Love or Money? The Effects of Owner Motivation in the California Wine Industry

Models that assume only consumer tastes determine the characteristics of supply are restrictive; producers can gain utility from aspects of production and pay for deviating from demand by accepting lower financial returns. We model and measure motivations of California winery owners, and analyze their effects on quality and price. We find utility–maximizers are more likely to produce high quality and set higher quality–adjusted prices. Profit–oriented owners are less likely to produce high quality wines. These results suggest that the presence of hobbyists who enjoy producing high quality may lower financial returns in the segment and discourage profit–maximizers from locating there.     

Price Commitment versus Flexibility: the Role of Exchange Rate Uncertainty and its Implications for Exchange Rate Passthrough

The paper investigates the incentives to commit price or retain price flexibility in a model in which exporting firms face different degrees of exchange rate uncertainty. The result shows that introducing exchange rate uncertainty can lead to the endogenous emergence of a unique leader–follower equilibrium; which firm emerges as price leader depends on the substitutability of products, the magnitude of exchange rate uncertainty, and the cost structure. This study may provide one explanation as to why some exporters set price before the realization of the nominal exchange rates (“sticky price”). The results imply exchange rate variability affects exchange rate passthrough.     

Building Small City and Town Sams and CGE Models

In this paper we attempt to describe both the data sources and organizational methods that allow for effective and easily created SAMs and regional computable general equilibrium (CGE) models. Small cities of around 100,000 people will face very different constraints than a town of 2000 people. Unfortunately, most CGE models typically describe relatively large geographical areas and are therefore not able to capture the uniqueness of individual cities within the region. An illustrative example using these methods demonstrates that the economic impacts vary substantially over different municipalities to the same economic shock.     

Symmetry and order in the portfolio allocation problem

Summary. This research studies the role of multivariate distribution structures on random asset returns in determining the optimal allocation vector for an expected utility maximizer. All our conclusions pertain for the set of risk averters. By carefully disturbing symmetry in the distribution of the, possibly covarying, returns, we ascertain the ordinal structure of the optimized allocation vector. Rank order of allocations is also established when a permutation symmetric random vector is mapped into the returns vector through location and scale shifts. It is shown that increased dispersion in the vectors of location and scale parameters benefit, ex-ante, investors as does a decrease in the rank correlation coefficient between the location and scale parameter vectors. Revealed preference comparative static results are identified for the location and scale vectors of asset returns. For most issues addressed, we arrive at much stronger inferences when a safe asset is available. Received: August 8, 2000; revised version: January 8, 2001     

The right to the city

The right to the city is not merely a right of access to what already exists, but a right to change it. We need to be sure we can live with our own creations. But the right to remake ourselves by creating a qualitatively different kind of urban sociality is one of the most precious of all human rights. We have been made and re‐made without knowing exactly why, how, and to what end. How then, can we better exercise this right to the city? But whose rights and whose city? Could we not construct a socially just city? But what is social justice? Is justice simply whatever the ruling class wants it to be? We live in a society in which the inalienable rights to private property and the profit rate trump any other conception of inalienable rights. Our society is dominated by the accumulation of capital through market exchange. To live under capitalism is to accept or submit to that bundle of rights necessary for endless capital accumulation. Free markets are not necessarily fair. Worse still, markets require scarcity to function. The inalienable rights of private property and the profit rate lead to worlds of inequality, alienation and injustice. The endless accumulation of capital and the conception of rights embedded threin must be opposed and a different right to the city must be asserted politically. Derivative rights (like the right to be treated with dignity) should become fundamental and fundamental rights (of private property and the profit rate) should become derivative. But new rights can also be defined: like the right to the city which is not merely a right of access to what the property speculators and state planners define, but an active right to make the city different, to shape it more in accord with our heart's desire, and to re‐make ourselves thereby in a different image.     

Management and the Professions: How Cracked is That Glass Ceiling?

All prestigious or highly-paid occupations in Britain are dominated by men: this is as true of the public sector as it is of industry. This article examines the evidence for discrimination in the public sector. It deals with both the situation at work and the one at home. It looks at various explanations as to why this is the case, as well as the evidence on how men and women deal with the inequality. The author concludes that there are good reasons why men and women do not see or confront the issues discussed in her article. Unless men and women wake up to the fact that we live in an unequal society and wish to see the glass ceiling well and truly broken, little is likely to change.     

An algebraic theory of multi-product decisions

Summary. We exploit the existence of matrix group symmetries on a production possibility set to identify group symmetries on the profit function. The groups are isomorphic, and provide a pre-ordering on firm preferences over prices. Together with additional structure on the technology, symmetries generate comparative statics on price responses. Linear and other invariances place bounds on firm choice vectors. Reflection group asymmetries on the feasible choice set also support welfare rankings over prices. The methods are adapted to study consumer decisions.Received: 12 August 2002, Revised: 30 January 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: D11, D21, C60, L23. Correspondence to: David A. Hennessy