The Business Economist’s Toolkit

Business economists are not members of the high church of academic orthodoxy. Our tool kit includes research functions, such as business cycle analysis, demographics research, data analytics, primary research, diversity of thought, and client research. It also includes personal skills that should be cultivated and practiced, such as curiosity, maintaining a nonpartisan view, humility, courage, and effective communication.     

From Social Pacts to Productivity Boards

Market solutions can be a way for small deregulated states like the Baltics to grow, but they are not a viable path for the EMU area as a whole or for the larger countries like France, Germany or Italy. As most of the challenges have to be addressed at the national level only, an interaction of flexible institutions (as the social pacts were) in coordination with developing European institutions (like a European unemployment scheme) can offer a more stable environment for growth.     

The Eurozone’s Flaws Are Not Intrinsic

There seem to be two typical responses to the failure of the euro project that the last five years have exposed. The first, mostly from those outside the eurozone, is that the whole project was doomed from the start and should be abandoned. The second is that the only way forward is further political integration. However, the problems of the eurozone are not intrinsic to any attempt at a monetary union, but rather reflect design flaws in the particular version of monetary union that was embodied in the euro project.     

An Economic Analysis of Requirements to Prevent Handheld Hair Dryer Water Immersion Electrocutions in the USA

Before 1987, when handheld hair dryers were not required to protect against water immersion electrocutions, there were almost 16 such electrocutions annually in the USA. This article presents a retrospective evaluation of the benefits and costs of the 1987 and 1991 immersion protection requirements of the voluntary hair dryer safety standard in the USA. The benefits are based on estimates of the reduced risk of electrocution resulting from the requirements, and the valuation of the reduced risk derived from willingness to pay studies of the “value of statistical life” found in the economics literature. The costs were defined as the incremental costs associated with incorporating the immersion protection technology into handheld hair dryers. The study found that the requirements were highly effective and may have reduced the immersion-related mortality rate by almost 97%. The expected present value of the estimated benefits of the requirements amounted to about $4.56 per dryer in 2014 dollars and substantially exceeded the costs of about $2 per dryer. The primary outcome measure, the expected net benefits (i.e., benefits minus costs) of the requirements, amounted to an average of about $2.56 per hair dryer, over the hair dryer’s expected product life. Given sales of about 23 million handheld hair dryers annually, the present value of the expected net benefits associated with 1 year’s production would have amounted to about $58.9 million. A sensitivity analysis showed that the major findings were robust with respect to changes in the underlying parameters of the analysis. The study also discusses the factors leading to a high rate of effectiveness estimated for the immersion protection requirements.     

Income and Wealth Inequality in OECD Countries

This paper summarises some of the key findings and policy recommendations of the latest OECD report on income inequality - “In It Together: Why Less Inequality Benefits All”. In particular, the paper presents new findings regarding the trade-off between inequality and growth, as well as with regard to the impact of the economic crisis and of female employment on the distribution of income and the distribution of wealth. Key policy recommendations derived from these findings are the need to promote employment and good quality jobs, to further improve female participation, to invest in education and skills, and to foster well-designed redistribution policies.     

A Sample Survey Based Linguistic MADM Method with Prospect Theory for Online Shopping Problems

In MADM problems, the attributes are often rated in linguistic variables, some researchers transform them into numerical values through some formulas. However, it might be inconsistent with real human thinking in some extent. In order to deal with such problems, a sample survey based MADM method with prospect theory is proposed. Firstly, through sampling survey, we collect the data in single point format corresponding to the words, and establish the codebook by mapping words into fuzzy sets, after that fuzzy operation rules are suitable for them. Secondly, based on the reference points, the gain and/or loss matrix is obtained, in accordance with the value function, the prospect value matrix is constructed. Finally, if the attributes are independent, the weighted prospect value of each alternative is computed, if the attributes are dependent, the Choquet integral based prospect value of each alternative is computed. The alternatives are ranked in descending order respect to the defuzzified values. The first alternative is chosen as the best decision result. The feasibility of the proposed method is illustrated through an application in online shopping problem from real life.     

The unrealized value of incentivized eWOM recommendations

While companies have recognized the perceived economic benefits of encouraging and managing electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), the benefits may be understated. Companies take into account the influence on the audience. But, what about any effects on the person who communicates the eWOM? We explore the impact that incentivized eWOM has on communicator attitude. Using the saying is believing effect as our theoretical foundation, we suggest that providing eWOM induces a change in the communicator’s attitude. By generating and providing a biased recommendation, the communicator will believe the biased recommendation. Furthermore, the communicator is likely to remember the biased recommendation and will use it to update their attitude. We examine how valence of recommendations (negative versus positive) and the number of opportunities to recommend affect the change in attitude. Our findings indicate that providing recommendations changes communicator’s attitude. Implications of the results are discussed.     

Response style corrected market segmentation for ordinal data

Survey data collected for market segmentation studies is typically ordinal in nature. As such, it is susceptible to response styles. Ignoring response styles can lead to market segments which do not differ in beliefs, but merely in how segment members use survey answer options and which possibly occur in addition to the belief segments. We propose a finite mixture model which simultaneously segments and corrects for response styles, permits heterogeneity in both beliefs and response styles, accommodates a range of different response styles, does not impose a certain relationship between the response style and belief segments, and is suitable for ordinal data. The performance of the model is tested using both artificial and empirical survey data.     

A Sealed-Bid Two-Attribute Yardstick Auction Without Prior Scoring

We analyze a two-attribute single item procurement auction that uses yardstick competition to settle prices. The auction simplifies the procurement process by reducing the principal’s articulation of preferences to simply choosing the most preferred offer as if it was a market with posted prices. This is done simply by replacing the submitted sealed bids by yardstick bids, computed by a linear weighting of the other participants’ bids. We show that there is only one type of Nash equilibria where some agents may win the auction by submitting a zero price-bid. Using a simulation study we demonstrate that following this type of equilibrium behavior often leads to winner’s curse. The simulations show that in auctions with more than 12 participants the chance of facing winner’s curse is around 95 %. Truthful reporting, on the other hand, does not constitute a Nash equilibrium but it is ex post individually rational. Using a simulation study we demonstrate that truthful bidding may indeed represent some kind of focal point.