infonet-economy

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Market liberalization of the German household electricity market has led to an excessive number of competitors (1,150 electricity providers) and volatile price dynamics on price comparison sites. To date, providers that are struggling to achieve a top ranking on price comparison sites do not appear to implement a consistent or elaborate strategy for attracting customers. We developed a pricing tool, E lectricity C ontract O ptimization (ECO), that addresses this highly competitive market situation by integrating various available data sources, such as data from price comparison sites, demographic data, and regional sales or cost data. ECO sets regionally varying one-time bonuses to attract new customers on price comparison sites with the goal of optimizing sales and profit targets or optimally allocating sales budgets. Based on two field experiments, we demonstrate that ECO’s optimization procedure reduces ENTEGA yearly sales costs for new customer business, on average, by 35% relative to previously used pricing heuristics. ENTEGA uses ECO monthly to analyze different scenarios or to set prices and one-time bonuses on price comparison sites.

Online price comparison sites (shopbots) like PriceGrabber.com are the most powerful tools for consumers to easily compare prices and find offers for desired products. Besides providing distributions of actual prices in price comparison tables, shopbots like NexTag.com have recently introduced price charts (line charts) displaying a product's full price history. Price charts should support consumers in forming expectations about future prices. Nevertheless, it is currently unclear how price charts influence consumer price expectations and purchase decisions. The results of this study show that the provision of past prices leads to strong adjustments of price expectations depending on price chart characteristics. In particular, the trend, variance and range of past prices in the chart strongly affect price expectations and purchase timing decisions. Furthermore, in the case of a strong downward trend and high variance in past prices, results show that nearly 50% of the total effect is caused by the visualization of the price history.

Many studies document systematic gender differences in a variety of important economic preferences, such as risk-taking, competition and pro-sociality. One potential implication of this literature is that increased female representation in decision-making bodies may significantly alter organizational and policy outcomes. However, research has yet to establish a direct connection from gender differences in simple economic choice tasks, to voting over policy and to the resulting outcomes. We conduct a laboratory experiment to provide a test of such a connection. In small laboratory “societies,” people repeatedly vote for a redistribution policy and engage in a real-effort production task. Women persistently vote for more egalitarian redistribution. This gender difference is large relative to other voting differences based on observable characteristics and is partly explained by gender gaps in preferences and beliefs. Gender voting gaps persist with experience and in environments with varying degrees of risk. We also observe policy differences between male- and female-controlled groups, though these are considerably smaller than the mean individual differences—a natural consequence of the aggregation of individual preferences into collective outcomes. Thus, we provide evidence for why substantial and robust gender differences in preferences may often fail to translate into differential policy outcomes with increased female representation in policymaking.

We present approaches to (generalized) Newton methods in the framework of generalized equations $0\in f(x)+M(x)$, where $f$ is a function and $M$ is a multifunction. The Newton steps are defined by approximations $\hat f$ of $f$ and the solutions of $0\in \hat{f}(x)+M(x)$. We give a unified view of the local convergence analysis of such methods by connecting a certain type of approximation with the desired kind of convergence and different regularity conditions for $f+M$. Our paper is, on the one hand, thought as a survey of crucial parts of the topic, where we mainly use concepts and results of the monograph (Klatte and Kummer, Nonsmooth equations in optimization: regularity, calculus, methods and applications, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 2002). On the other hand, we present original results and new features. They concern the extension of convergence results via Newton maps (Klatte and Kummer, Nonsmooth equations in optimization: regularity, calculus, methods and applications, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 2002; Kummer in: Oettli, Pallaschke (eds) Advances in optimization, Springer, Berlin, 1992) from equations to generalized equations both for linear and nonlinear approximations $\hat f$, and relations between semi-smoothness, Newton maps and directional differentiability of $f$. We give a Kantorovich-type statement, valid for all sequences of Newton iterates under metric regularity, and recall and extend results on multivalued approximations for general inclusions $0\in F(x)$. Equations with continuous, non-Lipschitzian $f$ are considered, too.

This paper studies the impact of a key feature of competitive markets on moral behavior: the possibility that a competitor will step in and conclude the deal if a conscientious market actor forgoes a profitable business opportunity for ethical reasons. We study experimentally whether people employ the argument "if I don’t do it, someone else will" to justify taking a narrowly self-interested action. Our data reveal a clear pattern. Subjects do not employ the "replacement excuse" if a social norm exists that classifies the selfish action as immoral. But if no social norm exists, subjects are more inclined to take a selfish action in situations where another subject can otherwise take it. By demonstrating the importance of social norms of moral behavior for limiting the power of the replacement excuse, our paper informs the long-standing debate on the effect of markets on morals.

We assess the quantitative implications of the re-use of collateral on financial market leverage, volatility, and welfare within an infinite-horizon asset-pricing model with heterogeneous agents. In our model, the ability of agents to re-use frees up collateral that can be used to back more transactions. Re-use thus contributes to the build-up of leverage and significantly increases volatility in financial markets. When introducing limits on re-use, we find that volatility is strictly decreasing as these limits become tighter, yet the impact on welfare is non-monotone. In the model, allowing for some re-use can improve welfare as it enables agents to share risk more effectively. Allowing reuse beyond intermediate levels, however, can lead to excessive leverage and lower welfare. So the analysis in this paper provides a rationale for limiting, yet not banning, re-use in financial markets.

This paper investigates how the peer gender composition in university affects students' major choices and labor market outcomes. Women who are randomly assigned to more female peers become less likely to choose male-dominated majors, they end up in jobs where they work fewer hours and their wage grows at a slower rate. Men become more likely to choose male-dominated majors after having had more female peers, although their labor market outcomes are not affected. Our results suggest that the increasing female university enrolment over recent decades has paradoxically contributed to the occupational segregation among university graduates that persists in today’s labor market.