Is showrooming really so terrible? start understanding showroomers

The customer journey is more omni-channel than ever. In this scenario, so-called showrooming behavior emerges as a growing trend that is usually considered by retailers as a threat. The purpose of this research is to analyze whether showrooming, when compared with online buying behavior in which the customer does not visit the store prior to the purchase, has a positive effect on the price paid online by the customer. The empirical research is based on the database compiled by GfK, which contains detailed information about the shopping journey of 4067 customers who purchased products from different retail sectors. The results, derived from the estimation of several regression models, reveal that showroomers who use their smartphones in store are more likely to purchase products at a higher price, which explains why these customers can be of special interest to retailers.     

“互联网+”背景下高校基层党建工作现状、面临问题、工作思路的深入思考

我国“互联网+”技术不断发展与广泛应用,其为高校基层党建工作带来了新的发展机遇,互联网的发展使得高校基层党建工作不断拓宽工作思路,在高校基层党建工作的探究和实践当中扮演着重要的角色。“互联网+”技术的使用能够使高校党委建工作以一种崭新的方式来开展,推动高校基层党建工作有效进行。     

Real estate prices and systemic banking crises

The collapse of real estate prices has historically jeopardized banking stability and triggered systemic banking crises. This paper studies risk contagion in a banking system in real estate price shock by adopting complex network theory. Modelling the real estate-related asset as a common exposure of banks to the real estate market, we propose a model that incorporates two main risk contagion channels, i.e., the financial network and asset fire sales, and reveal how the real estate price shock is transmitted and propagated across banks. We demonstrate that banking stability is highly sensitive to the real estate price shock. Moreover, due to the particularly low liquidity of the real estate market, the asset fire-sales of real estate assets overwhelms the financial network, playing the dominant role in risk contagion. Our model can be adopted by regulators to conduct stress testing and to forge effective risk management strategies.     

Relative age effects in political selection

We exploit a regression discontinuity design to provide causal evidence of the relative age effect (RAE) on a long-run adult age outcome: Political selection. We find strong evidence of the RAE in politics in Finland. However, the effect is heterogeneous: We find that male candidates born early in the calendar year have a significantly higher probability of getting elected to the parliament but no similar RAE applies to female candidates nor to municipal elections. Moreover, this effect only takes place in the most competitive parliamentary districts and is present only for some parties. We also find that in all the groups where the RAE does not exist, early-born candidates are under-represented suggesting attrition of talent in the candidate placement. Overall, our results show that seemingly artificial cutoffs imposed by the government have persistent consequences even on the selection to the highest positions of power within a society.     

Shrouding Add‐On Information: An Experimental Study*

We explore how increased competition affects firms’ obfuscation strategies in a laboratory experiment. Firms sell a base good and an add‐on product. Besides choosing the base‐good price, sellers take an action that mimics the effects of shrouding the add‐on product. Shrouding is an equilibrium but an unshrouding equilibrium coexists. In our experiment, more competition matters, in that only duopolistic markets are frequently shrouded whereas four‐firm markets are not. With repeated interaction, shrouding rates do not increase. However, the opportunities to shroud facilitate tacit collusion on the base‐good price for the duopolies: the unshrouding equilibrium serves as a credible punishment if deviations occur.     

股权金融市场、增长方式选择与平衡增长：传统与新兴部门视角*

为探究股权金融市场对增长方式选择和平衡增长的影响，本文基于传统与新兴部门的差异，构建动态理论模型并利用“Simulink”技术进行数值模拟分析。理论分析发现股权金融市场效率对平衡增长具有增长效应且存在门槛条件，效率高于门槛值时股权金融市场发展将提高平衡增长率和创新贡献率。总体上，发展股权金融市场将促进我国平衡增长和增长方式转变，但东、西部地区存在差异，发展股权市场可以加快东部地区创新型增长而对西部地区没有显著作用。     

A Framework for the Simultaneous Measurement of Spatial Variation and Temporal Movement in Prices in a Heterogeneous Country: The Dynamic Household Regional Product Dummy Model

This paper contributes to the growing literature on spatial prices in large heterogeneous countries. While the literatures on spatial variation and temporal movement in prices have grown in parallel, this study marks a departure by providing a unified treatment and proposing a comprehensive framework that allows both approaches. The proposed model is based on twin extensions of the household version of the “country product dummy model” by allowing for a dynamic stochastic specification and interdependence of spatial prices of geographically adjacent regions. Tests of temporal stability and regional independence of the estimated spatial prices are proposed and applied in this paper. The paper shows that the introduction of an autoregressive error process of order one, AR(1), improves the efficiency of the estimates of parameters, urban‐rural and temporal price indices under certain conditions. The Indian application points to a rich potential for using the proposed framework in cross country comparisons such as the International Comparison Program (ICP) exercises.     

Pricing used books on Amazon.com: a spatial approach to price dispersion

This paper estimates a spatial autoregressive (SAR) model of price dispersion using publicly available internet bookselling data. It uses a semiparametric adaptive estimator that does not require the usual Gaussian assumption of maximum likelihood (ML) estimators. The results suggest that both price competition and seller heterogeneity are key drivers of the observed price dispersion. The paper finds that sellers with large sales volume, newly established sellers and US mainland states-based sellers tend to price lower. The identified significant spatial interaction is evidence of spatial price competition. Controlling for everything else, a seller asks a lower price when large sellers charge relatively high prices, which is also evidence of price-based selling and undercutting.     

Land price diffusion across borders – the case of Germany

ABSTRACT

Land market regulations are often justified by the assumption that activities of foreign and non-agricultural investors drive up prices in domestic land markets. However, empirical knowledge about the dynamics of agricultural land prices across borders is sparse. Using the German reunification as a natural experiment, we study the effect of the former inner German border on the dynamics of agricultural land prices in East and West Germany. We apply a land price diffusion model with an error correction specification to analyse spatial agricultural land markets. A novel feature of our model is its ability to distinguish price diffusion within states and across state borders. We provide evidence for a persistent border effect given that the fraction of spatially integrated counties is larger within states than across the former border. Moreover, we observe non-significant error correction terms for many counties along the former border. From a policy perspective, it is striking to realize that even 25 years after German reunification, pronounced land price differences persist. It is quite likely that price diffusion through existing borders within the EU would take even more time given language barriers, different institutional frameworks, and information asymmetries between domestic and foreign market participants.     

The effects of exchange rate pass-through and cost channel on price level: The case of fragile five countries

ABSTRACT

In this study, we investigated whether the exchange rate and the interest rate had an effect on the inflation rate in the fragile five countries between the years of 1996Q4 and 2015Q4. In this context, a model was created to estimate the effect of interest rate and exchange rate on the inflation rate. The methods used in the study take into account cross-section dependence and heterogeneity. As a result of the analysis, it was determined that there was an exchange-rate and interest-rate pass-through effect in the fragile five countries. Moreover, it was found out that the cost channel and price puzzle were effective in Indonesia and South Africa but were not effective in Turkey, Brasil and India.