1,720,992 research outputs found
Endogenous subsidies for cleaner products: the role of eco-friendly consumers.
In a vertically differentiated duopoly, we assume that environmental subsidies are endogenously determined by the demand for dirtier goods and the relative greenness of cleaner alternatives. By contemplating the possibility that a subsidy targets either consumers or firms, we study how the impact of a subsidy changes with its recipients, consumers versus firms. A consumer-based subsidy is environmentally enhancing and increases firms' profits at equilibrium, while it hurts consumers. Overall, however, it is welfare improving. A firm-based subsidy makes firms better off but may be environmentally harmful and has the paradoxical effect of hurting consumers buying the cleaner variant. Moreover, it is welfare detrimental on the whole
Three essays on anti-consumerism, anti-hedonism and environmentalism, and economic growth
Rapid environmental changes and technological developments are crucial for sustainable economic growth goals. This dissertation aims to highlight the consequences of firms' and consumers' behavior for society in the presence of external influences exerted by environmental doctrines. In addition, it offers a comparison between machine learning and time series-based methodologies in predicting economic growth. The first chapter delves into the dichotomy between hedonic and environmental attributes of goods in a market characterized by vertical differentiation with heterogeneous consumer preferences. It examines how anti-hedonism and environmentalism influence market outcomes and societal welfare, revealing unexpected harmful effects. A relatively high level of environmental doctrines is detrimental to the ecological surplus. The second chapter explores anti-consumerism, distinguishing between its roles as a psychic reward or cost and its impact on pricing strategies, firm profits, and social welfare within markets for horizontally differentiated goods. The analysis demonstrates that the beneficial societal outcomes are predominantly associated with incentive-based (carrot) approaches rather than punitive (stick) measures. The final chapter compares traditional time series analysis with machine learning, incorporating a variety of economic factors for different strategies in forecasting the real United States Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The K-Nearest Neighbour (KNN) model enhances short-term accuracy predictions. In contrast, linear regression, including financial and macroeconomic factors, enhances long-term accuracy, offering valuable insights for data-driven economic decision-making. This dissertation sheds light on consumer behavior, firms strategies, and predictive modeling, suggesting pathways for more sustainable and informed economic practices
A note on acquisition of complements in a vertically differentiated market
This note is concerned with the effects of joint ownership of complements when they are vertically differentiated. We provide strong arguments for the positive nature of network integration among firms, while showing at the same time that, in some circumstances, anti-competitive consequences can be observed under acquisition
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Turning Piracy into Profits: a Theoretical Investigation
We analyse how the presence of a (private, small-scale) file-sharing community affects the profitability of producers of digital goods within a spatial duopoly model à la Hotelling (1929). Consumers can download pirated content by joining this file-sharing network. To gain access to the community, consumers have to buy and share a digital good with other members. We show that firms benefit from piracy in emerging markets, that is, markets that are not fully covered. The activity of file-sharing, in fact, allows firms to reach a larger share of customers who otherwise would not buy at all. This effect is missing in mature and widespread markets where firms prefer to be protected from piracy. Our results provide a rationale for the observation that in emerging countries, companies are unlikely to take a firm stance against piracy
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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