A REFUTATION OF THE COMMODITY EXPLOITATION THEOREM

This note is to show that the generalized commodity exploitation theorem put forward by Bowles and Gintis and Roemer is nothing but an alternative form of the Hawkins–Simon condition for given technical data, and that it has nothing to do with exploitation. That is, the Hawkins–Simon condition means a mere possibility of an economic system to produce a surplus in each commodity, and as such does not guarantee the existence of positive profits. To consider exploitation or the existence of positive profits, we need to introduce prices at which unequal exchanges may be carried out.     

A comparative analysis of marketing promotions and implications for data analytics

Retailers use many different marketing promotions to increase sales and profits. These promotions include price reductions, coupons, cash mail-in rebates, free gift cards, and buy-one-get-one (BOGO) discounts. The type of promotion used results in different outcomes for demand, profit, average price, consumer surplus, and sales taxes collected. We perform comparative analysis of these five promotions and their outcomes. We show that for the same discount amount, price reductions result in the lowest average price. For products with weakly diminishing consumer utility and low consumer stockpiling, BOGO promotions result in the largest demand, profit, consumer surplus, and taxes collected. Cash mail-in rebates may result in large profit and taxes collected, but they perform poorly in terms of average price paid and consumer surplus. We also find that a retailer offering a delayed incentive (i.e. gift cards and mail-in rebates) offers a larger reward but provides lower consumer surplus than when offering an immediate incentive (i.e. price reduction and BOGO). In a segmented market with a price-insensitive consumer segment, immediate incentives have the disadvantage of allowing price-insensitive consumers arriving during the promotion to obtain the discount, which reduces the discount effectiveness. The addition of more retailer objectives to maximizing profit, such as demand maximization or consumer surplus, increases the effectiveness of immediate incentives. We also provide a framework for estimating the important parameters for evaluating promotion effectiveness using readily available transactional data and examine its accuracy using a simulation experiment.     

对中美双边贸易利益结构的测算与分析——基于WWZ方法的测算与实证研究

随着全球价值链分工与贸易的发展，在增加值视角下重新测算与分析中美双边贸易的利益结构，对解释2018年中美贸易摩擦具有重要意义。文章应用双边/产业层面的贸易增加值核算方法，从前向生产联系和后向生产联系两个角度对中美双边贸易利益结构进行国家层面和产业层面的研究，并对中国增加值出口的影响因素进行实证检验。主要结论有：增加值视角下的中美贸易顺差严重缩水，美方发布的贸易逆差数据严重失真；中国在全球价值链中的位置落后于美国，导致贸易顺差在中国，但结构性收益在美国；中国服务业在中美贸易中的获利能力远不及制造业，2000—2014年中国主要的顺差产业未发生较大变化；参与全球价值链对我国制造业和非制造业增加值出口的影响不同，吸引外资对中国产业增加值出口具有显著的正向促进作用。     

Black's Model of Interest Rates as Options, Eigenfunction Expansions and Japanese Interest Rates

Black's (1995) model of interest rates as options assumes that there is a shadow instantaneous interest rate that can become negative, while the nominal instantaneous interest rate is a positive part of the shadow rate due to the option to convert to currency. As a result of this currency option, all term rates are strictly positive. A similar model was independently discussed by Rogers (1995) . When the shadow rate is modeled as a diffusion, we interpret the zero-coupon bond as a Laplace transform of the area functional of the underlying shadow rate diffusion (evaluated at the unit value of the transform parameter). Using the method of eigenfunction expansions, we derive analytical solutions for zero-coupon bonds and bond options under the Vasicek and shifted CIR processes for the shadow rate. This class of models can be used to model low interest rate regimes. As an illustration, we calibrate the model with the Vasicek shadow rate to the Japanese Government Bond data and show that the model provides an excellent fit to the Japanese term structure. The current implied value of the instantaneous shadow rate in Japan is negative.     

A NEW LOOK AT SHORT‐TERM IMPLIED VOLATILITY IN ASSET PRICE MODELS WITH JUMPS

We analyze the behavior of the implied volatility smile for options close to expiry in the exponential Lévy class of asset price models with jumps. We introduce a new renormalization of the strike variable with the property that the implied volatility converges to a nonconstant limiting shape, which is a function of both the diffusion component of the process and the jump activity (Blumenthal–Getoor) index of the jump component. Our limiting implied volatility formula relates the jump activity of the underlying asset price process to the short‐end of the implied volatility surface and sheds new light on the difference between finite and infinite variation jumps from the viewpoint of option prices: in the latter, the wings of the limiting smile are determined by the jump activity indices of the positive and negative jumps, whereas in the former, the wings have a constant model‐independent slope. This result gives a theoretical justification for the preference of the infinite variation Lévy models over the finite variation ones in the calibration based on short‐maturity option prices.     

浅谈盈余管理及其效应

盈余管理是企业在有选择会计政策和会计估计的自由时,在合法的前提下选择使企业市场价值最大化的行为,是企业作为追求市场价值最大化的经济主体。只有对盈余管理理性对待与恰当运用,才能给企业带来一定的正面效应,实现效益最大化。     

International mergers: Incentives and welfare

Information asymmetry creates incentives for firms from different countries to merge. To demonstrate this point, we develop a model of international oligopolistic competition under demand uncertainty and asymmetric information. We show that when domestic firms but not foreign firms are completely informed of local market demands, information sharing enhances the profitability of a merger between a domestic firm and a foreign firm. We also examine how such a merger affects the non-merging firms' profits, consumer surplus and social welfare.     

运用多层中间商模型解析“贴牌生产”微利与大商企发展问题

"贴牌"(生产或销售)是当今国内外相当普遍的经济现象,关于贴牌生产(或贴牌销售)利弊的争论在学术界已相当广泛,争论的焦点是利益分配。为使我国赢得在贴牌生产中因销售环节丢失的大部分利润,必须高度重视销售流通环节,同时着力培育中国自己的"商业航母",尤为重要。     

SHAREHOLDER VALUE ORIENTATION,DISTRIBUTION AND GROWTH—SHORT‐ AND MEDIUM‐RUN EFFECTS IN A KALECKIAN MODEL

We discuss the effects of rising shareholder power on distribution and capital accumulation in a Kaleckian model. In the short run, increasing shareholder power may have either positive (‘finance‐led’), negative (‘normal’) or ‘intermediate’ (‘profits without investment’) effects on capacity utilization, profits and capital accumulation. In the medium run, the positive (‘finance‐led’) effects may be maintained in a stable regime under very special conditions, whereas the negative (‘normal’) and the ‘intermediate’ (‘profits without investment’) effects turn into disequilibrium processes with falling rates of capital accumulation and rising outside finance–capital ratios. Therefore, this process gives rise to a ‘paradox of outside finance’.     

Tariffs,foreign capital and immiserizing growth

For a small tariff-imposing country, within the standard two-commodity two-factor model of international trade, this paper reconsiders the implications of an inflow of capital from abroad. When the host country continues to import the capital-intensive good while remaining incompletely specialized, the analysis shows that the capital inflow must reduce host-country welfare, assuming that the foreign capital receives the full (untaxed) value of its marginal product. Under other circumstances considered, however, the inflow may have different consequences for welfare.     

WELL‐BEHAVED PRODUCTION ECONOMIES

We show that production economies are tâtonnement stable if consumers satisfy the weak axiom of revealed preference. To ensure that producer supply decisions are well defined, we restrict prices in the tâtonnement so that positive profits cannot occur but do allow supply decisions to be multi‐valued. The model therefore permits linear activities and hence the technologies that admit capital theory paradoxes. The result thus shows that if the consumer side of the economy is well behaved then capital theory paradoxes are irrelevant for stability. Other features of the Walrasian general‐equilibrium model that have aroused suspicion (e.g. that a price below its equilibrium value may have negative excess demand and thus temporarily move even lower in a tâtonnement) may be a sign of trouble but also have nothing to do with capital theory paradoxes. We show that these phenomena arise even when there is no choice of technique and there is an aggregate production function.     

跨国公司增大了双向贸易不平衡

近年我国对外贸易迅速增长,贸易顺差扩大,使我国与主要贸易伙伴之间的贸易摩擦加剧。由此引发了新贸易保护主义,也增大了我国经济安全的风险。我国以加工贸易为主要贸易方式、以外商投资企业为进出口主体的贸易结构是长期顺差的主要因素。我国要在扩大进口、增加内需、调整利用外资政策、优化进出口结构、限制加工贸易发展等多方面采取措施,积极稳妥地应对贸易不平衡问题。     

Who should practice price discrimination using rebates in an asymmetric duopoly?

Price discrimination is generally thought to improve firm profits by allowing firms to extract more consumer surplus. In competition, however, price discrimination may also be costly to the firm because restrictive incentive compatibility conditions may allow the competing firm to gain market share at the discriminating firm’s expense. Therefore, with asymmetric competition, it may be the case that one firm would let the other firm assume the burden of price discrimination. We investigate optimal segmentation in a market with two asymmetric firms and two heterogeneous consumer segments that differ in the importance of price and product attributes. In particular, we investigate second-degree price discrimination under competition with explicit incentive compatibility constraints thus extending prior work in marketing and economics. Focusing on the managerial implications, we explore whether it would be profitable for either or both firms to pursue a segmentation strategy using rebates as a mechanism. We identify conditions under which one or both firms would want to pursue such segmentation. We find that segmentation lessens competition for the less price-sensitive consumer segment and that this results in higher profits to both firms. A key to understanding this result is that segmentation leads to consumer remixing. We establish the key result that if firms are asymmetric in their attractiveness to consumers, the disadvantaged firm in our model is more likely to pursue a segmentation strategy than its rival in equilibrium. We then ask whether this result prevails in practice. To this end, we explore competitive segmentation empirically and are able to verify that disadvantaged firms indeed pursue segmentation through rebates with greater likelihood.     

Optimal generic and brand advertising efforts in a decentralized supply chain considering customer surplus

While the previous researches of advertising efforts decisions focus on only the firms' profit target, no literature introduces corporation social responsibility target into advertising efforts decisions of a supply chain (SC). To fill this gap, we consider a two-stage SC with a manufacturer and a retailer where the SC members consider the customer surplus. Both the retailer and the manufacturer can invest in generic advertising efforts to influence and increase the products' sales volumes. This paper investigates the following four scenarios: (1) The retailer cares the customer surplus (Model I); (2) The manufacturer cares the customer surplus (Model II); (3) Both the retailer and the manufacturer care the customer surplus (Model III); (4) We then extend the model III to the case that the manufacturer invests in both the generic and brand advertising efforts (Model IV). The objective of this paper is to determine the optimal retail price, the optimal advertising efforts, and the optimal profits of SC members, and find the influence of customer concern level on the SC performance. Finally, numerical examples are conducted to investigate the influence of the customer concern levels of the retailer or the manufacturer on the profits of the SC members and the entire SC. We also study the joint impacts of the customer concern levels of the retailer and the manufacturer on the SC performance. We find that the SC obtains the highest profits when the retailer's customer concern level and the manufacturer's customer concern level are relatively high, and the best cooperative strategy for the retailer and the manufacturer is that they improve customer concern level simultaneously.     

Valuing Exclusivity from Encroachment in Franchising

Conflict is created when business format franchisors penetrate existing markets with new outlets that increase system-wide sales, but negatively affect the sales and profits of existing franchisees. Territorial exclusivity contracts are used to manage channel conflict in such situations. We present a model to value territorial exclusivity from the perspective of both the franchisor and the franchisee. We show that under certain circumstances there is positive value to the franchisor by including the exclusivity clause in the contract and to the franchisee by purchasing this exclusivity. When this happens, the likelihood of franchisor-franchisee encroachment-related conflict is reduced.     

Balancing Profitability and Customer Welfare in a Supermarket Chain

We investigate the impact of price discrimination by a large Chicago supermarket chain. First we measure the impact of the chain's current zone-pricing policy on shelf prices, variable profits and consumer welfare across its stores. Using the chain's database to simulate a finer store-specific micro-pricing policy, we study the implications of this policy on profits and welfare. We show how a store-pricing policy that is constrained to offer consumers at least as much surplus as a uniform chain wide pricing policy still enables the retailer to generate substantial incremental profits.To ensure our pricing problem exhibits a well-defined optimum, we use the parsimonious, mixed-logit demand function that allows for flexible substitution patterns across brands and also retains a link to consumer theory. We discuss the issue of price endogeneity when estimating the demand parameters with weekly store-level data. Standard instrumental variables techniques used to account for such endogeneity also seem to increase the magnitudes of own-price elasticities thereby offsetting the problem encountered by previous researchers of predicted prices from a demand model exceeding those in the actual data.     

Fitting and testing for the implied volatility curve using parametric models

Numerous issues have arisen over the past few decades relating to the implied volatility smile in the options market; however, the extant literature reveals that relatively little effort has thus far been placed into comparing the various implied volatility models, essentially as a result of the lack of any theoretical foundation on which to base such comparative analysis. In this study, we use a comprehensive options database and employ methods of combining the various hypothesis tests to compare the different implied volatility models. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of its kind to address this issue using combination tests. Our empirical results reveal that the linear piecewise model is the most appropriate model for capturing the implied volatility smile, with additional robustness checks confirming the validity of this finding.     

台湾地区服务贸易国际竞争力研究

利用显示性比较优势指数、贸易净出口和贸易竞争力指数,对台湾地区服务贸易的国际竞争力进行具体分析。根据台湾地区1997-2004年数据计算结果显示,台湾地区服务贸易竞争力在总体上处于劣势;各项服务贸易竞争力有所差异,但基本上除其他商业服务部门因三角贸易的巨额顺差形成带来了一定的国际竞争力外,其余10个服务贸易部门在国际贸易领域的竞争力大多数年份均处于比较劣势中。     

The Perceived Value of Value Meals

Abstract

This study provides a new explanation as to why restaurants frequently sell value meals along with the meals' components separately. We argue that beyond the traditional economic model of extracting the surplus from customers with extreme valuation for particular dishes, mixed bundling unintentionally creates a decoy price effect. With mixed bundling, the value meal might seem more attractive than with pure bundling, generating more profits for the restaurant. The combination of extracting additional consumer surplus and the increased demand due to decoy pricing makes the mixed bundling strategy a highly valuable marketing tool for restaurants. We test the theory by measuring subjects' willingness to pay for value meals while varying the prices of the meal's components that appear separately on the menu. The results strongly support our prediction that customers' willingness to pay for a value meal can be manipulated by controlling the price of the components.     

Efficiency of travel agency franchises: a study in Spain

Efficiency in a firm is important because it ensures that the economy’s scarce resources are not being wasted. It produces something else of value—profits or the continued existence of the organisation. This work contributes to the literature on efficiency in franchising. Specifically, it is focused on the sector of travel agencies which operate in the franchising system in Spain. This fact is an original contribution and is very important because until now there have not been any studies about efficiency in this sector of franchising. The results show that the number of brand names which are efficient is around 50%. This means that many chains are not efficient. This result may be, to a great extent, a result of the dynamics of this sector in recent years. A Tobit model is also used in order to characterise the franchisors’ efficiency. Some important findings are showed.