The Effects of Energy Cost Labelling on Appliance Purchasing Decisions: Trial Results from Ireland

Household failure to minimize the total costs of energy-consuming investments has become known as the “energy efficiency gap.” This paper explores if this is partly the result of imperfect information related to future energy costs. We test this hypothesis by adding 5-year consumption cost labels to the tumble dryer lineup of four outlets of an Irish electrical retailer. Although we observe a reduction in the average energy consumption of dryer sales, our analysis does not show a statistically significant effect. However, we highlight a number of experimental limitations in our trial which potentially undermine this treatment effect. In addition, mixed findings from previous research suggest that further trials should be conducted before “lifetime” energy cost labelling is removed from potential policy options to increase the energy efficiency of household appliances.     

Towards a Personal Knowledge of Economic History

A bstract . Our intellectual heritage from the Polanyi Brother: Michael, the scientist-philosopher, and karl, the economic historian, is explicated. Michael Polanyi's Post-critical philosophy of personal Knowledge is explained and analyzed.
Michael Polanyi applied his philosophy to develop a powerful historical epistemology and methodology. The classic economic history. The Great Transformation , by Karl Polanyi is analyzed and interpreted as a prototypical example of a historical work which utilized and applied Michael Polanyi's historical epistemology and methodology. It is concluded that the Polanyi Brothers have developed a powerful historical epistemology and have applied their methodology to expand historical knowledge beyond the limits of the "new" economic history.     

Competing on value: Perspectives on business class aviation

This paper presents an airline consumer choice model to analyze value propositions – the benefits delivered to passengers in relation to the fares paid. The model is developed using a study of clientele flying business class, studying three premium start-up airlines Eos, MaxJet and Silverjet that provided business-class-only flights on London–New York routes. Premium airlines were compared to selected rival full-service carriers for sustainability of their business class value propositions, using preference profiles of five target customer groups that comprise the business class passenger population. We find that the three premium start-up airlines were superior in offering some appealing features at reasonable fares that were highly valued by some passengers, although they were unable to replicate some other attractive aspects in the value propositions of the incumbents. This suggests a coexistence of premium entrants and incumbent carriers would have been possible, had the environment they operated in not changed drastically for the worse, before the premium entrants had achieved the financial robustness necessary for survival.     

Internationalization in Japan’s service industries

The relatively low level of internationalization in Japan’s service industries is a cause of real concern among policy-makers and service industry executives. Explanations have focused on distinctive features of Japan’s culture, particularly its service culture, and idiosyncratically demanding customers. Two additional factors are also of significance: the complexity of the customer interface and process embeddedness in the home country. Mapping service sectors in terms of these two dimensions offers insights into the challenges faced by Japanese service firms, while also providing a framework for assessing home country effects in general.     

Racial Differences in Civic Participation and Charitable Giving: The Confounding Effects of Educational Attainment and Unmeasured Ability

In this paper we use human capital theory to follow the links from educational attainment to civic engagement, and to other pro-social behaviors such as charitable giving and volunteering, and in so doing we offer a cautionary explanation for observed racial differences in civic participation, giving, and volunteering. Our argument is that when, in a racialized society such as the U.S., the costs and benefits of education differ by race, and when innate ability is an unmeasured source of heterogeneity across individuals, controlling for educational attainment and not for ability will create spurious race effects in empirical studies of behaviors that depend on both education and ability. Because (1) blacks at any level of educational attainment are predicted to be of higher average ability than equally educated whites and (2) higher ability is associated with higher levels of civic participation, a regression of civic participation on educational attainment and race will produce a positive coefficient on the dummy variable that takes on a value of one if the subject is African American. Using data from the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, we find strong support for the interpretation of race effects as spurious artifacts of having included data on educational attainment without measures of innate ability.     

A Decade of EC Merger Control

The introduction of the EC Merger Control Regulation in September 1990 plugged a serious gap in European competition policy. This paper examines aspects of its record over the first ten years. These include the changing scope of the policy and the much higher level of activity than originally anticipated. Developments in the appraisal of mergers are assessed with particular reference to oligopoly, the treatment of non-competition effects and dynamic competition, especially in high tech industries. The risks of an increasing tendency towards remedial settlements are also discussed and some future challenges highlighted .     

The effect of monetary policy on real estate price growth in China

Using quarterly data from 1998:Q1 to 2009:Q4 and monthly data from July 2005 to February 2010, this paper examines the impact of key monetary policy variables, including long-term benchmark bank loan rate, money supply growth, and mortgage credit policy indicator, on the real estate price growth dynamics in China. Empirical results consistently demonstrate that expansionary monetary policy tends to accelerate the subsequent home price growth, while restrictive monetary policy tends to decelerate the subsequent home price growth. These results suggest that Chinese monetary policy actions are the key driving forces behind the change of real estate price growth in China. We also show that hot money flow does not have a significant impact on the change of home price growth after controlling for the money supply growth. Finally, a bullish stock market tends to accelerate subsequent home price growth.