extension individual performance evaluation and feedback seeking we present a comparative study to test the hypotheses that u s respondents desire success feedback whereas japanese and chinese desire feedback show more initiative and perceive more direct workplace feedback than do either japanese or chinese respondents strong support was found for comparisons between the u s and japan but the chinese consistently departed from predictions we interpret these results in terms of recent reforms in the people s republic of china and discuss implications of the study for international management

search market equilibrium bilateral heterogeneity and repeat purchases abstract we develop a general model of search market equilibrium with heterogeneous buyers and sellers this framework unifies previous models with one sided heterogeneity and clarifies many of their special properties it easily accounts for price dispersion active search and the matching of buyer and seller types it also extends to repeat purchases once we embed it into a dynamic game with incomplete information we formalize the inferences and strategies underlying equilibria where firms charge constant prices and customers patronize them loyally we establish a general correspondence between such equilibria and single purchase markets journal of economic literature classification numbers d83 l13

gender and agricultural productivity implications of the farm input subsidy program in malawi alleviating gender differences in agricultural productivity is vital for poverty reduction while numerous studies suggest that gender differences in agricultural productivity are a result of female farmers having limited access to resources few studies investigate the role of agricultural interventions in alleviating the constraints to input use and subsequently the gender gap in productivity this study investigates whether there are gendered gains in agricultural productivity from participating in an input subsidy program and if these gains help reduce the gender gap using nationally representative data that is disaggregated at the plot level this study analyzes the large scale voucher based farm input subsidy program in malawi focusing on the total value of output per hectare relationships are identified using weighted estimators where the weights are constructed from propensity scores and spatial fixed effects to address the unobservable factors that may confound the relationship between program participation and productivity the findings suggest that participation in the program improves agricultural productivity for both male and female farmers but it does not provide disproportionate help to female famers to overcome gender disparities in agricultural productivity this suggests that female farmers face additional constraints to productivity apart from nonlabor input use

how does gender affect the adoption of agricultural innovations why do men and women adopt agricultural technologies at different rates evidence from ghana suggests that gender linked differences in the adoption of modern maize varieties and chemical fertilizer result from gender linked differences in access to complementary inputs this finding has important policy implications because it suggests that ensuring more widespread and equitable adoption of improved technologies may not require changes in the research system but rather introduction of measures that ensure better access for women to complementary inputs especially land labor and extension services

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

subsidies and crowding out a double hurdle model of fertilizer demand in malawi this article uses a double hurdle model with panel data from malawi to investigate how fertilizer subsidies affect farmer demand for commercial fertilizer the article controls for potential endogeneity caused by the nonrandom targeting of fertilizer subsidy recipients results show that on average 1 additional kilogram of subsidized fertilizer crowds out 0 22 kg of commercial fertilizer but crowding out ranges from 0 18 among the poorest farmers to 0 30 among relatively nonpoor farmers this indicates that targeting fertilizer subsidies to the rural poor is likely to maximize the contribution of the subsidy program to total fertilizer use

on evaluating income distributions rank dominance the suppes sen grading principle of justice and pareto optimality rawls s study 1970 suggests the rank dominance condition for evaluating income distributions rank optimal non rank dominated income distributions are always pareto optimal however pareto optimality implies rank optimality if and only if a symmetry condition on the set of attainable income distributions dubbed equal opportunity holds rank dominance is equivalent to the suppes sen 1970 justice grading principle as applied to attainable income distributions the set of attainable income distributions is defined so as to recognize possible interdependence between total income and the distribution of income we also note that if total income is independent of the distribution of income as is the case in many equality of income studies then the equal opportunity condition is automatically satisfied hence the pareto and rank dominance criteria are equivalent

the effects of cultural adaptation on business relationships americans selling to japanese and thais a 2 4 culture of participants degrees of cultural adaptation experimental design with 145 thai and 101 japanese professionals is used to investigate the effect of cultural adaptation on attraction and outcomes when americans adapt to japanese and thais this study extends the research of francis 1991 the curvilinear relationship between adaptation and attraction found in francis is not replicated for thais the relationship appears monotonic positive for japanese it reaches a plateau beyond moderate adaptation

compliance with agreements in cross cultural transactions some analytical issues assessing whether the other party is likely to fulfil all obligations can be arduous when a transaction is international the mechanisms that underpin compliance with agreements and the functional detail of these mechanisms may vary in relative importance between countries perplexing the foreign operative additionally a foreigner may suffer from informational constraints communications distortions and difficulty in achieving full acceptance in the local business culture

personalized pricing and advertising an asymmetric equilibrium analysis we study personalized price competition with costly advertising among n quality cost differentiated firms strategies involve mixing over both prices and whether to advertise in equilibrium only the top two firms advertise earning bertrand like profits welfare losses initially rise then fall with the ad cost with losses due to excessive advertising and sales by the wrong firm when firms are symmetric the symmetric equilibrium yields perverse comparative statics and is unstable our key results apply when demand is elastic when ad costs are heterogeneous and with noise in consumer tastes

the impact of natural culture and economic ideology on managerial work values a study of the united states russia japan and china this study assesses the impact of economic ideology and national culture on the individual work values of managers in the united states russia japan and china the convergence divergence crossvergence cdc framework was used as theoretical framework for the study while the schwartz value survey svs was used to operationalize over investigation of managerial work values across these four countries the findings largely support the crossvergence prospective while also confirming the role of national culture implications from the findings are drawn for the convergence divergence crossvergence of values as well as for the feasibility of multidomestic or global strategies for a corporate culture

competitive promotional strategies this article analyzes the equilibrium pricing strategies of brands engaged in a pricing game each brand has a monopoly market loyal consumers and competes with others in a common market called brand switchers in the case of a duopoly it is shown that the behavior of the brand switchers characterizes the equilibrium behavior of the duopolists this article focuses on two key comparative statics namely the depth of discounts away from a regular high price and the probability of giving a deal or the frequency of deals how these properties vary with the size of the loyal markets and the behavior of the brand switching population is discussed copyright 1988 by the university of chicago

gender agricultural production and the theory of the household virtually all models of the household assume that the allocation of resources is pareto efficient within many african households agricultural production occurs on many plots controlled by different members of the household pareto efficiency implies that factors should be allocated efficiently across these plots i find in contrast that plots controlled by women are farmed much less intensively than similar plots within the household controlled by men the estimates imply that about 6 percent of output is lost because of inefficient factor allocation within the household the paper suggests a new approach to modeling intrahousehold allocation consistent with the empirical results

disrupting demand for commercial seed input subsidies in malawi and zambia summary this study uses nationally representative household level panel data from malawi and zambia to identify the determinants of subsidized maize seed and fertilizer receipt and to estimate how input subsidies affect households commercial purchases of improved maize seed varieties in both countries we find that households in areas where the ruling party won the last presidential election acquire significantly more subsidized inputs than other households results also indicate that each additional kilogram of subsidized maize seed acquired by a household reduces its commercial improved maize seed purchases by 0 58 kg in malawi and by 0 49 kg in zambia on average

how do fertilizer subsidy programs affect total fertilizer use in sub saharan africa crowding out diversion and benefit cost assessments a major determinant of input subsidy programs effects on the achievement of national policy goals is the extent to which they raise total fertilizer use this study synthesizes recent literature on how the new generation of targeted input subsidy programs has affected national fertilizer use after accounting for crowding effects and derives benefit cost bc estimates of the fertilizer subsidy programs for kenya malawi and zambia after accounting for crowding out and diversion we highlight two major findings first accounting for the illicit diversion of program fertilizer can profoundly influence estimates of how fertilizer subsidy programs affect total fertilizer use and program impacts given recent evidence that 33 or more of total program fertilizer may be diverted before being received by intended beneficiary farmers the failure to account for program diversion is shown to overestimate the contribution of the subsidy programs to national fertilizer use by 67 3 in the case of malawi by 61 6 for zambia and by 138 0 for kenya the second major finding is that the incremental value of maize output produced from these subsidy programs is considerably less than their costs in most years except under unusually high maize price assumptions conventional bc analyses that do not account for crowding out and diversion may seriously overestimate the benefits of input subsidy programs greater attention to program design and implementation details to reduce problems of crowding out and diversion can substantially raise the returns to such programs

cultural differences in conducting intra and inter cultural negotiations a sino canadian comparison a study on conflict resolution strategies of canadian and chinese peoples republic of china executives was conducted responses to two types of joint project conflicts task related and person related with potential partners from their own culture or from the other culture were examined neither group of executives altered its strategy when negotiating across cultures chinese executives were more likely to avoid conflicts but recommended more negative strategies discontinue negotiation withdraw negotiation when conflict emerged person related conflicts were found to generate more negative responses than task related conflicts especially for chinese executives both canadian and chinese executives preferred to negotiate with canadians than with chinese

individual marketing with imperfect targetability our research investigates the competitive ramifications of individual marketing and information management in today s information intensive marketing environments the specific managerial issues we address are as follows first what kinds of incentive environments do competing firms face when they can only target individual customers imperfectly second does the improvement in an industry s targetability intensify price competition in the industry such that all competing firms become worse off third should a firm share its customer knowledge so as to improve its rival s targetability fourth how should an information vendor sell its information that can improve a firm s targetability finally do competing firms have the same incentives to invest in their own targetability to answer those questions we develop a simple model a la narasimhan 1988 in which each of the two competing firms have their own loyal customers and compete for common switchers we assume that each firm can classify its own loyal customers and switchers correctly only with a less than perfect probability this means that each firm s perceived customer segmentation differs from the actual customer segmentation based on their perceived reality these two competing firms engage in price competition as an extension we also allow the competing firms to make their investment decisions to acquire targetability we show that when individual marketing is feasible but imperfect improvements in targetability by either or both competing firms can lead to win win competition for both even if both players behave noncooperatively and the market does not expand win win competition results from the fact that as a firm becomes better at distinguishing its price insensitive loyal customers from the switchers it is motivated to charge a higher price to the former however due to imperfect targetability each firm mistakenly perceives some price sensitive switchers as price insensitive loyal customers and charges them all a higher price these misperceptions thus allow its competitors to acquire those mistargeted customers without lowering their prices and hence reduce the rival firm s incentive to cut prices this effect softens price competition in the market and qualitatively changes the incentive environment for competing firms engaged in individual marketing a prisoner s dilemma occurs only when targetability in a market reaches a sufficiently high level this win win perspective on individual marketing has many managerial implications first we show that superior knowledge of individual customers can be a competitive advantage however this does not mean that a firm should always protect its customer information from its competitors to the contrary we find that competing firms can all benefit from exchanging individual customer information with each other at the nascent stage of individual marketing when firms targetability is low indeed under certain circumstances a firm may even find it profitable to give away this information unilaterally however as individual marketing matures as firms targetability becomes sufficiently high further improvements in targetability will intensify price competition and lead to prisoner s dilemma therefore it is not only prudent politics but also a business imperative for an industry to seize the initiative on the issue of protecting customer privacy so as to ensure win win competition in the industry second we show that the firm with a larger number of loyal customers tends to invest more in targetability when the cost of acquiring targetability is high however the firm with a smaller loyal base can through information investment acquire a higher level of targetability than the firm with a larger loyal base as long as the cost of acquiring targetability is not too high as the cost further decreases competing firms will all have more incentives to increase their investments in targetability until they achieve the highest feasible level third an information vendor should make its information available nonexclusively exclusively when its information is associated with a low high level of targetability when the vendor does sell its information exclusively it should target a firm with a small loyal following if it can impart a high level of targetability to that firm finally our analysis shows that an information intensive environment does not doom small firms in fact individual marketing may provide a good opportunity for a small firm to leapfrog a large firm the key to leapfrogging is a high level of targetability or customer knowledge

pricing product diversity and search costs a bertrand chamberlin diamond model we study price competition in the presence of search costs and product differentiation the limit cases of the model are the bertrand paradox the diamond paradox and chamberlinian monopolistic competition market prices rise with search costs and decrease with the number of firms prices may initially fall with the degree of product differentiation because more diversity leads to more search and more competition equilibrium diversity rises with search costs while the optimum level falls so entry is excessive the market failure is most pronounced for low preference for variety and high search costs

price discrimination with transportation costs and arbitrage abstract this paper demonstrates that a higher price is always charged in the market with the smaller own price elasticity of demand when the price differential between two markets cannot exceed pre unit transportation costs a sufficient condition for gains from trade is also derived

truly costly sequential search and oligopolistic pricing we modify the paper of stahl 1989 stahl d o 1989 oligopolistic pricing with sequential consumer search american economic review 79 700 12 by relaxing the assumption that consumers obtain the first price quotation for free when all price quotations are costly to obtain the unique symmetric equilibrium need not involve full consumer participation the region of parameters for which non shoppers do not fully participate in the market becomes larger as the number of shoppers decreases and or the number of firms increases the comparative statics properties of this new type of equilibrium are interesting in particular expected price increases as search cost decreases and is constant in the number of shoppers and in the number of firms welfare falls as firms enter the market we show that monopoly pricing never obtains with truly costly search d 2005 elsevier b v all rights reserved

conditional cash transfers and agricultural production lessons from the oportunidades experience in mexico abstract this paper explores whether cash transfer programmes conditioned on human capital outcomes can influence agricultural production programme impact on food consumption from own production land use livestock ownership and agricultural spending are evaluated using first difference and weighted estimators in which weights are constructed from propensity scores the programme is found to increase the value and variety of food consumed from own production and to increase land use livestock ownership and crop spending impact estimates are found to differ across land use categories and procampo participation results support the hypothesis that transfers influence agricultural production and impacts are greater for households invested in agriculture

relative efficiency of women as farm managers profit function analysis in cote d ivoire abstract the efficiency of women farmers in the agricultural sector of developing countries is passionately debated very few studies have examined this issue in african agriculture all previous studies were based on production functions but have been criticised as suffering from simultaneous equation bias because the input levels are endogenous the profit function method avoids these problems no previous study has used the profit function method to test for technical allocative and economic efficiency differences between women and men farmers the objective of this paper was to determine whether women rice farmers are less efficient than men rice farmers in cote d ivoire using the restricted normalised profit function method our results show that the relative degree of efficiency of women is similar to that of men the paper provides empirical support for efforts to eliminate bias against women farmers in african agriculture

when in rome the effects of cultural adaptation on intercultural business negotiations drawing on social identity and similarity attraction theories as well as empirical studies in intercultural communication hypotheses were developed to test the effects of three degrees of adaptive behaviors during intercultural buyer seller negotiations hypotheses covered both the positive and negative effects of adaptation on the adjudged interpersonal attractiveness of the adaptor these hypotheses were tested in two experimental studies using scenario based manipulations the first study looked at american subjects responses to adaptive behaviors of japanese business people to test the generalizability of these findings to a less familiar culture a replication looking at american subjects responses to adaptive behaviors of korean business people was also conducted the findings partially support the notion that moderate adaptation may be the optimal strategy in intercultural negotiations moderate adaptation was found to improve the adjudged attraction of the japanese business people relative to no adaptation and substantial adaptation however this finding was not replicated with korean business people

search and segregation abstract consumers willingness to pay for an identical product e g as caused by differences in local income or tastes may differ greatly across locations yet while a large literature examines consumers optimal price and product search behavior under various market configurations the equilibrium effects of such consumer segregation remain unexplored to this end i study a stylized model in which two local monopolistic markets differ in size and their consumers willingness to pay after observing their native market s price a subset of flexible consumers may travel to the other market at positive cost hoping for a bargain i show that as long as the proportion of flexible high valuation consumers is not too large active and directed search to the lower valuation market will occur in equilibrium if the higher valuation market is relatively large in size complex mixed strategy pricing emerges in equilibrium for regulators increasing the fraction of flexible consumers tends to be more effective than manipulating search costs

chapter 11 pricing models in marketing publisher summary this chapter brings together a set of diverse efforts in the recent literature on the modeling of price decisions and related questions in marketing there has been an impressive growth in the array of topics investigated in the literature various trends in the development of pricing models are evident from the foregoing review first one trend has been to develop theoretical models to describe observed pricing strategies in the marketplace and to derive conditions under which certain strategies are optimal this trend is clearly evident when one considers the area of dynamic pricing models another trend is an attempt to develop pricing models in which certain aspects of consumer behavior e g asymmetric response to price increases versus price decreases are incorporated this development is quite recent and does offer a large potential a third dominant direction is the use of game theoretic models for developing equilibrium pricing strategies

poverty and productivity in female headed households in zimbabwe abstract a household survey conducted in rural zimbabwe in 2001 is used to compare the position of de facto and de jure female headed households to those with a male head these households are characterised by different forms of poverty that impinge on their ability to improve agricultural productivity however once inputs are accounted for it is only for growing cotton that female headed households productivity is lower than that found for male headed households general poverty alleviation policies will benefit the female headed household but specific interventions via extension services and access to marketing consortia are also indicated

when the cat s away a content analysis of mnc overseas recruitment print ads this study examines discrimination in the overseas recruitment print ads of multinational national corporations mncs in a lax regulatory environment singapore institutionalization theory suggests that in a weakly regulated environment mnc affiliates would tend to adopt the less stringent requirements with the lack of a strong legal framework in the host country the home country s legal and cultural imperatives would be more salient suggesting differences in discrimination as a function of home country imperatives some 1122 recruitment print ads of u s u k and japanese affiliates of mncs were examined while discrimination was found in the print ads of all organizations u s affiliates were least discriminatory followed by japan and u k affiliates when singapore firms were included they were found to be least discriminatory however singapore firms became more discriminatory when the request for a recent photograph was considered in the discrimination index implications of the findings are discussed and suggestions for future research advanced

understanding the domain of cross national buyer seller interactions cross national face to face selling has thus far received very little scholarly treatment in marketing literature with few notable exceptions most existing research in this area has been fragmentary and opportunistic these problems are largely because of the lack of a broad generalizable framework within which to conceptualize and execute research studies in offering such a conceptual framework this article looks at buyer seller interactions from a communication perspective

price dispersion and differentiation in online travel an empirical investigation previous research has examined whether price dispersion exists in theoretically highly efficient internet markets however much of the previous work has been focused on industries with low cost and undifferentiated products in this paper we examine the presence of price dispersion and product differentiation using data on the airline ticket offerings of online travel agents otas we find that different otas offer tickets with substantially different prices and characteristics when given the same customer request some of this variation appears to be due to product differentiation different otas specialize by systematically offering different trade offs between ticket price and ticket quality minimizing the number of connections matching requested departure and return time however even after accounting for differences in ticket quality ticket prices vary by as much as 18 across otas in addition otas return tickets that are strictly inferior to the ticket offered by another ota for the same request between 2 2 and 28 of the time overall this suggests the presence of both price dispersion and product differentiation in the online travel market

product differentiation with consumer arbitrage abstract we determine the equilibrium to a game where two firms set delivered price schedules and consumers simultaneously declare where they want to take delivery of the product equilibrium pricing policies provide incentives for consumers not to demand their preferred varieties but rather to purchase more standard varieties this behavior may decrease market diversity the demanded varieties tend to agglomerate around the market center we also show that it is efficient for the cost of adapting the product to consumers to be shared through arbitrage but oligopoly gives rise to an inefficient level of personal arbitrage

improving the efficiency targeting of malawi s farm input subsidy programme big pain small gain abstract the farm input subsidy programme fisp in malawi was introduced in the 2005 2006 season against a background of bad weather affecting production and prolonged food shortages vouchers are distributed empowering eligible farmers to exchange them for fixed quantities of inputs at subsidized prices since its inception there has been a debate at national level about whether the fisp s potential has been fully exploited with policy makers exploring options to improve the programme proposals include targeting efficient and productive farmers to maximize returns in this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of these proposed changes to the existing fisp design by utilizing two waves of the lsms isa survey merged with climatic data we estimate how the national demand for agricultural inputs varies according to a variation in the targeting criteria by means of a two stage demand system then we identify more efficient farmers by means of a stochastic frontier approach we observe a mismatch between voucher recipients and efficiency with approximately 60 of vouchers being allocated to the three bottom quintiles of efficiency this mismatch is observed also at the spatial level with more vouchers going to districts characterized by less efficient production while concerns on the distributional impacts of the new criteria are discussed together with some suggestions for spatially diversifying the structuring of the policy and incentivizing crop diversification our results highlight a high substitutability of commercial with subsidized inputs by new eligible farmers consequently simulating the targeting policy variation we obtain an outcome that would lead only to a limited increases in predicted food expenditure ranging from 0 27 to 0 8 and maize production from 0 2 to 1 3 scope for analysing different adjustments in the functioning of fisp are thus proposed to policy makers

do fertilizer subsidies crowd out organic manures the case of malawi we assess the impacts of the malawian farm input subsidy program on manure use at the farm plot level using more than 3 000 farm plot observations from six districts in central and southern malawi over three years 2006 2007 and 2009 the probabilities and intensities of manure use were investigated with the correlated random effects cre probit and tobit models the endogeneity of access to fertilizer subsidies and fertilizer use intensity was controlled for with a control function approach both the probability of manure use and intensity of manure use were positively correlated with the intensity of fertilizer use a 1 increase in fertilizer use intensity is associated with a 1 94 1 96 increase in the intensity of manure use outside the subsidy program and a 0 62 1 66 increase in manure use with the subsidy program a 1 increase in average fertilizer price was associated with a 0 43 0 76 increase in the probability of manure use and a 3 5 5 3 increase in the intensity of manure use

price distributions and competition considerable evidence demonstrates that significant dispersion exists in the prices charged for seemingly homogeneous goods this paper adopts a simple flexible equilibrium model of search to investigate the way the market structure influences price dispersion using the noisy search approach the paper demonstrates the effects of having a single large price leading firm with multiple outlets and a competitive fringe of small firms with one retail outlet each

cropland allocation effects of agricultural input subsidies in malawi summary we measure the impacts of malawi s farm input subsidy program on the cropland allocation decisions of farmers in kasungu and machinga districts in central and southern malawi using a two step regression strategy to control for endogenous selection into the program we find positive correlations between participation in the program and the amount of land planted with maize and tobacco furthermore results suggest that participating households simplified crop production by allocating less land to other crops e g groundnuts soybeans and dry beans our findings have implications for policies aimed at promoting both food self sufficiency and crop diversification in low income settings 2011 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

true monopolistic competition as a result of imperfect information the paper restates hart s 1985a 1985b definition of large group monopolistic competition distinguishes it from oligopolistic competition and raises the question of whether there are reasonable circumstances that give rise to true monopolistic competition as defined the purpose is to show that consumers imperfect information may create conditions that will turn an otherwise oligopolistic market into a truly monopolistically competitive one