Consumer valuation of energy-saving features of residential air conditioners with hedonic and choice models

The promotion of energy-efficient appliances is necessary to reduce the energetic and environmental burden of the household sector. However, many studies have reported that a typical consumer underestimates the benefits of energy-saving investment on the purchase of household electric appliances. To analyze this energy-efficiency-gap problem, many scholars have estimated implicit discount rates that consumers use for energy-consuming durables. Although both hedonic and choice models have been used in previous studies, a comparison between the two models has not yet been made. This study uses point-of-sale data about Japanese residential air conditioners and estimates implicit discount rates with both hedonic and choice models. Both models demonstrate that a typical consumer underinvests in energy efficiency. Although choice models generally estimate a lower implicit discount rate than hedonic models, the latter models estimate the values of other product characteristics more consistently than choice models.     

论绿色经济思想与云南农村经济

在资源、人口、环境、食品安全和全球经济一体化问题日趋突出的今天,社会经济发展的路子怎么走,用什么样的战略思想来指导这一实践,这是区域内的人们必须去思考的一大问题。本文从战略的高度,结合"社会主义新农村建设"的农村经济内涵.依据云南得天独厚的自然条件和社会经济条件,用绿色经济思想的观念分析云南自然、社会、经济可持续发展道路与战略理论,为云南农村发展做一点理论探讨。     

Household Demand, Network Externality Effects and Intertemporal Price Discrimination

This paper examines the optimality of intertemporal price discrimination when network externality effects are present in the consumption of a durable good. We conduct our study in two settings. In a model with two household types, utilities are dependent on the cumulative proportion of households that have purchased the durable good. Next, in a model with a continuum of household types, we extend the analysis to the case where households consume both a durable good and a stream of non-durable goods. We show that in both settings, the presence of network externalities facilitates a sales strategy with intertemporal price discrimination.     

Replacement cycles,income distribution and dynamic price discrimination

This article analyses how income distribution, Intellectual Property Rights and other regulatory policies such as minimum quality standards determine pricing strategies in a dynamic context where a monopolist periodically introduces new generations or upgrades of a durable good. Discrimination through quality and screening in this article takes place in a context where consumers buy several versions of the durable good during their lifetime, instead of a single version as in Inderst’s (2008) or Koh’s (2006). It also differs from Glass (2001) in that an equilibrium may emerge in which different consumer types replace their durable generations with different frequencies. Our modelling is motivated by stylized facts from the last Brazilian POF (household budget survey).     

Efficient Management of Product Durability and Recyclability under Utilitarian and Chichilnisky Preferences

In a dynamic general equilibrium vintage model we explicitly consider the relationship between the product attributes durability and recyclability. Efficient management in the case that green design markets fail is analyzed both under Utilitarian and Chichilnisky preferences. It turns out (a) that durability may be inefficient even in a perfectly competitive economy in which environmental externalities are absent, (b) that the efficiency-restoring tax-subsidy schemes crucially depend on the kind of preferences, and (c) that changing the property rights for consumption goods and residuals is a promising policy option to overcome market failure independent of the kind of preferences.     

HETEROGENEOUS RISK ATTITUDES IN A CONTINUOUS‐TIME MODEL*

We prove that every continuous‐time model in which all consumers have time‐homogeneous and time‐additive utility functions and share a common probabilistic belief and a common discount rate can be reduced to a static model. This result allows us to extend some of the existing results of the representative consumer and risk‐sharing rules in static models to continuous‐time models. We show that the equilibrium interest rate is lower and more volatile than in the standard representative consumer economy, and that the individual consumption growth rates are more dispersed than in the absence of uncertainty.     

耐用消费品品牌个性高级性纬度形成机制研究

耐用消费品品牌个性的高级性纬度可以分为"时尚"与"高档"两个次级纬度,"时尚"纬度的主要驱动因素是品牌视觉元素、消费者的时尚形象、品牌知名度与消费者的社会地位,"高档"纬度的主要驱动要素是品牌视觉元素、消费者的社会地位、感知服务品质、消费者的时尚形象、商品价格与产品感知品质。品牌的视觉元素与消费者形象是驱动品牌个性高级性纬度的最主要因素。品牌的视觉元素与典型消费者形象对高级性纬度的形成具有明显的性别差异。     

Efficiency and equilibrium when preferences are time-inconsistent

We consider an exchange economy with time-inconsistent consumers whose preferences are additively separable. If consumers have identical discount factors, then allocations that are Pareto efficient at the initial date are also renegotiation-proof. In an economy with a sequence of markets, competitive equilibria are Pareto efficient in this sense, and for generic endowments, only if preferences are locally homothetic.     

TURNPIKE PROPERTIES OF A MONEY‐IN‐THE‐UTILITY‐FUNCTION MODEL*

This study establishes the global stability of a long‐run stationary state in a money‐in‐the‐utility‐function model. The major finding is that the constant money supply rule results in a stable allocation and price system if consumers discount their future utilities sufficiently weakly. Nominal and real interest rates will be in the neighbourhood of the inverse of the consumers’ discount factor β^‐1.     

Shared producer and consumer responsibility — Theory and practice

Over the past decade, an increasing number of authors have been examining the nexus of producer versus consumer responsibility, often dealing with the question of how to assign responsibility for internationally traded greenhouse gas emissions. Recently, a similar problem has appeared in drafting the standards for the Ecological Footprint: While the method traditionally assumes a full life-cycle perspective with full consumer responsibility, a large number of producers (businesses and industry sectors) have started to calculate their own footprints (see www.isa.org.usyd.edu.au). Adding any producer's footprint to other producers' footprints, or to population footprints, which all already cover the full upstream supply chain of their operating inputs, leads to double-counting: The sum of footprints of producers and consumers is larger than the total national footprint. The committee in charge of the Footprint standardisation process was hence faced with the decades-old non-additivity problem, posing the following dilemma for the accounting of footprints, or any other production factor: if one disallows double-counting, but wishes to be able to account for producers and consumers, then one cannot impose the requirement of full life-cycle coverage; the supply chains of actors have to be curtailed somehow in order to avoid double-counting. This work demonstrates and discusses a non-arbitrary method of consistently delineating these supply chains, into mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive portions of responsibility to be shared by all actors in an economy.     

Corporate Power and the Development of New Competition Policies in Canada

The aim of this paper is to associate elements of Aristotle's view of a "good society" with the development ethics standpoint of a "good society." For Aristotle, the vehicle to "eudaimonia" and to a "good society" is "politics." We argue that development ethics provides an ethical response to the question "what is good society" based on Aristotle's key concept of "eudaimonia." The Aristotelian vision for a "good life" can be perceived as a precursor and a contributor to development ethics perspective for a "good society."     

Reconciling sustainability, systems theory and discounting

Most definitions of sustainability imply that a system is to be maintained at a certain level, held within certain limits, into the indefinite future. Sustainability denies run-away growth, but it also avoids any decline or destruction. This sustainability path is hard to reconcile with the renewal cycle that can be observed in many natural systems developing according to their intrinsic mechanisms and in social systems responding to internal and external pressures. Systems are parts of hierarchies where systems of higher levels are made up of subsystems from lower levels. Renewal in components is an important factor of adaptation and evolution. If a system is sustained for too long, it borrows from the sustainability of a supersystem and rests upon lack of sustainability in subsystems. Therefore by sustaining certain systems beyond their renewal cycle, we decrease the sustainability of larger, higher-level systems. For example, Schumpeter's theory of creative destruction posits that in a capitalist economy, the collapse and renewal of firms and industries is necessary to sustain the vitality of the larger economic system. However, if the capitalist economic system relies on endless growth, then sustaining it for too long will inevitably borrow from the sustainability of the global ecosystem. This could prove catastrophic for humans and other species. To reconcile sustainability with hierarchy theory, we must decide which hierarchical level in a system we want to sustain indefinitely, and accept that lower level subsystems must have shorter life spans. In economic analysis, inter-temporal discount rates essentially tell us how long we should care about sustaining any given system. Economists distinguish between discount rates for individuals based on personal time preference, lower discount rates for firms based on the opportunity cost of capital, and even lower discount rates for society. For issues affecting even higher-level systems, such as global climate change, many economists question the suitability of discounting future values at all. We argue that to reconcile sustainability with inter-temporal discounting, discount rates should be determined by the hierarchical level of the system being analyzed.     

Reasserting Institutionalist Insights on the Good Society: 30 Years After Petr’s Call for a Mixed Economy

In this research note, I revisit the issues raised by Jerry Petr (1987) in “The Nature and Necessity of the Mixed Economy.” The institutionalist mixed economy is still a sound model for the good society. However, Western industrialized countries have been losing ground on the goals of the mixed economy. The struggle to defend pragmatism over ideological attachment to neoliberalism, has evolved into a distributional struggle that cannot be resolved without institutional change.     

On the determinants of household debt maturity choice

This article jointly analyses a behavioural and a cultural concept to explain household debt portfolio choice. The behavioural approach explores the role of time preferences on household debt maturity in a theoretical model and a numerical analysis. We derive a positive relationship between the long-term discount factor δ and the optimal maturity of household loans. The cultural approach examines whether national culture is a reasonable predictor for household debt maturity. We show that culture is an important factor for households’ borrowing decisions and has even more predictive power than time preferences. Countries with higher scores on the Hofstede dimension of long-term orientation tend to have shorter household debt maturity. Time preferences incur a primarily mediating role, because the effect of national culture on the borrowing decision is reduced, as the long-term discount factor δ increases.     

从爱国消费到习惯形成:平台经济背景下电商中介效应对国货销售的影响研究

随着华为Mate60 Pro的回归,国内消费者对国货的热情再度被激发。与此同时,近年来各大电商平台上的国货销售量快速增长。国潮活动、网店预售和直播销售成为消费者购买国货的重要方式。然而,如何利用平台经济和电商的力量将消费热情转化为消费习惯,并促使消费者形成常态化的购买意愿,是亟需深入研究和探讨的课题。本研究采用扎根理论和偏最小二乘定量分析方法,验证了电商平台在促进国货消费习惯形成中的中介作用。研究认为,电商平台在开展国货销售活动时应更加注重以中国文化为基础,重点满足消费者对精神追求的需求。这一研究为未来的实践奠定了理论基础,同时也填补了相关研究的不足和空白。     

ENDOGENOUS CONSUMER PARTICIPATION AND THE RECYCLING PROBLEM*

We endogenise the extent of consumer participation in the recycling process, and analyse its effect on the ‘recycling problem’. When recycling requires consumers to undertake costly sorting activities to separate scrap from household waste, they will participate only if the net reward from sorting is positive. Consumers' sorting cost is subject to a network effect arising due to social norms. With heterogeneous consumers differing in terms of their sorting cost, the entire output of the recyclable product may not be subsequently available as scrap to the recycling firms. This increases the virgin producer's monopoly power, and may also lead to multiple equilibria if the network effect of sorting is sufficiently large. The latter result suggests a role for the government in influencing equilibrium selection to improve social welfare. Depending on the fraction of consumers that participate in recycling, increased societal pressure on consumers to recycle may decrease consumer participation and increase the virgin producer's market power.     

城乡差距与统筹城乡发展途径

城乡发展失衡、差距日趋扩大,已经成为当前我国经济生活中存在的突出矛盾之一.统筹城乡发展是我国新阶段经济社会发展的必然要求,对解决“三农“问题、全面建设小康社会具有重要的战略意义.文章分析了城乡差距日趋扩大的现象及原因,分析了统筹城乡发展提出的背景,阐述了统筹城乡发展的内涵和意义,并提出加强体制和制度创新、发展和壮大县域经济、加快城镇化进程、建设社会主义新农村是实现统筹城乡发展的主要途径.     

The government's time discount rate: Choices and consequences in a dynamic framework

This paper considers a closed macroeconomy where the monetary authority pursues an inflation target and policy outcomes are the consequence of a Nash game between fiscal and monetary authorities. The specification of the macroeconomic framework is characterized by nonlinearities which lead to multiple equilibria with differing stability properties. Employing a calibrated model and simulations derived using the Mathematica package, the stability properties of the economy and the likely choice of equilibrium are examined. Within this framework, the dynamic consequences of different time discount rates for the fiscal authority are investigated, both in a world of certainty and also in a world of uncertainty. It is shown that, in a world of certainty, it will be optimal to choose the fiscal authority's time discount rate equal to the market rate of interest. However, depending on the degree of uncertainty in evaluating the time discount rates of consumers and of the fiscal authority, it may be appropriate to bias the fiscal authority's discount rate above or below the expected interest rate.     

Financialization and Vested Interests: Self-Regulation vs. Financial Stability as a Public Good

I propose an institutionalist analysis of financialization through the lens of Thorstein Veblen, built on some peculiar characteristics of money and related financial instruments in a market-based capitalist economy. Following the case of the overcapitalization of farmlands, studied by Veblen (1919), I argue that modern capitalism is a financialized society dominated by vested interests that rely on financial liberalization-led speculative overcapitalization, often leading to a perverse accumulation process and resulting in systemic catastrophes. Consequently, one of the major constituent institutions of liberal finance, market-dependent selfregulation, proves unable to deal with society-level issues like financial stability. This latter issue must be handled at a systemic level, as a public good. Therefore, specific public regulation and action mechanisms must be designed to maintain society (and dominant vested-interests) within some viability limits to ensure a smooth functioning of the economy.     

中国发展知识经济的空间结构

发展知识经济可以有效解决中国所面临的诸多挑战。文章探讨了经济发展的空间结构理论、城市与现代经济的关系、中国发展知识经济的路径选择,提出中国发展知识经济的空间结构是“升岛成陆”,即以各级有条件的城市特别是大城市为主先行发展知识经济,然后带动其它地区,扩大发展知识经济的区域,从而最终像地球科学中的升岛成陆造地运动一样,实现全国发展知识经济。同时,要通过行政区划制度创新促进这一进程,要将一些大城市升格为直辖市。