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Articles 1 - 8 of 8
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Green Markets, Eco-Certification, And Equilibrium Fraud, Stephen F. Hamilton, David Zilberman
Green Markets, Eco-Certification, And Equilibrium Fraud, Stephen F. Hamilton, David Zilberman
Economics
Consumers voluntarily pay significant price premiums to acquire unobservable environmental attributes in green markets. This paper considers the performance of eco-certification policy under circumstances where consumers cannot discern environmental attributes in goods, but are able to form rational expectations regarding the extent of illicit activities in the green market. The main results are: (i) fraud is less prevalent in green markets when entry barriers limit the number of firms; (ii) conventional environmental policies on polluting techniques increase the incidence of fraud, and can even preclude the use of non-polluting techniques which would otherwise emerge in green markets; (iii) voluntary eco-certification …
The Anatomy Of An Oil Price Shock, Eric O'N. Fisher, Kathryn G. Marshall
The Anatomy Of An Oil Price Shock, Eric O'N. Fisher, Kathryn G. Marshall
Economics
Oil price shocks do not cause inflation, no matter how close the connection seems to be in our practical experience. But they can cause significant price increases throughout the economy. Tracing the way a sharp increase in the price of crude oil affects prices in various industrial sectors of the U.S. economy suggests how big these increases are. Fortunately, our economy seems better prepared now to weather such shocks than in the 1970s and 1980s.
Tobacco Control Programs And Tobacco Consumption, Michael L. Marlow
Tobacco Control Programs And Tobacco Consumption, Michael L. Marlow
Economics
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) believe that adequate funding of tobacco control programs by all 50 states would reduce the number of adults who smoke by promoting quitting, preventing young people from ever starting, reducing exposure to secondhand smoke, and eliminating disparities in tobacco use among population groups. CDC has established guidelines for comprehensive tobacco control programs, including recommended funding levels, in Best Practices for Comprehensive Tobacco Control Programs (CDC 1999; hereafter called Best Practices). Recommendations are based on best practices in nine program elements: community programs to reduce tobacco use, chronic disease programs to reduce the …
Rivalry In Price And Variety Among Supermarket Retailers, Timothy J. Richards, Stephen F. Hamilton
Rivalry In Price And Variety Among Supermarket Retailers, Timothy J. Richards, Stephen F. Hamilton
Economics
Recent theoretical models of retail competition suggest that product heterogeneity is critical to retail price and variety strategies. This article provides empirical evidence on supermarket retailers' price and variety strategies using a nested constant elasticity of substitution (NCES) modeling framework. The model is estimated using chain-level scanner data for four major grocery chains in a large, urban West Coast market. The results show that retailers compete for market share using both price and variety. While they all tend to follow moderately cooperative pricing strategies, the extent to which they follow cooperative strategies in variety is less homogeneous.
Priors That Do Not Rule Out Strategic Uncertainty Cannot Lead To Nash Equilibrium, Eduardo Zambrano
Priors That Do Not Rule Out Strategic Uncertainty Cannot Lead To Nash Equilibrium, Eduardo Zambrano
Economics
Consider a two player game that is to be played once. The players receive information that they use to help them predict the choices made by each other. A decision rule for each player captures how each player uses the information received in making their choices. Priors in this context are probability distributions over the information that may be received and over the decision rules that their opponents may use. I investigate the existence of prior beliefs for each player that satisfy the following properties: (R) they do not rule out their opponent using a rational decision rule, (K) they …
Monte Carlo Methods For Estimating, Smoothing, And Filtering One- And Two-Factor Stochastic Volatility Models, Garland B. Durham
Monte Carlo Methods For Estimating, Smoothing, And Filtering One- And Two-Factor Stochastic Volatility Models, Garland B. Durham
Finance
One- and two-factor stochastic volatility models are assessed over three sets of stock returns data: S&P 500, DJIA, and Nasdaq. Estimation is done by simulated maximum likelihood using techniques that are computationally efficient, robust, straightforward to implement, and easy to adapt to different models. The models are evaluated using standard, easily interpretable time-series tools. The results are broadly similar across the three data sets. The tests provide no evidence that even the simple single-factor models are unable to capture the dynamics of volatility adequately; the problem is to get the shape of the conditional returns distribution right. None of the …
Naked Slotting Fees For Vertical Control Of Multi-Product Retail Markets, Robert Innes, Stephen F. Hamilton
Naked Slotting Fees For Vertical Control Of Multi-Product Retail Markets, Robert Innes, Stephen F. Hamilton
Economics
Slotting fees are fixed charges paid by food manufacturers to retailers for access to the retail market. This note considers this practice in the context of multi-product markets with imperfectly competitive retailers, a monopoly supplier of one good, and competitive suppliers of other goods. We show how the monopolist and the retailers can use "naked" slotting fees–charges imposed on the suppliers of other goods–to obtain vertically integrated monopoly profits.
The Forward Premium In A Model With Heterogeneous Prior Beliefs, Eric O'N. Fisher
The Forward Premium In A Model With Heterogeneous Prior Beliefs, Eric O'N. Fisher
Economics
This paper explores a model of bond prices where agents have diverse prior beliefs about domestic and foreign inflation. In the long run, the foreign exchange forward premium reflects expected differences in inflation, but in the short run, it depends upon the diversity of prior beliefs. If some people have diffuse priors about a country's inflation process, then its currency commands a forward premium that is eventually dissipated. Using data on the dollar–mark premium from the 1980s, it shows that this kind of diversity really matters. Thus models with a single representative agent give an inadequate description of the data.