In marketing durable goods, manufacturers use varying degrees of leasing and selling to consumers, e.g., cars, photocopiers, personal computers, airplanes, etc. The question that this raises is whether the distinction between leases and sales is simply one of price, or whether the proportion of leases and sales effects a firm’s ability to compete in the market. In this paper we use two approach...

Properly functioning markets effi ciently allocate resources. Such markets must refl ect certain principles, including consumer options, cost-based pricing, and economic neutrality. Transportation markets oft en violate these principles. This report examines these distortions and their implications for transport planning. Transportation market distortions include various types of underpricing o...

The aim of this study is to find an automobile pricing model using artificial neural networks (ANN). As commonly known, pricing is a difficult matter for both automobile manufacturers and buyers/sellers. Developing a neural networks based on the technical properties of automobiles will allow both groups to price autos with great ease. However, in this study there are two basic assumptions. The ...

A methodology is presented for studying the effects of automobile emission policies on the design decisions of profitseeking automobile producers in a free-entry oligopoly market. The study does not attempt to model short-term decisions of specific producers. Instead, mathematical models of engineering performance, consumer demand, cost, and competition are integrated to predict the effects of ...

Consumers’choices depend on preferences over outcomes and beliefs about how their choices map into these outcomes. While economic models typically assume some form of rational expectations or "perfect beliefs,” in reality consumers are often ill-informed or confused. In this paper, I elicit beliefs over the …nancial bene…ts and costs of higher or lower fuel economy using the Vehicle Ownership a...

Executive Summary We develop a consumer-level model of vehicle choice to shed light on the erosion of the U.S. automobile manufacturers' market share during the past decade. We examine the influence of vehicle attributes, brand loyalty, product line characteristics, and dealerships. We find that nearly all of the loss in market share for U.S. manufacturers can be explained by changes in basic v...

We study the kidney market in Iran. The most effective treatment for end-stage renal disease is a kidney transplant. While the supply of cadaveric kidneys is limited, the debate has been focused on the effects of the existence of a free market for human organs. Economists as well as medical and legal researchers are divided over the issue. Iran has a unique kidney market which has been in place...

Do active secondary markets aid or harm durable goods manufacturers? We build a dynamic equilibrium model of durable goods oligopoly, with consumers who incur lumpy costs when transacting in the secondary market, and calibrate it to U.S. automobile industry data. By varying transaction costs, we obtain a direct measure of the competitive pressure that secondary markets create on durable goods m...

While much has been written about how consumers make decisions to purchase foreign brand-name products, relatively less is known about the effect of international relations on the market performance of the products of one country in another with which it has conflicts. Motivated by this gap in the literature, we test the effect of the relationship between China and Japan on automobile sales, an...