Reaching for the Stars: Spatial Competition and Consumer Reviews

Atlantic Economic Journal - Competition is a key feature of the market process assumed to improve market outcomes. But how strong is the relationship between competition and positive consumer...     

New international evidence on output-inflation tradeoffs: A note

This note presents some new international evidence for the variance hypothesis by Lucas according to which the output-inflation tradeoff varies inversely with the variance of nominal aggregate demand. The annual cross-country data on 18 countries are used. Over the period 1952–1967 the variance hypothesis gets support, and allowing for serial and contemporaneous correlation of error terms leaves the results practically unaffected. Over the period 1952–1977, however, the variance hypothesis gets stronger support, which is even reinforced by allowing for serial and contemporaneous correlation of error terms between the OLS residuals.     

Labor Supply and Targeting in Poverty Alleviation Programs

The introduction of variable labor supply raises some fundamentalissues in analyzing the targeting of poverty alleviation programsin developing countries. It forces a reconsideration of thestandard objective function, which is based on income or expenditureand so makes no allowance for the effort made in earning thatincome. We show that alternative views on the appropriate valuationof effort have very different implications for commodity-basedtargeting rules. We also establish a benchmark for marginaleffective tax rates (inclusive of benefit withdrawal) in income-testedschemes and show that indicator targeting rules may also haveto be modified significantly when labor supply responses arerecognized.     

Saving and inflation: Some international evidence

This note contains empirical results for the ‘disequilibrium’ saving function specification, in which uncertainty about relative prices in a cross-section sense plays a major role. Quarterly time series evidence from several OECD countries over the period 1967(II)–1980(III) lies in striking conformity with the view - suggested particularly by Deaton - that there is a positive relationship between unanticipated inflation and the saving ratio.     

Strategic business marketing developments in the New Europe: Retrospect and prospect

The unification of Europe is causing considerable effects on industrial marketing strategy. Roughly ten years ago the Industrial Marketing Management journal published a study on the expected consequences of the European Union (EU) single market. In the current study, we investigate the actual results of the single market formation on industrial marketing in the EU and compare them to the expectations noted by industrial marketers a decade earlier. We find that the effects differ markedly from those anticipated and that they have important implications for business marketing practice in the EU.     

NON-WELFARIST OPTIMAL TAXATION AND BEHAVIOURAL PUBLIC ECONOMICS

Abstract.  Research in behavioural economics has uncovered the widespread phenomenon of people making decisions against their own good intentions. In these situations, the government might want to intervene, indeed individuals might want the government to intervene, to induce behaviour that is closer to what individuals wish they were doing. The analysis of such corrective interventions, through taxes and subsidies, might be called 'behavioural public economics'. However, such analysis, where the government has an objective function that is different from that of individuals, is not new in public economics. In these cases the government is said to be 'non-welfarist' in its objectives, and there is a long tradition of non-welfarist welfare economics, especially the analysis of optimal taxation and subsidy policy where the outcomes of individual behaviour are evaluated using a preference function different from the one that generated the outcomes. First of all the object of this paper is to present a unified view of the non-welfarist optimal taxation literature and, second, to present behavioural public economics as a natural special case of this general framework.     

Asymmetry and the Problem of Aggregation in the Euro Area

This paper highlights the implications for a single monetary policy when key economic relationships are nonlinear or asymmetric at a disaggregate level. Using data for the EU and OECD countries we show that there are considerable non-linearities and asymmetries in the Phillips and Okun curves. High unemployment has relatively limited effect in pulling inflation down while low unemployment can be much more effective in driving it up. Downturns in the economy are both more rapid and sustained in driving unemployment up than recoveries are in bringing it down. There is considerable variety in these relationships and IS curves across not just countries but also sectors and regions.     

Poverty alleviation and tax policy

This paper examines public good provision and tax policy—optimal non-linear income taxation and linear commodity taxation—when the government departs from purely welfarist objective function and seeks to minimise poverty. This assumption reflects much policy discussion and may help understand some divergences of practical tax policy from lessons in optimal tax analysis. In contrast to Atkinson and Stiglitz (J. Public Econom. 6 (1976) 55), it may be optimal to use differentiated commodity tax rates, including the taxation of savings, even if preferences are separable in goods and leisure. The optimal effective marginal tax rate at the bottom of the distribution may be negative, suggesting that wage subsidy schemes can be optimal. Finally, optimal provision of a public good is analysed under poverty minimisation.     

How to stimulate supplier innovation? Insights from a multiple case study

Drawing on the literature on supplier innovation, supplier development, and the relational view, we bring forward the concept of stimulation of supplier innovation, which refers to the buyer company's actions which aim to enhance its suppliers' innovativeness, guide its suppliers' innovation processes, and/or encourage its suppliers to share their innovations. Through four case studies about purchasing categories in three companies, we study how the stimulation focus is determined and what methods can be used for stimulating supplier innovation. We propose that stimulation comprises indirect and direct forms of knowledge-sharing and governance with an emphasis on indirect methods and suggest that the concept sheds light on the research gap on the push model of supplier innovation. We also elaborate the literature on supplier development and relational view in the context of supplier innovation.