Income redistribution,interdependent consumers’ preferences and aggregate consumption

Conclusion In the above discussion we have taken a particular view of the emulation process, its relation to the movement from one level of living to another level of living and the process of such a movement itself. One may disagree with some elements in this framework but this analysis suggests, nonetheless, that a number of factors are involved in determining the effect of income redistribution on aggregate consumption expenditure. The manner and the force of emulation, the number of consumers in various income groups, their nearness to another level, the extent to which they increase or decrease their savings or consumption as a result of income redistribution appear to be some of the important factors. Unless one has sufficient information on these factors it seems difficult to conclude one way or the other about the effect of income redistribution on aggregate consumption. It becomes still more difficult to come to a definite conclusion if we consider that the consumers desire not only a better standard of living but also larger financial reserves.     

夏威夷农产品礼物篮的消费者偏好分析——对于广州购买者的问卷研究

文章使用广州的调研数据,采用联合分析方法研究了消费者对于高价值、夏威夷生产的食品礼物篮的偏好.我们计算了相对重要性指标衡量消费者对礼物篮属性的评价.研究得到了三点结论:(1)食品和容器应为"夏威夷制造",从而使得消费者愿意支付高的价格;(2)企业消费者一般不愿意为礼物篮支付高的价格;(3)个人消费者愿意支付高价格的奎阿相思木礼物篮.这说明一个新兴的高消费阶层在中国出现.     

夏威夷农产品礼物篮的消费者偏好分析——对于广州购买者的问卷研究

文章使用广州的调研数据，采用联合分析方法研究了消费者对于高价值、夏威夷生产的食品礼物篮的偏好。我们计算了相对重要性指标衡量消费者对礼物篮属性的评价。研究得到了三点结论：（1）食品和容器应为“夏威夷制造”，从而使得消费者愿意支付高的价格；（2）企业消费者一般不愿意为礼物篮支付高的价格；（3）个人消费者愿意支付高价格的奎阿相思木礼物篮。这说明一个新兴的高消费阶层在中国出现。     

不确定需求、垂直协调与电力市场结构

本文考虑一个在发电和零售环节均为完全竞争的电力市场。电力以事先确定的线性价格销售给用户,而电力总需求不确定。模型表明,如果企业的发电量与边际发电成本之间的协方差为正,即两个随机变量之间有正的线性关联度,那么在短期均衡中,垂直分离导致较高的电力价格和发电企业利润。在长期均衡中,垂直分离导致发电企业的过度进入,形成较高的电价和较低的社会福利水平。本文的结论对我国正在进行的电力体制改革有一定参考意义。     

Integrability and aggregation in the theory of demand

Harold Hotelling believed that integrability was a necessary characteristic of both individual and market demand equations, and he demonstrated that it would hold if consumers did not have a budget constraint. If there was a budget constraint, he contended, the usual integrability condition would be replaced by a condition which assures that an integrating factor can be introduced. This paper shows that this condition can be satisfied only if the consumer's income effect is the same numerically for all goods. Aggregation by summation of individual demands is considered, and it is shown that this form of aggregation is valid if there is a budget constraint only when income effects are the same for all individuals.     

Foreign dependence of individual stock prices: The role of aggregate product market developments

In this paper, we analyze the role of aggregate variables in the transmission from international stock price developments to individual domestic stock prices in a small open stock market. In particular, a theoretical and econometric model is used to determine whether international aggregate product market developments explain observed differences in foreign dependence among individual Belgian stocks. The results suggest that, except for the stocks of some internationally oriented companies, expected international production is not the most important explanatory variable and that an estimation model of aggregate fundamentals explains only part of individual stock price adjustments.     

Forecasting Financial Crises in Emerging Market Economies

This article identifies six fundamental indicators that might predict a financial crisis similar to the one that affected the emerging markets of Southeast Asia. Our empirical analysis shows that the 1997 Asian crisis could have been predicted. Probit estimation reveals that a small number of common indicators can forecast a financial crisis well. The estimation gives estimates that are robust to either cross-section or panel data. We suggest an aggregate indicator that combines all the individual indicators and calculates the optimal thresholds for the indicators. This aggregate indicator has similar predictive properties and reduces the calculations to determine the probability of crisis.     

Exclusive Dealing through Resellers in Auctions with Stochastic Bidder Participation

This paper demonstrates that a seller prefers to exclude final consumers from an auction and sell only to resellers when these resellers can gain access, at a cost, to a sufficiently bigger market than the seller himself. The intuition is that resellers recoup their expenses for marketing the item by reselling it to final consumers. If some consumers participate in the first auction and are outbid by the resellers, then their values for the item are relatively low. Outbidding part of their customer base is “bad news” for the resellers, and this depresses their bids when consumers compete with them. The socially optimal and revenue-maximizing choices of auction format may not coincide: Restricting participation of consumers may be socially optimal but privately suboptimal and vice-versa. The results suggest that (i) the exclusion of final consumers in some auctions may not be driven by transaction cost considerations, and (ii) sellers should not necessarily sell directly to consumers, even though new technologies allow them to do so at essentially zero cost, unless they can access a sufficiently large portion of the market.     

Minimum wage,trade and unemployment in general equilibrium

The path‐breaking work of Card and Krueger, showing that a higher minimum wage can increase employment, turned the age‐old conventional wisdom on its head. This paper demonstrates that this apparently paradoxical result is perfectly plausible in a competitive general equilibrium production structure of a small open economy with a non‐traded good, without recourse to monopsony, spatial heterogeneity, heterogeneity of consumers and so on, the usual theoretical drivers behind the result. Following Jones and Marjit, we build a simple general equilibrium model with production complementarity and we show that a higher minimum wage can raise aggregate employment. Expansion in the non‐traded sector following a wage hike may be consistent with the overall expansion of the export sector in a multi‐good framework, an unlikely outcome in a conventional two‐good model which cannot accommodate with production complementarity.     

Changing Graph Use in Corporate Annual Reports: A Time‐Series Analysis

Graphs in corporate annual reports form part of a powerfully designed annual report package that offers considerable potential for “impression management.” The primary purpose of this paper is to determine whether graph use depends on corporate performance. Time‐series analysis, not previously used in the financial graphs literature, allows discretionary changes in graph use by companies to be identified and related to changes in individual companies' corporate performance over time. Based on the prior financial graphs and accounting choice literature, we develop two hypotheses that relate changes in graph use to changes in corporate performance. These hypotheses focus on the aggregate and individual company levels. We base our analysis on the corporate annual reports of 137 top UK companies that were in continued existence during the five‐year period from 1988 to 1992. At both the aggregate and individual company levels, we find the decision to use key financial variable (KFV) graphs, the primary graphical choice, to be associated positively with corporate performance measures. This finding is consistent with the manipulation hypothesis ‐ that is, that financial graphs in corporate annual reports are used to “manage” favorably the reader's impression of company performance, and hence that there is a reporting bias.     

Exploring the Macroeconomic Impact of Subsidized Employment

Spending on subsidized employment programmes has taken a high flight in the Netherlands over the past decade. We consider the impact of subsidized employment for low-productive workers in a stripped-down version of the MIMIC model. In our stylized model employment subsidies in the private sector lead to a marginal increase in employment and output. Subsidized employment programmes in the public sector lead to a larger increase in overall employment, but crowding out of regular employment leads to a fall in overall output. We further show that judging programmes on the basis of individual effects can be quite misleading, as the effects on the aggregate level can be quite different. Finally, given the steep rise in expenditures it is disturbing to see how little empirical knowledge we have on the impact of actual programmes on the individual level.     

Multi‐battle Contests: An Experimental Study

We examine behavior of subjects in simultaneous and sequential multi‐battle contests, where each individual battle is modeled as an all‐pay auction with complete information. In simultaneous best‐of‐three contests, subjects are predicted to make positive bids in all three battles, but we find that subjects often make positive bids in only two battles. In sequential contests, theory predicts sizable bids in the first battle and no bids in the subsequent battles. Contrary to this prediction, subjects significantly underbid in the first battle and overbid in subsequent battles. Consequently, instead of always ending in the second battle, contests often proceed to the third battle. Finally, although the aggregate bid in simultaneous contests is similar to that in sequential contests, in both settings, subjects make higher aggregate bids than predicted. The observed behavior of subjects can be rationalized by a combination of multidimensional iterative reasoning and a nonmonetary utility of winning.     

面向消费者非理性消费行为的营销策略研究

消费者在消费决策时往往做出非理性决策,产生非理性的消费行为,了解并掌握消费者非理性消费决策的生成机制,不仅能合理解释个体的某些消费行为,而且能为企业制定营销策略提供指导。本文将利用行为经济学的理论与方法分析消费者的非理性消费行为,并针对这种行为提出相应的营销策略。     

论网络金融背景下金融消费安全的法律保护

网络金融蓬勃发展的背后存在着威胁金融消费安全的诸多隐患,为保护金融消费安全,要不断创新法律制度。自然人、法人或其他组织均可成为金融消费者,专业投资机构也可被视为专业金融消费者。在科学界定金融消费安全所涉及的权利内容的基础上,应从强化金融监管、落实向金融消费者倾斜的司法救济政策及加强对消费者安全教育等方面加强金融消费安全保护。     

Do Credit Cards Really Reduce Aggregate Money Holdings?

This paper discusses whether the use of credit cards reduces aggregate money holdings in an economy. Applying and modifying the Baumol-Tobin model (Baumol Quarterly Journal of Economics 66:545–556, 1952 and Tobin Review of Economics and Statistics 38(3):241–247, 1956), it studies how much money a credit card bank would normally maintain to support retail trade, and shows that whether or not the use of credit cards actually reduces the aggregate demand for money depends on how often consumers visit the bank and how long it takes to clear a check. With innovations in the banking industry such as ATMs, online banking, and other electric funds transfer services, the cost of visiting banks (i.e., switching funds between a checkable account and an interest-earning account) is now very low. For the whole economy, as a result, the use of credit cards may not necessarily reduce aggregate money holdings.     

Pricing, Sunk Costs, and Market Structure Online: Evidence from Book Retailing

While online consumers are less concerned than traditional consumersabout firm location, they may be more concerned about unobservablequality and, to signal this, online retailers rely more on advertisingthan traditional retailers. Imperfect price competition mayarise because of vertical product differentiation, incompleteconsumer awareness, and near-perfect information exchange betweenretailers. This paper evaluates alternative theories of competitionand market structure in online retailing. Advertising, productdevelopment, and revenue data for the online book market revealthat consumers respond to advertising and website spending ratherthan low prices. As the market size expanded, during 1997–2001,these endogenous sunk costs escalated and there was no majornew entry. Advertising-to-sales ratios and market-concentrationratios are much higher than for traditional bookselling. Usingprice and demand information for individual books over a numberof weeks, we find counter-cyclical and cross-sectional pricevariation inconsistent with perfect price competition.     

Brand familiarity and product knowledge in customization

I adopt Hotelling's model with two firms. Each consumer has a most preferred variety and possesses a certain level of category‐specific knowledge. When a firm offers customization, consumers must interact with the firm to create their products. Consumers familiar with the brand can do this seamlessly, whereas consumers unfamiliar with the brand have difficulty expressing their individual needs (the difficulty decreases with consumers' knowledge). The firms first simultaneously decide whether to customize, then engage in price competition. Although customization makes the products less differentiated, the frictions caused by consumer co‐design activities relax price competition. Customization by one of the firms occurs in equilibrium.     

Adversary activities and per capita income growth

When some present or future markets are either imperfect or incomplete, the selfish motivations of individual agents may (but not necessarily) lead to rent-seeking activities that can make society worse off. Legal activities tend to raise the costs of doing business. Moreover, because they are biased in the direction of suits by firms and consumers against other firms, they may as a whole lower profit and hence both investment and growth rates relative to what they would be without such activities. This paper uses international cross-section data to provide a simple test of this hypothesis. Despite the crudeness of the test, the small size of the sample and possible ambiguities in interpretation, the results provide a tentative confirmation of the hypothesis.     

Two-Part Pricing with Costly Arbitrage

This paper considers the optimal two-part pricing strategy of a monopolist whose customers collude when they purchase the firm's product. In contrast to the sentiment in the existing price discrimination literature, I find that a monopolist's profit can actually increase when consumers share its good. When transaction costs for collusion are zero the firm can extract the full consumer surplus through two-part prices. When transaction costs are positive or there are a substantial number of consumers without access to resale, the firm may be hurt by arbitrage.     

Valuing improvements in lifetime endowments in markets with no borrowing

The objective is to determine whether single period data regarding willingness to pay for improvements in lifetime endowments when consumers cannot borrow can be used to measure the net present value of the improvements. When consumers who discount utility at the real interest rate can borrow and save, the willingness to pay for improvements in lifetime endowments is the net present value of the improvements. A single period measure of the willingness to pay for improvements in lifetime endowments without borrowing is at least as large as the improvement in the period in which the individual has the opportunity to obtain the stream of improvements. The sum of single period measures is an upper bound for the net present value of improvements in lifetime endowments. Previous versions of this paper have been presented at the following conferences: International Atlatic Economic Conference 2000, International Society for Technological Assessment in Health Care 2001, Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics 2001, and International Health Economics Association 2001. The author would like to thank Philip Clarke for his insight on the disutility associated with traveling and both Philip Clarke and Robert Brent for their insights on the potential importance of measuring willingness to accept. Support for work on this paper was provided by the International Trachoma Initiative. The author would also like to thank Richard Bowman and Eric Keuffel for their collaboration on the original willingness to pay analysis of the Gambian data that led to the new theoretical developments. Any remaining errors are solely the responsibility of the author.