Recently fixed pricing and auctions have been brought together in a new pricing format that offers bidders the option of prematurely ending an auction at a fixed price. The growing popularity of auctions presents an interesting pricing decision for managers: whether to sell at a fixed price, in a regular auction, or through a buy-it-now auction. This paper studies eBay’s buy-it-now auction and ...

In the present study, the effects of bioethanolunleaded gasoline blends on engine performance were investigated in a spark ignition engine. Fuel containing 100% ethanol (E100), fuel blend containing 40% bioethanol by volume (E40) and 100% unleaded gasoline (E0) were tested and the test results were compared. As the result of the study, it was found that the use of unleaded gasoline and bioethan...

Our objective is to assess personal income under perfect competition, when factors are rewarded according to their productivities, and to contrast the ensuing distribution with the status quo. Competition will yield winners and losers, both in terms of factor claims and in terms of regions or provinces. Income differences will press people to migrate. To analyze this, we divide China into 30 in...

Until its sales of a product materialize, a firm is a “pre-producer” in the market for that product. That firm may may be a new start-up, or it may already sell other products. Firms that do not succeed in generating sales eventually become discouraged and move on to other activities. When this fate befalls a lot of firms, as it recently did in several IT-related businesses, the indistry experi...

In this paper, I will try to show that the idea that there can be consciousness without some form of attention, and high-level top-down attention without consciousness, originates from a failure to notice the varieties of forms that top-down attention and consciousness can assume. I will present evidence that: there are various forms of attention and consciousness; not all forms of attention pr...

Two kinds of relations are generally proposed between consciousness and matter. Firstly matter gives rise to consciousness and secondly consciousness gives rise to matter. The second possibility is explored in the paper. The term consciousness vector has been proposed by the author earlier. In this paper the origin of space, time and matter is discussed in the terms of consciousness vector. It ...

This study surveys the operation modes, results and problems of the waste container recycling system in Taiwan, known as the Four-in-One Program, and compares the collation and time trend analysis of the program’s results (such as the garbage clearance volume, the recycling rate of recyclable resources, the price of plastic “Due Recyclable Waste Containers” (DRWCs), among other variables). The ...

The science of consciousness begins with the search for the neural correlates of consciousness. I explain this notion and give examples of research in the field. I then discuss how different conceptions of consciousness may influence the search for the neural correlates. This includes the distinctions between access and phenomenal consciousness, and between conscious states and unified consciou...

It is well known that in linear programming, the optimal values of the dual variables can be interpreted as shadow prices (marginal values) of the right-hand-side coefficients. However, this is true only under nondegeneracy assumptions. Since real problems are often degenerate, the output from conventional LP software regarding such marginal information can be misleading. This paper surveys and...

AIMS To review empirical research that seeks to relate marginal increases in enforcement against the supply of illicit drugs to changes in drug prices at the level of the drug supply system being targeted. METHOD Review of empirical studies. FINDINGS Although the fact of prohibition itself raises prices far above those likely to pertain in legal markets, there is little evidence that raisin...