慎重看待大用户直供电问题

论述了在电力市场初期我国缺少实施大用户直供电所必须具备的若干条件,分析了当前开展大用户直供电存在的问题及可能造成的影响,指出开展直供是改革的趋势但不可急于求成.     

Intraorganizational influences on business-to-business pricing strategies: A political economy perspective

Historically, researchers have addressed pricing issues from many different perspectives, including the firm's business model (cost structure, experience curve), stakeholders (customers and channel partners), competition (market structure and intensity), and macroeconomic issues (interest rates, economic growth). An important dimension of organizational price setting that has been neglected is the impact that the firm's internal political system, reflected in interdepartmental coordination and rivalry, has upon price setting. A study of managers who are influential in shaping the firm's pricing strategy was conducted to identify intraorganizational issues and their relative impact on the firm's pricing strategy. The results of the study provide important implications for the development and execution of a firm's pricing strategy.     

Benefits of Downward Earnings Management and Political Connection: Evidence from Government Subsidy and Market Pricing

This paper examines the role of downward earnings management and political connection on the receipt of government subsidies and market pricing of subsidies. Using subsidies data hand-collected from Chinese listed firms over the period 2004–2014, the results show a significantly positive association between downward earnings management and the receipt of government subsidies. The results also reveal that a firm's political connection is conducive to securing subsidies for poor performers, but not for good performers. Market pricing analyses demonstrate that share markets value subsidies positively in general, but the effect is ameliorated in firms conducting downward earnings management. No discernible difference is found between the market pricing of subsidies received by firms with political connections and those without.     

A NOTE ON PRICING OF PRODUCT QUALITY FOR STATUS CONCERNS

The paper analyses the optimal pricing of the product quality scheme when concerns for relative standing exist among consumers. We demonstrate that if the proportion of high‐value consumers is over (respectively, under) 1/2 of the total consumers, a firm has an incentive to select a large (respectively, small) quality gap among products. Therefore, there exists a cut‐off level for status concerns, which eliminates quality differences, and the firm assigns the same quality to all the consumers. These results indicate that consumers’ qualities will reflect distortions at the top and bottom. Accordingly, the firm's profit depends on which consumer category is larger.     

Price Discrimination with Private and Imperfect Information

In this paper, I investigate the competitive and welfare effects of the improvements in information accuracy in markets where firms can price discriminate after observing a private and noisy signal about a consumer's brand preference. I show that when firms believe that consumers have a brand preference for them, then they charge more to these consumers, and this price has an inverse U‐shaped relationship with the signal's accuracy. In contrast, the price charged after a disloyal signal has been observed falls as the signal's accuracy rises. While industry profit and overall welfare fall monotonically when price discrimination is based on increasingly more accurate information, the reverse happens to consumer surplus.     

External balances,trade flows and financial conditions

This paper studies how changing expectations concerning future trade and financial conditions are reflected in international external positions. In the absence of Ponzi schemes and arbitrage opportunities, the net foreign asset position of any country must, as a matter of theory, equal the expected present discounted value of future trade deficits, discounted at the cumulated world stochastic discount factor (SDF) that prices all freely traded financial assets. I study the forecasting implications of this theoretical link in 12 countries (Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, The United States and The United Kingdom) between 1970 and 2011. I find that variations in the external positions of most countries reflect changing expectations about trade conditions far into the future. I also find the changing forecasts for the future path of the world SDF are reflected in the dynamics of the U.S. external position.     

A membership pricing policy to facilitate service scale-expansion

This paper proposes a multi-year membership pricing policy for a service business like a gym chain. In the pricing policy, the equivalent membership price per year is relatively low to attract customers, and the multi-year membership fees must be prepaid in full. The prepaid cash provides resources for scale-expansion by opening new stores. We develop a nonlinear mixed integer programming model to formulate the pricing decisions. Numerical experiments reveal that the multi-year membership pricing policy, from a long-term perspective, is substantially better than the business-as-usual pricing policy (1-year membership) in cash balance, profit, and market share. Yet, the performances of the two pricing policies do not differ much from a short-term perspective. These findings indicate that the multi-year pricing policy may be a good strategy, because it initially attracts less attention of competitors; suddenly it emerges and substantially outperforms its competitors in cash balance, profit, and market share.     

The impact of temporary uses on property prices: the example of food trucks

Food trucks represent a temporary use of vacant or underutilised land. They have been assumed to increase the livability, vibrancy and attractiveness of a neighbourhood. However, no previous study has investigated whether this effect is reflected in property prices within the surrounding neighbourhood. We investigate the impact of a food truck pod on the values of single-family homes nearby. Using a quasi-experimental design, transaction data from Portland, Oregon and a difference-in-difference specification of a spatial regression model, we find that food trucks actually represent a negative externality, and that proximity of a home to food trucks is penalised by homebuyers. The closer a home is to the food trucks, the lower is the sales price. Explanations for this effect include increased parking shortages and trash issues in a neighbourhood due to food truck visitors.