The promise and peril of dynamic targeted pricing

Dynamic pricing is widely adopted in many industries, such as travel and insurance. These industries are also gaining extensive capabilities in identifying and segmenting customers, partly fueled by the increasing availability of data. It is natural to ask whether firms should take advantage of such developments by charging different prices to different customer segments. If so, under what conditions? We seek answers to these highly managerially relevant questions.We consider a market with two customer segments served by a monopolist. The monopolist can choose among a set of pricing strategies to exploit consumers’ inter-temporal preferences and/or inter-segment variations. At one end of the spectrum, the firm can charge a constant price to all customers, which is called static pricing. At the other end of the spectrum, the firm can charge different prices to different customer segments and vary these prices over time, which is referred to as dynamic targeted pricing. We systematically compare these alternative pricing strategies. We show that dynamic pricing without targeting can be more effective than static targeted pricing when customers are not very forward looking, which corroborates the findings in the empirical literature. Interestingly, we find that the monopolist can be worse off when she adopts targeting in addition to dynamic pricing. We conduct laboratory experiments to test several key model predictions. The studies show that individuals behave in a manner consistent with the predictions of our model.     

Recent developments in the economics of entrepreneurship

This paper serves as an introduction to the special issue of JBV on the economics of entrepreneurship. Since the beginning of the 18th century, economics has recognized the importance of entrepreneurship at both the microeconomic and macroeconomic levels. This paper reviews recent developments in the economics of entrepreneurship, discusses the principles behind the emergence of a new heterodoxy in economics, and how these new principles provide fertile grounds to further our understanding of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial behavior. Finally, the paper reviews the contributions included in this special issue and puts them in the context of recent developments in entrepreneurship research.     

广西林业产品物流问题及对策研究

林业产品物流的发展滞后使林业产品成本居高不下,从而导致林业整体效率低,林业产品价格竞争不具优势。发展林业产品物流可提高流通效率,有利于提高林业产品竞争力。本文通过分析广西林业产品物流存在的问题,提出发展林业产品物流的一些对策,以推动广西林业的发展。     

主流西方经济学思维对流通理论与实践的影响

以马克思主义为基础的流通理论在建立市场经济过程中发挥了重要作用,但当其随着流通产业的发展进入了新的阶段后,却面临着发展的困惑,就其理论根源而言,是因为主流西方经济学将精力集中在不影响私有产权基础上的制度设计和机制研究,加之理论发展上的路径依赖,对于竞争性的流通领域进行理论研究不符合其理论传统和研究路径.理论上的滞后导致流通产业实践过程中隐含危机,因此流通理论虽不是主流西方经济学的研究范畴,但产业发展和变化要求我们循序渐进的进行流通理论的创新,使其符合时代的需要.     

Asset specificity and behavioral uncertainty as moderators of the sales growth — Employment growth relationship in emerging ventures

Sales growth and employment growth are the two most widely used growth indicators for new ventures; yet, sales growth and employment growth are not interchangeable measures of new venture growth. Rather, they are related, but somewhat independent constructs that respond differently to a variety of criteria. Most of the literature treats this as a methodological technicality. However, sales growth with or without accompanying employment growth has very different implications for managers and policy makers. A better understanding of what drives these different growth metrics has the potential to lead to better decision making. To improve that understanding we apply transaction cost economics reasoning to predict when sales growth will be or will not be accompanied by employment growth. Our results indicate that our predictions are borne out consistently in resource-constrained contexts but not in resource-munificent contexts.     

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: A MICROECONOMIC REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

This paper provides a review of the theoretical and empirical literature on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Depending on whether an individual can be considered as selfish, or whether she has also social preferences, motives for CSR, can be explained in different ways. Furthermore, we explicitly highlight the influence of different Corporate Governance System on CSR as well as the relationship between firms' size and social commitment. Because it is difficult to distinguish between different theories in empirical studies, we argue that an experimental approach might be suitable to test theories of CSR.     

[火用]经济学思想在供应链管理中的应用

在[火用]经济学分析的基础上,综合考虑环境因素对供应链系统的影响,引入了环境负效应因子的概念,并运用系统科学的广义子系统理论,对供应链系统中的各股[火用]流进行分析,建立了供应链广义子系统[火用]经济学模型.     

城市交通拥堵问题研究综述

从经济学、工程学、管理学三个方面详细综述了交通拥堵问题的成因和对策,最后对交通拥堵研究中存在的问题和未来发展的趋势进行了总结和展望。     

Chromosomes and the Slutsky Equation: Lessons from 21st Century Genetics for 20th Century Economics

Reductionist scientific methodology has been at the forefront of economics research for much of the past 50 years. This short essay argues that recent discoveries in genetic engineering show that the study of complex phenomena might not be best served by such an approach, but rather by one that takes into consideration more evolutionary approaches. This provides a tremendous opportunity for the field of bioeconomics to establish itself as a major school of though, going into the future.     

试论生态经济农业

解决传统农业生产模式生态与经济发展的矛盾，缓解生态危机，关键在于建立能实现经济与生态共同繁荣的生态经济农业模式，使经济发展与生态发展融合为一个完整的有机整体，达到生态与经济、人与自然在更高发展水平上和谐统一，21世纪，人类的生存与发展将进入生态经济时代，应该应用生态经济农业的观念指导现代农业，把农业经济行为同生态环境看做一个相互制约的系统，建立人与自然的和谐关系。减少和避免违反自然规律和经济规律的行为。