A learning-oriented decision-making process for real estate brokerage service evaluation

Real estate brokers or realtors are expected to possess superior knowledge of their local markets and typically require commissions in return for their services in real estate sales. To justify these commissions, it is important to evaluate brokerage service performance. We develop a learning-oriented decision-making process for evaluating real estate brokerage services, which concentrates on understanding the nature, the role, and the interaction of the evaluation aspects of real estate brokerage service quality by integrating cognitive maps and the Decision EXpert approach. Results suggest that this framework permits new rudiments to be considered in the realtor decision-making and sales process, facilitating transparency, and understanding of realtor functions that may lead to recommendations to improve the performance and quality of these functions. Avenues for future research are also presented.     

Complementary Goods: Prices and Consumer Welfare Under Duopoly and Monopoly

We examine prices, profits, and consumer surplus for differentiated complementary goods under duopoly and a multi‐product monopoly. We find that little can be said about the relative magnitudes of prices of the components of a system of complementary goods under the alternative market structures. Although demand complementarity can lead to lower prices for either the primary or the secondary good under monopoly, both prices are not necessarily lower. The results unique to this paper are that, when two complementary goods form a system, the system price is unambiguously lower and consumer surplus and profits are higher under a multi‐product monopoly.