Single Object Auctions With Externalities: A Tractable Model

We consider the single object auction model with allocative externalities in a private valuation and quasi‐linear setting. We model externalities by assuming that every agent has a private valuation (for the object) and a strict ranking of other agents. The utility for an agent when another agent receives the object is the product of his own valuation and a real number that depends on the rank of this agent in his ranking. When the only private information is the valuation of the agents, we characterise the implementable allocation rules and use these to derive the optimal auction. The optimal auction collects payments from agents who do not receive the object.     

Farmer perception and valuation of seed quality: Evidence from bean and cowpea seed auctions in Tanzania and Ghana

Double blind field experiments and experimental auctions were conducted with bean and cowpea farmers in Tanzania and Ghana to gauge the relative demand for three types of seed products that differ in price and quality: certified, quality declared, and recycled. Whether the cost differential makes these seeds qualitatively different products as reflected in their perceived performance, and whether that translates into farmers’ willingness to pay price premiums, are the research questions addressed by this study. Results indicate that, all else equal, there were significant differences in the perceived quality of the seed products evaluated. Farmers were willing to pay significantly more for their higher rated seed relative to their lower rated seeds. However, for a majority of farmers the magnitude of the premium they are willing to pay for a higher quality seed is less than the current price differential between certified seed and grain. Research and policy implications of these results for legume seed system are discussed.     

Communication and marketing of services by religious organizations in India

Marketing communication is a vital strategic tool for religious organizations to achieve competitive differentiation. The study uses media richness theory with competitive response to develop hypotheses about the use of personal and non-personal channels by religious organizations. The study uses unique primary survey data on 568 Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh and Jain organizations spread over 7 states in India, collected between 2006 and 2008, to investigate the marketing communication strategy of religious organizations in response to their competitors' use of non-personal communication channels and provision of non-religious services. The findings suggest that if a competitor uses higher non-personal communication channels, then this evokes a retaliatory reaction with the incumbent, increasing their personal communication channels. Second, an incumbent who is more responsive to a competitor increasing their non-religious service provision will respond by increasing their non-personal communication channels and by decreasing their personal channels. The findings have implications for managers who need to select the richness of the media for their communications' strategy in the context of competitive response.     

Biases and Strategic Behaviour in Performance Evaluation: The Case of the FIFA's best soccer player award

In this paper, we study biases in performance evaluation by analysing votes for the FIFA Ballon d'Or award for best soccer player, the most prestigious award in the sport. Our findings suggest that ‘similarity’ biases are substantial, with jury members disproportionately voting for candidates from their own country, own national team, own continent and own league team. Further, we show that the impact of such biases on the total number of votes a candidate receives is fairly limited and hence is likely to affect the outcome of this competition only on rare occasions where the difference in quality between the leading candidates is small. Finally, analysing the incidence of ‘strategic voting’, we find jury members who vote for one leading candidate are more, rather than less, likely to also give points to his main competitor, as compared with neutral jury members. We discuss the implications of our findings for the design of awards, elections and performance evaluation systems in general and for the FIFA Ballon d'Or award in particular.     

Extrinsic psychosocial stressors and workers’ productivity: impact of employee age and industry experience

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to explore the impact of employee age and industrial experience on extrinsic psychosocial stressors that may influence the productivity of workers. Using an integrated theoretical approach, this study examines four extrinsic psychosocial stressors, i.e. work environment, infrastructure, economy and country environment. The data were collected from Pakistani construction industry through a questionnaire survey approach. The study’s findings show that workers having diverse ages did not agree over several work environments and economy-related psychosocial stressors, whereas workers having diverse industrial experiences were in disagreement over numerous country environment and economy-related psychosocial stressors. The study concludes that firms need to mitigate the work environment related psychosocial stressors in young workers, such as, over congestion and inaccessibility to different tools, high temperature and workspace atmosphere. Moreover, organizational and governmental support are direly needed to overcome the country environment-related psychosocial stressors of less experienced workers who are more susceptible to these stressors due to the complex organizational culture, occurrence of natural disasters and unfavourable economic and political state of the country.     

A Measure of Trade Induced Adjustment in Volume and Quality Space

In this paper we contribute to the literature on the measurement of international trade flows. Specifically, we combine changes in the volume and quality in matched trade changes to present a simple new index together with a geometric framework that can be used to visualise changes in quality and volume simultaneously. We illustrate the usefulness of our simple extension with data for trade between Malaysia and China between 1994 and 2004.     

A general equilibrium analysis of production subsidy in a Harris-Todaro developing economy: an application to India

Since 1950s India has advocated import substituting industrialization policies to promote its manufacturing sector. The end result was creation of a dual economy: highly favored manufacturing sector with high and rigid wages and neglected agricultural sector with low wages and poverty. Because of the higher wages in the manufacturing sector, the rural laborers migrate to the urban sector, a typical characteristic of the Harris-Todaro developing economy. Realizing this crisis, the Indian government recently initiated policies to boost agricultural production to curb the labor migration and improve the welfare of the rural population. In this study, we develop a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model for India by incorporating Harris-Todaro economic characteristics of unemployment, labor migration, farm dependant population, and labor-intensive agriculture. We use the model to analyze the effects of agricultural production subsidy policies on employment, factor price, output price, output levels, and welfare in agricultural and manufacturing sectors. Our findings show that agricultural production subsidy increases agricultural production, reduces unemployment, raises the wage rate in the agriculture sector, augments the consumption among the rural and urban households, and increases the rental rate for capital in agricultural sector.