Is gold an efficient store of value?

Summary. Gold and tobacco have both been used as commodity money. One difference between the two is that gold yields utility, on account of its beauty, without diminishing its quantity. Tobacco yields utility when it is consumed. If this were the only difference, Received: January 2, 2001; revised version: February 22, 2002 Correspondence to: J. Geanakoplos     

Representing Heterogeneity in Consumer Response Models 1996 Choice Conference Participants

We define sources of heterogeneity in consumer utility functions relatedto individual differences in response tendencies, drivers of utility, formof the consumer utility function, perceptions of attributes, statedependencies, and stochasticity. A variety of alternative modelingapproaches are reviewed that accommodate subsets of these various sourcesincluding clusterwise regression, latent structure models, compounddistributions, random coefficients models, etc. We conclude by defining anumber of promising research areas in this field.     

Online/offline (hybrid) consumers and the attention economy

Yoram (Jerry) Wind, Vijay Mahajan, & Robert Gunther. 2002. Convergence Marketing: Strategies for Reaching the New Hybrid Consumer. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. 368 pages. ISBN 0‐13065‐075‐7. Thomas H. Davenport & John C. Beck. 2001. The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. 272 pages. ISBN 1‐57851‐871‐7.     

Product classifications,consumer characteristics,and patronage preference for online auction

An important unanswered question in the area of Internet auctions is what dynamics influences consumer preferences for shopping on these online auctions. Two key aspects of studying what sells on the Internet auctions are (a) the characteristics of products to be purchased and (b) consumer characteristics. This research focuses on the relationship between product purchase preference, prior experience, and socioeconomic characteristics for the online auction participants. It uses product classification theory rooted in information economics and marketing. The study results are based on a US national sample of online auction participants. The findings suggest that product class affects online auction patronage, yet socioeconomic characteristics may not be as influential as once perceived. The online merchants can benefit from the inquiry to improve auctions for search, experience, and credence goods. The five key contributions of the findings add value to the theory and practice of consumer behavior.     

The ‘Triple-alliance’ perspective for new industry creation: Lessons from the flat panel industry in Taiwan

This paper describes how the development of the microelectronics industry in Taiwan has followed an evolutionary path that eventually led to the formation of the ‘Triple-alliance’. The ‘Triple-alliance’ model postulates that a nation's industrialization is fundamentally underpinned by the arrangement of three distinct institutions: state bureaucracy, domestic business groups and multinational corporations. The paper delineates the role of each participating institution in the context of Taiwan's microelectronics industry, and discusses the interaction between domestic and foreign institutions to demonstrate how the alliance facilitates the transfer and absorption of technology. Using the creation of the flat panel display industry in Taiwan as an example, the paper shows that understanding the interactions among these three institutions is essential for uncovering how technology-intensive industries are created in late-industrializing countries. The paper adopts an evolutionary approach in tracing how the web of linkages and alliances among these three institutions has led to the successful creation of Taiwan's technology-intensive flat panel display industry.     

An empirical analysis of alternative parametric ARCH models

This paper presents empirical evidence on the effectiveness of eight different parametric ARCH models in describing daily stock returns. Twenty‐seven years of UK daily data on a broad‐based value weighted stock index are investigated for the period 1971–97. Several interesting results are documented. Overall, the results strongly demonstrate the utility of parametric ARCH models in describing time‐varying volatility in this market. The parameters proxying for asymmetry in models that recognize the asymmetric behaviour of volatility are highly significant in each and every case. However, the ‘performance’ of the various parameterizations is often fairly similar with the exception of the multiplicative GARCH model that performs qualitatively differently on several dimensions of performance. The outperformance of any model(s) is not consistent across different sub‐periods of the sample, suggesting that the optimal choice of a model is period‐specific. The outperformance is also not consistent as we change from in‐sample inferences to out‐of‐sample inferences within the same period. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Efficiency properties of strategies market games: An axiomatic approach

The paper investigates the conditions under which an abstractly given market game will have the property that if there is a continuum of traders then every noncooperative equilibrium is Walrasian. In orther words, we look for a general axiomatization of Cournot's well-known result. Besides some convexity, continuity, and nondegeneracy hypotheses, the crucial axioms are: anonymity (i.e., the names of traders are irrelevant to the market) and aggregation (i.e., the net trade received by a trader depends only on his own action and the mean action of all traders). It is also shown that the same axioms do not guarantee efficiency if there is only a finite number of traders. Some examples are discussed and a notion of strict noncooperative equilibrium for anonymous games is introduced.     

Incentives, Risk, and Agency Costs in the Choice of Contractual Arrangements in Agriculture

The author develops a theory of the choice of contractual arrangements in agriculture by analyzing the incentives, risk-premia, and agency (supervision and shirking) costs under different contracts using the principal–agent framework. The theory is able to explain many tenancy-related issues, such as why sharecropping can be the optimal contract even in the presence of considerable shirking by the tiller, the predominance of sharecropping and of the 50*T*:*T*50 output share, the coexistence of sharecropping with other contracts, and the tenancy ladder.     

采用双网络结构的压缩视频超分辨率重建

在实际应用中,为了节省带宽和方便存储,图像和视频通常被下采样和压缩,而降质的图像与视频无法满足人们的实际需求。针对这一问题,采用了一种双网络结构的超分辨率重建方法,首先建立下采视频与压缩后的低分辨率视频的映射关系,然后建立质量增强的压缩视频与原始视频的映射关系,最终在输出端可以得到质量提升的视频帧。在网络中,采用密集残差块来提取压缩视频中丰富的局部分层特征,并结合全局残差学习恢复视频中的高频信息。在压缩环节,采用高性能视频编码来验证所提算法的有效性。实验结果表明,相比于主流的视频编码标准和先进的超分辨率重建算法,所提方法能有效提升编码视频的率失真性能。