A preliminary investigation of factors affecting seafood consumption behaviour in the inland and coastal regions of Victoria,Australia

This paper examines whether there are any substantial differences in factors influencing seafood consumption (at‐home) behaviour of consumers from two different regions of Victoria, Australia. We have used the logit modelling procedure and found that there exist noticeable regional differences in seafood consumption behaviour. In the case of the inland region, it is found that the variables price, distance, taste, quality and season are significant at the conventional level. For the coastal region, the factors quality, age and number of persons employed (at the 5% level) and size of households (at the 10% level) significantly influence the seafood consumption behaviour.     

Optimal sale across venues and auctions with a buy-now option

We characterize the optimal selling mechanism for a seller who faces demand demarcated by a high and a low end and who can access an (online) auction site (by paying an access cost) in addition to using his own store that can be used as a posted price selling venue. We first solve for the optimal mechanism of a direct revelation game in which there is no venue-restriction constraint. We find that the direct optimal mechanism must necessarily incorporate a certain kind of pooling. We then show that even with the venue constraint, the seller can use a two stage indirect mechanism that implements the allocation rule from the optimal direct mechanism, and uses the venues in an optimal fashion. The first stage of the indirect mechanism is a posted price at the store. If the object is not sold, we move to stage two, which involves an auction at the auction site. A feature of this auction is a buy-now option which is essential for implementing the pooling feature of the optimal direct mechanism. We also show that the buy-now option in the optimal mechanism is of a “temporary” variety, and that a “permanent” buy-now option, in contrast, cannot implement the optimal mechanism. Auctions with a temporary buy-now option are in widespread use on eBay. We thank the Associate Editor, George Deltas, for his insightful comments. We also thank seminar participants at the University of Basel and the SAET conference 2007.     

Asymmetric treatment of identical agents in teams

We investigate when identical agents will be treated asymmetrically in a simple team setting. Asymmetric treatment is optimal when the agents’ individual contributions to team performance are strategic complements. Symmetric treatment of identical agents is optimal when the agents’ contributions are strategic substitutes or when they are independent.     

Targeting Debt and Deficits in India: A Structural Macroeconometric Approach

This study attempts to construct a consistent macroeconomic framework for India to review the macro-fiscal linkages over the 14th Finance Commission period, 2015–2019. A macroeconomic policy simulation model comprising of real, external, monetary, fiscal and macroeconomic block is built for the purpose. The estimated model is used for policy simulations to address three scenarios: (a) shock due to 7th Pay Commission award, (b) targeting deficit and debt and (c) targeting higher growth. The results suggest that while Pay Commission award would result in slightly higher growth compared to the base case, this also results in higher inflation, fiscal-revenue deficits, current account deficit as well as higher government liability. Further simulation results suggest that expenditure switching policy, which is the core of expansionary fiscal consolidation mechanism, of increasing higher government capital expenditure and reducing the government transfers could result in higher growth with a manageable fiscal deficit of 5.3% that also brings down the government (centre plus states) liability to around 60% by 2019–2020.