Revisiting the substantiality criterion: From ethnic marketing to market segmentation

This paper examines the meaning and application of the concept of substantiality for consumer market segmentation and target selection with a focus on ethnicity and minority ethnic groups. In contrast with interpretations of segment substance anchoring on some sufficient potential size to justify time and effort involved in planning, the objective is to consider key group dimensions to ascertain potential substantiality. Common criteria proposed to assess substance are essentially an exhortation to assess the value of the segmenting opportunity. An increase in producer surplus meets this requirement but this consideration is done post hoc. The challenge for market segmentation is to assess substantiality a priori. This paper presents a screening approach based on appraising minority ethnic group resources that enables such an assessment and has potential applicability to other consumer subcultures.     

Screening equilibria in experimental markets

We conduct an experimental test of a screening model of an insurance market with asymmetric information. We first conduct three sessions in which the proportion of high risk buyers is such that a separating equilibrium should exist. We then conduct three more sessions in which the only change we make is decreasing the proportion of high risks such that the equilibrium is now a pooling equilibrium. In both treatments, the observed behavior converges to the equilibrium prediction.

TECHNOLOGY SHOPS: EFFICIENT PRICING IN BUSINESS-UNIVERSITY COLLABORATIONS

Recently, business–university collaborations have become the subject of much interest. It is important to distinguish between ‘blue-sky’ research and more directly commercially applicable research. This paper provides a framework in which to think about the latter. A simple screening model is proposed to study the ways in which a university might sell its research to the private sector. It demonstrates that ‘technology shops’, where firms pay a fixed fee to join and a relatively low marginal cost for each piece of research, would increase the amount of research commercially developed and would be beneficial to all parties.     

Brokers’ contractual arrangements in the Manhattan residential rental market

We bring new evidence to bear on the role of intermediaries in frictional matching markets and on how parties design contracts with them. Specifically, we examine two features of contracts between landlords and agents in the Manhattan residential rental market. In our data, 72 percent of listings involve exclusive relationships between landlords and agents (the remaining 28 percent are non-exclusive); and in 21 percent of listings, the landlord commits to pay the agent’s fee (in the other 79 percent, the tenant pays the agent’s the fee). Our analysis highlights that these contractual features reflect landlords’ concerns about providing agents with incentives to exert effort specific to their rental units and to screen among heterogeneous tenants.     

Screening Ethics when Honest Agents Keep their Word

Using a principal-agent setting, we introduce honesty that requires pre-commitment. The principal offers a menu of mechanisms to screen ethics. Agents may misrepresent ethics. Dishonest agents may misrepresent the match with the assigned task (good or bad), while honest agents reveal the match honestly if they have pre-committed. Ethics-screening, that allows for match-screening with dishonest agents while leaving a lower rent to honest agents, is optimal if both honesty and a good match are likely. Otherwise the optimal mechanism is the standard second-best or the first-best (where dishonest agents misrepresent the match), if dishonesty is likely or unlikely respectively.An earlier version of this paper was entitled “Honest Agents and Equilibrium Lies.” We are grateful to seminar participants at MIT, Université de Caen, University of St Andrews, University of Virginia, and ESEM 99, and two anonymous referees for useful comments.     

Alternating-offer bargaining over menus under incomplete information

Summary. This paper considers bargaining with one-sided private information and alternating offers where an agreement specifies both a transfer and an additional (sorting) variable. Moreover, both sides can propose menus. We show that for a subset of parameters the alternating-offer game has a unique equilibrium where efficient contracts are implemented in the first period. This stands in sharp contrast to the benchmarks of contract theory, where typically only the uninformed side proposes, and bargaining theory, where typically the agreement only specifies a transfer. Received: September 10, 2001; revised version: March 25, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" I benefitted from discussions with Benny Moldovanu, Holger Müller, and Roland Strausz, and from comments made by an anonymous referee.     

On the construction of <Emphasis Type="Italic">E</Emphasis>(<Emphasis Type="Italic">s</Emphasis><Superscript>2</Superscript>)-optimal supersaturated designs

Supersaturated designs are an important class of factorial designs in which the number of factors is larger than the number of runs. These designs supply an economical method to perform and analyze industrial experiments. In this paper, we consider generalized Legendre pairs and their corresponding matrices to construct E(s ²)-optimal two-level supersaturated designs suitable for screening experiments. Also, we provide some general theorems which supply several infinite families of E(s ²)-optimal two-level supersaturated designs of various sizes.      

Two ge neral classes of search designs for factor screening experiments with factors at three levels

In this paper, we are presenting general classes of factor screening designs for identifying a few important factors from a list of m (≥ 3) factors each at three levels. A design is a subset of 3^m possible runs. The problem of finding designs with small number of runs is considered here. A main effect plan requires at least (2m + 1) runs for estimating the general mean, linear and quadratic effects of m factors. An orthogonal main effect plan requires, in addition, the number of runs as a multiple of 9. For example, when m=5, a main effect plan requires at least 11 runs and an orthogonal main effect plan requires 18 runs. Two general factor screening designs presented here are nonorthogonal designs with (2m− 1) runs. These designs, called search designs permit us to search for and identify at most two important factors out of m factors under the search linear model introduced in Srivastava (1975). For example, when m=5, the two new plans given in this paper have 9 runs, which is a significant improvement over an orthogonal main effect plan with 18 runs in terms of the number of runs and an improvement over a main effect plan with at least 11 runs. We compare these designs, for 4≤m≤ 10, using arithmetic and geometric means of the determinants, traces, and maximum characteristic roots of certain matrices. Two designs D1 and D2 are identical for m=3 and this design is an optimal design in the class of all search designs under the six criteria discussed above. Designs D1 and D2 are also identical for m=4 under some row and column permutations. Consequently, D1 and D2 are equally good for searching and identifying one important factor out of m factors when m=4. The design D1 is marginally better than the design D2 for searching and identifying one important factor out of m factors when m=5, … , 10. The design D1 is marginally better than the D2 for searching and identifying two important factors out of m factors when m=5, 7, 9. The design D2 is somewhat better than the design D1 for m=6, 8. For m=10, D1 is marginally better than D2 w.r.t. the geometric mean and D2 is marginally better than D1 w.r.t. the arithmetic mean of the maximum characteristic roots.     

基于乘同余伪随机算法的调频加网效率研究

调频网点的生成体现随机性，其加网效率与多种因素相关。本文重点讨论乘同余伪随机算法生成调频网点的效率问题。首先介绍了伪随机算法用于调频加网生成网点的基本原理，在此基础上讨论了乘同余伪随机算法实现调频加网的方法机制，同时提出5种可用于调频网点生成的随机函数，并通过定量实验对5组乘同余伪随机函数生成随机数效率进行了讨论和研究。通过分析数据和曲线走势图，得出不同条件对加网效率的影响趋势，为调频加网用于印刷生产提供了理论参考。     

Japanese Banks’ monitoring activities and the performance of borrower firms: 1981–1996

We construct an index measure that quantitatively describes the monitoring activities of Japanese banks. Using micro data on Japanese banks and borrower firms, we examine the effects of bank monitoring on the profitability of borrower firms. We find significant positive effects in the periods 1986–1991 and 1992–1996, although there is no significant effect in the period 1981–1985. We also examine how banks’ monitoring affects borrowers. The results show that the positive effects of banks’ monitoring on borrowers’ profitability are mostly caused by screening effects, not performance-improving effects.