Biological conservation in dynamic agricultural landscapes: Effectiveness of public policies and trade-offs with agricultural production

Land use change and land management intensification are major drivers of biodiversity loss, especially in agricultural landscapes, that cover a large and increasing share of the world's surface. Incentive-based agri-environmental policies are designed to influence farmers' land-use decisions in order to mitigate environmental degradation. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of agri-environmental schemes for biological conservation in a dynamic agricultural landscape under economic uncertainty. We develop a dynamic ecological economic model of agricultural land-use and spatially explicit population dynamics. We then relate policies (subsidies to grassland, taxation of agricultural intensity) to the ecological outcome (probability of persistence of a species of interest). We also analyze the associated trade-offs between agricultural production (in value) and biological conservation (in probability of persistence) at the landscape scale.     

财政分权、政府竞争与土地价格结构性偏离

财政分权背景下地方政府的财政约束和政府竞争是导致土地价格结构性偏离的根本原因。地方政府存在拉升商业用地和居住用地出让价格的倾向,金融宽松环境和投机行为盛行会使这两种土地出让价格存在正向偏离其理论地价的可能;而地方政府对流动性税基的争夺过程会导致工业用地出让价格低于其理论价格。工业用地价格与商业和居住用地价格正是在政府这两种反作用力量的作用下出现结构性偏离。     

双品类存货组合的质押率研究

本文假设静态质押模式下组合质押存货的价格变动相互独立并服从对数正态分布。在此基础上,构建质押率决策模型并对其影响因素进行分析。研究结果表明:存在使银行期望利润最大化的最优质押率;质押率与银行贷款利率呈同向递增趋势,随着贷款周期的增加呈现先增加后减小趋势。     

History-based price discrimination and entry in markets with switching costs: A welfare analysis

We analyze history-based price discrimination in an asymmetric industry, where an incumbent, protected by switching costs, faces an entrant who does not have access to information about consumers’ purchase histories. We demonstrate that consumer surplus is higher with uniform pricing than with history-based price discrimination. We find that the entry decision is invariant to whether the incumbent implements history-based pricing or uniform pricing. This implies that the potential abuse of market dominance imposed by history-based price discrimination is exploitation, not exclusion. Finally, we establish that the profit gain to the incumbent from history-based pricing exceeds the associated loss to consumers.     

Estimating demand curve in the Korean VoIP telecommunications market

The VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) market in Korea is showing rapid growth since domestic carriers initiated the service in 2006. These carriers are now seeking new revenue sources from various convergence services and are increasing investment into VoIP. In particular, local exchange carriers (LECs), formerly reluctant to invest in technologies that would cannibalize their local telephone revenue, have started to invest in VoIP, in recognition of the current convergence of media and the telecommunications industry, as well as in the face of intensifying competition. In this study, we determined that VoIP call rates and landline telephony call rates were the most important factors affecting VoIP call demand, in addition to network externality. We also verified that landline telephony is no longer a supplement to VoIP, but rather, a substitute that has considerable influence on VoIP call demand. Empirical evidence is expected to be considered in policy decision making on current issues in the IT industry, such as access prices or competitiveness assessment. The current empirical analysis on the Korean VoIP industry and the adherence to lessons learned from policy enforcement should provide valuable information to countries seeking to develop their own VoIP industries, as well as to businesses developing new strategies based on the VoIP market.     

Marketing and society: Preface to special section on volunteerism, price assurances, and direct-to-consumer advertising

We discuss the reasons why this call for papers was issued and describe the process of selecting the three articles presented in this special section. We argue that maximizing stakeholder welfare and not just consumption maybe a new goal for marketing that will be consistent with emerging societal trends. Three articles on volunteerism, price assurances, and direct-to-consumer advertising result from our call and are presented in this section. This introduction is an overview of the three articles.     

I Have Paid Less Than You! The Emotional and Behavioral Consequences of Advantaged Price Inequality

This study examines the emotion blends and the subsequent customer reactions that occur in advantaged price inequality situations, that is, when consumers learn that retailers charged them a lower price than what the same retailers charged another customer. Drawing on the appraisal theories of emotion and on social comparison theory, an experiment (n = 272) and a field study (n = 261) are conducted. The results reveal that in advantaged price inequality situations, customers experience a host of positive and negative emotions depending on two factors: the quality of relationship that the customer has with a disadvantaged other customer (neutral, positive, or negative) and the attribution of agency for the price advantage (situational attribution to competition, external attribution to store policies, or internal attribution to customer abilities). Positive emotions include happiness, gratitude, pride, and malicious joy; while negative emotions include pity, outrage, and guilt. These emotions are shown to mediate the occurrence of customer reactions (i.e., customer satisfaction, loyalty, WOM referral, and WOM activity). The article concludes with theoretical implications and recommendations for retail practitioners on how to use dynamic pricing.     

The relationship between store image and store brand equity: A conceptual framework and evidence from hypermarkets

Retailers are making considerable efforts to improve their brand management. The challenge they face, however, is how best to integrate coherently their stores, as brands, and their various distributor brands (store brands, private labels, etc.), in order to increase their brand equity and offer the market differential value that will stimulate customer loyalty. From this perspective, it is crucial for retailers to investigate the relationship between the store and their own brands. This study proposes two theoretical models showing the mechanism whereby store image helps increase the equity of a specific type of distributor brand (the store brand). The approach used in this analysis is based, on the one hand, on defining brand equity through its components, using the model in Aaker (1991), and on the other, on including (social and strategic) corporate dimensions in measuring store image. The empirical research made in the hypermarket sector in the Basque province of Gipuzkoa backs the majority of the proposed hypotheses. The results show that store image can be used by retailers to influence all components of store brand equity, essentially through its commercial and strategic dimension. This research is intended to address the clear lack of research on store brand equity.     

Why the Generalized Bass Model leads to odd optimal advertising policies

We show that the optimal advertising strategy under the Generalized Bass Model (GBM) involves beginning at an extremely low level (the lower the better) and then increasing spending throughout the planning period. This strategy remains optimal in the presence of decreasing prices that affect both margins and diffusion speed. We provide a simple explanation for why this happens. We further show that the intuitively appealing patterns of continuous decrease or increase-then-decrease (both with an uptick towards the end) identified in earlier research are also possible as optimal dynamic advertising paths under the GBM structure, but only if the advertising at launch is constrained to be higher than a particular threshold, which we identify. The constraint necessary to generate intuitively appealing strategies lowers overall profits. Therefore, the GBM generates advertising policy recommendations that most marketers would deem odd. This casts doubt on the value of the GBM for normative purposes. Other existing diffusion models are preferred when seeking normative guidance on optimal dynamic advertising policies for new products subject to word of mouth.     

上海大型综合超市调查发现与对策分析

上海超市经历二十五年的演变,从小超市发展到大型综合超市,出现了差异化发展趋势,外资以大型综合超市为主导,内资以中小超市为主导,各有优势与缺陷。本文首次公布了上海商学院管理学院市场营销系对上海普陀区六家大型综合超市的调查数据,提供了调查的七项发现,并指出了大型综合超市进一步发展的四大趋势与三点建议。