Geographic Variation in Consumer Prices: Implications for Local Price Indices

Previous research has established that considerable variation exists in consumer prices both between states and within states. This paper extends that research by specifying and implementing a procedure for estimating price indices in localities within one state, North Carolina. The paper makes a number of improvements over previous work, including examining geographic variation in the prices of individual products and services, estimating the association between local prices and national prices, and testing the potential capitalization of local taxes and public output into local prices.     

Relative Price Level of 99-Ending Prices: Image Versus Reality

Consumer research has indicated that the use of the 99 ending in a retail price creates the impression of a price that is relatively low. A comparative price survey of a wide assortment of general merchandise products indicates that this impression does not match marketplace reality. On the contrary, the price survey showed that retail prices with 99 endings were less likely than prices with other endings to be among the lower prices for an item. The finding of this discrepancy has implications for consumers, public policy-makers, and our understanding of how consumers make inferences from price information.     

Why World Oil Monopolization Lowers Oil Prices: A Theory of Involuntary Cartelization

This paper first shows that, in the absence of long-term production commitments, time-consistent monopolistic sellers of a wasting natural resource will underconserve their resource. Since the present values of the profits of these uncommitted monopolists are generally much lower than under competition, the only rational explanation for the persistent recurrence of such monopolies in the oil industry is the high profits to current generations of oil buyers, who unite to establish such a producer monopoly. The victims of such a monopolistic cartel, besides future generations of consumers, are the producers who must involuntarily expand their current productive capacities in order to benefit the cartel leaders, who stand to benefit from the higher future prices. OPEC, rather than being a monopolistic cartel, is an excess-capacity cartel, one that has been induced by current generations of buyers to supply sufficient excess capacity to efficiently accommodate their prospective future emergencies.     

Retailer Categorization: How Store-Format Price Image Influences Expected Prices and Consumer Choices

Prior research indicates that consumers may base their retail decisions (e.g., store choice, purchase quantity) on price image, which has been defined as consumer perceptions “of the aggregate price level of a retailer” (Hamilton and Chernev 2013, p. 2). The present research shows that consumers associate different price images not only with specific retailers, but more broadly with various store formats — such as grocery stores, convenience stores, and specialty stores. Six studies provide evidence that store-format price image exerts influence on consumer price expectations and store choice decisions, and that these retailer categorization effects are distinct from the effects of retailer price image.     

Price Promotion Evaluation Using Price Discrimination Theory

Abstract

Traditional methods for evaluating price promotions may judge some profitable events to be unsuccessful and some unprofitable ones to be effective. A new, simplified approach based on price discrimination theory is proposed to help marketers identify efficient price promotions and boost their marketing spending productivity.     

Measuring Prices and Price Competition Online: Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com

Despite the interest in measuring price sensitivity of online consumers, most academic work on Internet commerce is hindered by a lack of data on quantity. In this paper we use publicly available data on the sales ranks of about 20,000 books to derive quantity proxies at the two leading online booksellers. Matching this information to prices, we can directly estimate the elasticities of demand facing both merchants as well as create a price index for online books. The results show significant price sensitivity at both merchants but demand at BarnesandNoble.com is much more price-elastic than is demand at Amazon.com. The data also allow us to estimate the magnitude of bias in the CPI due to the rise of Internet sales.     

Acceptance of New Food Products: Reference Prices and Psychological Moderators of Heterogeneous Price Effects

This paper emphasizes a consumer-centered perspective to understand new food product success. It pursues two central objectives by showing that consumers are more likely to interpret new product prices as offering gains or losses depending on their individual purchase histories, and consumer psychographics are demonstrated to affect new product adoption directly, and/or moderate effects of prices and promotions as well as quality signalling product attributes. Several hypotheses are generated based on explanations of underlying psychological mechanisms. For data analysis a cross-classified random effects model is applied to household panel data on yoghurt and sausages that includes four crossed random factors. The findings confirm that inclusion of consumer-specific price information is beneficial for understanding new food products’ adoption behavior. Monetary losses as well as gains negatively affect adoption. Purchase habits also hinder adoption while consumer innovativeness is an important driver. Price consciousness and purchase habits moderate price and promotion effects. While price consciousness reinforces negative effects of prices and positive effects of promotions, habits hinder positive effects of promotions. This implies that introductory promotions are an inappropriate strategy for attracting habitual consumers, and managers should identify appropriate target groups in order to improve the efficiency of introductory promotions.     

价格歧视理论研究综述

价格歧视理论是现代产业组织理论研究的热点之一。通过对相关理论研究文献的回顾,分析了价格歧视对社会福利、产业利润的影响,探讨了产生价格歧视的原因及其与市场进入之间的关系,同时重点考察了惠卖定价策略和多产品竞争条件下的价格差异现象,以期为处理相关价格歧视问题提供理论依据。     

A Stock Flow Consistent Analysis of a Schumpeterian Innovation Economy

Schumpeter argued that boom and bust cycles are inherent to the rise of innovation and constitute an unavoidable consequence of the way the capitalist system reacts to the emergence of a wave of innovations. This contribution aims to describe Schumpeterian economic development in a ‘monetary theory of production’ framework, emphasizing the crucial role played by credit creation, conceived as ‘the monetary complement’ of innovation. By adopting a stock flow consistent analytical approach, we analyze both the structural change process triggered in the real economy by the emergence of innovation, and the monetary dynamics arising during the various stages of the development process.     

Book Prices in the UK Since the End of Resale Price Maintenance

After the Net Book Agreement was abandoned in 1995 and struck down by the Restrictive Practices Court in 1997 Restrictive Practices Court. 1997. Judgment in the matter of the Net Book Agreement, 1995 No 3 and No 4  [Google Scholar], retail book prices were widely expected to fall. Despite deeper and wider retail discounts, official indices show that book prices have subsequently risen more than general inflation. This apparent anomaly may be explained by an argument accepted at the 1962 Restrictive Practices Court hearing: that price competition would lead to concentration and greater buying power in bookselling and to bigger trade discounts from publishers, who would seek to maintain profits by raising list prices. Discounts by retailers would fail to compensate. Evidence provides some support for this explanation. While more research is required to confirm this analysis, it is relevant wherever there is debate about retention of resale price maintenance for books. It also supports the argument for case by case consideration of resale price maintenance, rather than condemnation on principle     

地价推动下的房价上涨逻辑与影响

中国目前房价过高、上涨过快的问题,从作为二线城市的哈尔滨近年来房价异常的走势也能够得到印证。形成高房价及房价泡沫的根本原因在于地方政府基于"土地财政"利益的幕后推手,并由此形成了地价推动下的房价内生上涨机制。高房价的负面影响很严重,尤其在民生和潜在政治危害等方面。彻底治理高房价及其泡沫的出路是改革现行土地出让金分配方式,由中央财政统筹安排。     

石油价格对初级产品价格的影响研究

本文分析考察了石油与14种初级品价格的长期互动关系。通过研究本文认为,石油价格与相关初级农产品价格间存在较强的长期均衡性关系,与初级金属品关系次之。然而并不能完全认定近年来石油价格的上升是引发各类初级品价格上涨的主要原因,其中可能存在更为复杂的作用机制。这种互动影响的传递渠道及方式也为干预初级品价格提供了可能。     

以知识观企业理论为基础的多国企业理论

多国企业理论近10年的发展是基于对内部化和交易成本方法多国企业理论的批判,以资源观多国企业理论的兴起和发展为代表。然而,该理论在完整性和成熟度上的不足体现为它同交易成本方法在综合上遇到的困难。本文通过引入专业化的企业理论观点作为综合的平台,并进一步将知识观的企业理论应用于多国企业理论的发展,一方面解决了上述综合的困难,另一方面明确地在生产维度和组织维度发展出更为完善的知识观多国企业理论。     

Towards an Interdisciplinary Theory of Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is one of the least understood topics in economics. The rising significance of small companies and especially of start-ups for the creation of new jobs has been an intensively discussed subject for nearly one decade. But there is still no theory of entrepreneurship.First this paper reviews the role of the entrepreneur in the history of economic thought and concludes that there is no agreed upon definition of what an entrepreneur does or is. The unsolved problem is the non-rational human behavior. Schumpeter and Kirzner have developed economic models of the role of the non-maximizing entrepreneur in the price-mechanism. But they did not develop a theory of entrepreneurship.In the second part of the paper entrepreneurship is understood as the pursuit of opportunites without regard to resources currently controlled (Stevenson, Roberts, and Grousbeck). Based on that definition the contributions of economic decision theory, sociological system theory, psychoanalytical research and behavioral studies are reviewed and an interdisciplinary approach to the development of an entrepreneurship theory is proposed.     

Undivided Corporate Responsibility: Towards a Theory of Corporate Integrity

In the years since Enron corporate social responsibility, or “CSR,” has become a ubiquitous phenomenon in both research and business practice. CSR is used as an umbrella term to describe much of what is done in terms of ethics-related activities in firms around the globe to such an extent that some consider it a “tortured concept” (Godfrey and Hatch 2007, Journal of Business Ethics 70, 87–98). Addressing this skepticism, I argue in this article that the focus on CSR is indeed problematic for three main reasons: (1) the term carries a lot of historical baggage – baggage that is not necessarily conducive to the clarity of the concept; (2) it is the object of increasing ethical instrumentalism; and (3) given the multiple ethical challenges that corporations face, and given the fact that the “social” responsibilities of business are but one set of corporate responsibilities, a suitable term would have to be more inclusive and integrative. I therefore suggests moving instead toward a sound definition of corporate integrity and aim in this article to develop a working definition by fleshing out “7 Cs” of integrity: commitment, conduct, content, context, consistency, coherence, and continuity. I then discuss how these 7 Cs impact our understanding of CSR or, more broadly, corporate responsibility in general.

论住房价格高低的评判标准——从生命周期理论角度的一点思考

本文在基于消费者生命周期理论的基础上,提出了如何通过计算消费者所能承受的最高理论房价,并将其与实际房价进行比较来确定房价高低判断标准的思路,并进行了实证研究。实证研究表明,全国各省会城市中还没有一致地出现房价实际值高于理论值的现象、在城市中的不同行业中所能承受的房价理论值并不相同以及上海、杭州、北京等几个城市可能存在一定的房地产泡沫。     

When Does Convergence of Asset Price Processes Imply Convergence of Option Prices?

We consider weak convergence of a sequence of asset price models (Sⁿ) to a limiting asset price model S . A typical case for this situation is the convergence of a sequence of binomial models to the Black–Scholes model, as studied by Cox, Ross, and Rubinstein. We put emphasis on two different aspects of this convergence: first we consider convergence with respect to the given "physical" probability measures (P^n) and second with respect to the "risk‐neutral" measures (Q^n) for the asset price processes (Sⁿ) . (In the case of nonuniqueness of the risk-neutral measures the question of the "good choice" of (Qⁿ) also arises.) In particular we investigate under which conditions the weak convergence of (Pⁿ) to P implies the weak convergence of (Qⁿ) to Q and thus the convergence of prices of derivative securities.
The main theorem of the present paper exhibits an intimate relation of this question with contiguity properties of the sequences of measures (Pⁿ) with respect to (Qⁿ) , which in turn is closely connected to asymptotic arbitrage properties of the sequence (Sⁿ) of security price processes. We illustrate these results with general homogeneous binomial and some special trinomial models.     

专业市场价格指数编制理论初探

专业市场在商品经济中的地位越来越重要,专业市场价格指数作为一种反映市场价格变动情况的指标工具,其作用日渐被人们所认可,价格指数的编制工作越来越受到重视。通过对当前我国的专业市场及其价格指数编制理论的探述,为指数编制实践和运用提供支持。