1,720,959 research outputs found

    Advertising in the US Personal Computer Industry

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    Traditional models of consumer choice assume consumers are aware of all products for sale.This assumption is questionable, especially when applied to markets characterized by a high degree of change, such as the personal computer (PC) industry. I present an empirical discrete-choice model of limited information on the part of consumers, where advertising influences the set of products from which consumers choose to purchase. Multi-product firms choose prices and advertising in each medium to maximize their profits. I apply the model to the US PC market, in which advertising expenditures are over $2 billion annually. The estimation technique incorporates macro and micro data from three sources. Estimated median industry markups are 19% over production costs. The high industry markups are explained in part by the fact that consumers know only some of the products for sale.Indeed estimates from traditional consumer choice models predict median markups of one fourth this magnitude. I find that product-specific demand curves are biased towards being too elastic under traditional models of consumer choice. The estimates suggest that PC firms use advertising media to target high-income households, that there are returns to scope in group advertising, and that word-of-mouth or experience plays a role in informing consumers. The top firms engage in higher than average advertising and earn higher than average markups.

    Cooperation in the Classroom: Experimenting with Research Joint Ventures

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    This paper describes a classroom exercise that illustrates the investment incentives facing firms when technological spillovers are present. The game involves two stages in which student “sellers” first make investment decisions then production decisions. The classroom game can be used to motivate discussions of research joint ventures, the free-rider problem, collusion, and antitrust policy regarding research and development.

    Limited Information and Advertising in the U.S. Personal Computer Industry

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    Traditional discrete-choice models assume buyers are aware of all products for sale. In markets where products change rapidly, the full information assumption is untenable. I present a discrete-choice model of limited consumer information, where advertising influences the set of products from which consumers choose to purchase. I apply the model to the U.S. personal computer market where top firms spend over $2 billion annually on advertising. I find estimated markups of 19% over production costs, where top firms advertise more than average and earn higher than average markups. High markups are explained to a large extent by informational asymmetries across consumers, where full information models predict markups of one-fourth the magnitude. I find that estimated product demand curves are biased toward being too elastic under traditional models. I show how to use data on media exposure to improve estimated price elasticities in the absence of micro ad data. Copyright 2008 The Econometric Society.

    Advertising in the U.S. Personal Computer Industry

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    Traditional models of consumer choice assume consumers are aware of all products for sale. This assumption is questionable, especially when applied to markets characterized by a high degree of change, such as the personal computer (PC) industry. I present an empirical discrete-choice model of limited information on the part of consumers, where advertising influences the set of products from which consumers choose to purchase. Multi-product firms choose prices and advertising in each medium to maximize their profits. I apply the model to the US PC market, in which advertising expenditures are over $2 billion annually. The estimation technique incorporates macro and micro data from three sources. Estimated median industry markups are 19% over production costs. The high industry markups are explained in part by the fact that consumers know only some of the products for sale. Indeed estimates from traditional consumer choice models predict median markups of onefourth this magnitude. I find that product-specific demand curves are biased towards being too elastic under traditional models of consumer choice. The estimates suggest that PC firms use advertising media to target high-income households, that there are returns to scope in group advertising, and that word-of-mouth or experience plays a role in informing consumers. The top firms engage in higher than average advertising and earn higher than average markups

    Cooperation in the Classroom: Experimenting with R&D Cooperatives

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    This paper describes a classroom experiment that illustrates the research and development investment incentives facing firms when technological spillovers are present. The game involves two stages in which student sellers first make investment decisions then production decisions. The classroom game can be used to motivate discussions of research joint ventures, the free-rider problem, collusion, and antitrust policy regarding research and development

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    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

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    “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

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    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
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