This study evaluated the capacity of the medicine pricing mechanism of the National Medicines and Poisons Board (NMPB), the medicine regulatory agency of Sudan, in controlling prices of imported medicines. The study was conducted between July and September 2008 and data on the 50 most sold medicines in 2007 were obtained from the records of the regulatory authority and pharmacies in Khartoum; 1...

The Thanksgiving-Christmas holiday period is a major sales period for US retailers. Due to higher store traffic, tasks such as restocking shelves, handling customers’ questions and inquiries, running cash registers, cleaning, and bagging, become more urgent during holidays. As a result, the holiday-period opportunity cost of price adjustment may increase dramatically for retail stores, which sh...

BACKGROUND This study aims at understanding the mechanisms underlying the dramatic decline of the retail prices of major drugs like cocaine and heroin during the past two decades. It also aims at analysing the implications of this decline for drug policies. METHODS We use a theoretical model to identify the possible causes of this price decline. This allows us to formulate the hypothesis that...

It is a defining characteristic of electricity supplied through AC networks that it cannot be efficiently stored, and needs to supplied at the instant that demand is registered. If retail prices in electricity markets do not fluctuate in response to fluctuations in demand and supply, then the burden of adjustment falls completely on the supply sides, necessitating a large investment in generati...

We use a unique store-level data set to directly measure menu costs and to study the price change process at a large U.S. drugstore chain. We compare and contrast the magnitude of these measures with similar measures from 4 large U.S. supermarket chains. We find that (1) the actual magnitude of menu costs as a share of revenues, (2) menu costs per price change, (3) the frequent use of promotion...

Do Gasoline Pricing Laws Affect Prices? It Depends on the Plaintiff Studies of the effects of the "below-cost" gasoline pricing laws that exist in several states have led to contradictory results regarding the significance and direction of price impacts at the retail level. The majority have found such laws produce higher prices because they insulate inefficient firms from competition with more...

It has been documented that retail gasoline prices respond more quickly to increases in wholesale price than to decreases. However, there is very little theoretical or empirical evidence identifying the market characteristics responsible for this behavior. This paper presents a new theoretical model of asymmetric adjustment that empirically matches observed retail gasoline price behavior better...

Understanding the degree of price stickiness and the nature of price setting is necessary for analyzing the effects of monetary policy on economy. To the best of our knowledge, no comprehensive study has examined the degree of price stickiness in Iran yet. For this reason, we examine the basic features of retail price setting behavior using a large data set containing the micro data underly...

Inactive myostatin (one or two copies) results in increased muscularity, increased yield of closely trimmed retail product, reduced fat content, increased lean growth efficiency, reduced quality grade, increased birth weight, and increased dystocia. Even though one or two copies of inactive myostatin reduces quality grade or marbling compared to zero copies, there is no decrease in meat tendern...