Search results for "MICROECONOMICS"
showing 10 items of 442 documents
When buyers also sell: The implications of pricing policies for customer satisfaction
2002
In certain purchase situations, such as when a new car is purchased and an old vehicle is traded in, individuals simultaneously play the role of buyers and sellers. It is interesting to observe that, when evaluating the purchase and selling prices of the new and old products respectively, such consumers often fail to behave rationally. For example, a discount on the price of the new commodity and an equivalent markup on the old product will be weighted differently. This empirical phenomenon can be analyzed with the aid of the prospect theory - an approach based on the descriptive decision theory. This theory facilitates the elaboration of decision-making rules for determining the optimum pu…
Can the International Environmental Cooperation Be Bought?
2005
In this paper a two-stage game of international environmental agreement formation with asymmetric countries is solved. The equilibrium of the game allows to determine the number of countries interested in signing the agreement. Two cases are studied. In the first case, it is assumed that the only difference among countries is given by the abatement costs, and in the second case, by the environmental damages. In both cases, two different institutional settings, one without side payments and another with side payments, are considered. The results establish that the asymmetry assumption has no important effects on the scope of cooperation in comparison with the symmetric case if side payments …
A Simulation Analysis of the Microstructure of an Order Driven Financial Market with Multiple Securities and Portfolio Choices
2005
In this paper we propose an artificial market where multiple risky assets are exchanged. Agents are constrained by the availability of resources and trade to adjust their portfolio according to an exogenously given target portfolio. We model the trading mechanism as a continuous auction order-driven market. Agents are heterogeneous in terms of desired target portfolio allocations, but they are homogeneous in terms of trading strategies. We investigate the role played by the trading mechanism in affecting the dynamics of prices, trading volume and volatility. We show that the institutional setting of a double auction market is sufficient to generate a non-normal distribution of price changes…
Evolving to the Impatience Trap: The Example of the Farmer-Sheriff Game
2011
The literature on the evolution of impatience, focusing on one-person decision problems, finds that evolutionary forces favor the more patient individuals. This paper shows that in the context of a game, this is not necessarily the case. In particular, it offers a two-population example where evolutionary forces favor impatience in one group while favoring patience in the other. Moreover, not only evolution but also efficiency may prefer impatient individuals. In our example, it is efficient for one population to evolve impatience and for the other to develop patience. Yet, evolutionary forces move the wrong populations.
Converging Analysis of the Concept of Strategic Group in the Spanish Lighting Industry
2008
Strategic group literature does not seem to offer strong enough theoretical bases to state the very existence of strategic groups and their effects on firm’s conduct and performance. The empirical validation of the existence of strategic groups has been usually done trying to contrast their predictive validity in relation to performance, obtaining conflicting evidence. Other papers have decided to contrast the convergent validity of the strategic group concept using different definitions and measures of this construct. Our work belongs to the second type of studies. It tries to make progress in the development of a theoretical model, able to state the industry features which affect the prob…
Is Democracy Exportable?
2017
Among many aspects to the question of whether democracy is exportable, this contribution focuses on the role of the people, understood not as a unitary actor but as a heterogeneous set: the citizens. The people matter, in a different way, both in the countries to which democracy might be exported and in the democratic countries in which the question is about promoting democracy elsewhere. The mechanisms or characteristics involved in the discussion include yardstick competition, differences among citizens in the intensity of their preferences, differences among autocracies regarding intrusion into private life, citizens’ assessments of future regime change, and responsiveness of elected inc…
Analysis of intermittent supply systems in water scarcity conditions and evaluation of the resource distribution equity indices
2007
Generally, urban water distribution shortage situations are solved by introducing discontinuous service and rationing the available water resources. This approach is widely adopted, not only in developing countries but also in developed ones, for solving short term scarcity conditions which can be caused by unpredicted drought periods. Intermittent distribution has the advantage of requiring small financial efforts but it leads to network operating conditions that are very far from the usual design ones. With the aim to analyse and describe the water supply network behaviour in intermittent conditions, a network hydraulic model has been set up in which both user and manager dependent regula…
Real-time pricing for aggregates energy resources in the Italian energy market
2015
Abstract Over the last decade, the architecture of the energy market has radically changed. In many countries end-users are now able to directly access the market, which has given rise to the question of how they can actively participate in that market. End-users can comprise a critical mass through aggregation that is carried out by a third party – to wit the “loads aggregator.” This paper proposes a new framework for generating feasible real-time price curves for those end-users in a demand-response management process. The underlying algorithm generates output curves as the solution to a constrained optimization problem whose objective function is the aggregator's economic benefit. A case…
Inducing efficient conditional cooperation patterns in public goods games, an experimental investigation
2010
This study analyses the behavior in a repeated public goods game when subjects know about the possibility of existence of strict conditional cooperators. We employed a baseline treatment and a threat treatment in which subjects are informed about the possibility of being in a group together with automata playing a grim trigger strategy. We conjecture the resulting game allows for almost fully efficient outcomes. Contributions in the threat treatment increase by 40% before a surprise restart, and by 50% after the surprise restart. In line with the grim trigger strategy subjects contribute either all or nothing in the threat treatment.
Die Herausbildung von Zufriedenheits-urteilen bei Alternativenbetrachtung
1999
Traditional elements of competitive differentiation are declining. As industries and firms worldwide face increasing competition, slower growth rates, and price pressures, greater attention is being placed on customer satisfaction. However the research in satisfaction never consider alternatives, when customer satisfaction is formed. It has been the approach of this paper to present an extension for this circumstance. Therefor the regret theory, a diversion of the expectation utility theory, is used to explain the phenomena. According to this theory, each outcome has associated with it the evaluation of the difference between the outcome and the outcome that would have been received had a d…