This paper starts with primitive assumptions on consumer preferences and then derives prices consistent with a social optimum within an insurance company and the capital allocation implied therein. The implied allocation “adds up” to the total capital of the …rm (a result echoing …ndings in the congestion pricing literature— where optimal tolls exactly cover the rental cost of the highway). The...

Considerable media attention has recently been given to novel applications for products that contain nanoscale materials. These products could have utility in several industries that market consumer products, including textiles, sporting equipment, cosmetics, consumer electronics, and household cleaners. Some of the purported benefits of these products include improved performance, convenience,...

Consumer-level activity monitors, such as Fitbit and Misfit devices, are a popular and low-cost means of measuring physical activity. This study aims to compare the accuracy of step counts from two consumer-level activity monitors against two reference devices in healthy, community-dwelling older adults in free-living conditions. Twenty-five older adults (aged 65-84) simultaneously wore 5 devic...

This paper develops and estimates a dynamic model of consumer behavior with switching costs in the market for paid television services. It is hypothesized that consumer choices of cable versus satellite providers are affected by the presence of switching costs, which in turn justifies forward-looking consumer behavior. The model allows for persistently heterogeneous consumer preferences. I esti...

This research aims to apply a model to the study and analysis of environmental and natural resource costs created in supply chains of goods and services produced in Thailand, and propose indicators for environmental problem management, caused by goods and services production, based on concepts of sustainable production and consumer behavior. The research showed that the highest environmental co...

This paper explains four things in a unified way. First, how e-commerce can generate price equilibria where physical shops either compete with virtual shops for consumers with Internet access, or alternatively, sell only to consumers with no Internet access. Second, how these price equilibria might involve price dispersion on-line. Third, why prices may be higher on-line. Fourth, why establishe...

A strategy used by firms in industries such as wireless is to bundle several services into a service plan and administer a nonlinear price with different marginal prices for different usage levels. Usually firms offer more than one service plan. While product bundling and nonlinear pricing have been extensively studied separately in the economics and marketing literature there are no theoretica...

The article analyzes a linear-city model where the consumer distribution can be asymmetric, which is important because in real markets this distribution is often asymmetric. The model yields equilibrium price differences, even though the firms' costs are equal and their locations are symmetric (at the two endpoints of the city). The equilibrium price difference is proportional to the transporta...

BACKGROUND Numerous mechanisms have been introduced to deliver prescription drug benefits while controlling pharmaceutical costs. An understanding of the most prominent mechanisms of benefit management is an important step in determining the most effective approach to take in future years. OBJECTIVES The aims of this review were to illustrate the mechanisms by which managed care has attempted...

This paper describes a model for estimating, in a probabilistic framework, expected future consumer surplus from planned new product innovations. The model has been applied to estimations of taxpayer benefits from NASA's New Millenium Program (NMP), which develops new technologies for space science, and to the digital data storage technologies being supported by the Department of Commerce's Adv...