Payday loan pricing

We estimate the pricing determinants for 35,098 payday loans originated in Colorado between 2000 and 2006, and generate a number of results with implications for public policy. We find evidence consistent with classical price competition early in the sample, but as time passed these competitive effects faded and the data become more consistent with a variety of strategic pricing practices. On average, loan prices moved upward toward the legislated price ceiling over time, consistent with implicit collusion facilitated by price focal points. Large multi-store payday firms tended to charge higher prices than independent single-store operators, but were less likely to exploit inelastic demand near military bases and in largely minority neighborhoods. Of the three loan pricing measures used in our analysis, the annual percentage interest rate (APR) favored by regulators and analysts performed poorly.

The efficiency of individual optimization in the conditions of competitive growth

The paper aims to discuss statistical properties of the multi-agent based model of competitive growth. Each of the agents is described by growth (or decay) rule of its virtual "mass" with the rate affected by the interaction with other agents. The interaction depends on the strategy vector and mutual distance between agents and both are subjected to the agent's individual optimization process. Steady-state simulations yield phase diagrams with the high and low competition phases (HCP and LCP, respectively) separated by critical point. Particular focus has been made on the indicators of the power-law behavior of the mass distributions with respect to the critical regime. In this regime the study has revealed remarkable anomaly in the optimization efficiency

A continuous model for dynamic pricing under costly price modifications

This paper presents a heuristic method to solve a dynamic pricing problem under costly price modifications. This is a remarkably difficult problem that is solvable only under very few special cases. The method is applied to a more general form of the problem and is numerically tested for a variety of demand functions in the literature. The results show that the method is quite accurate, approximating the optimal profit within usually much less than 1\%. A more important result is that the accuracy tend to be much greater as the number of price changes increases, precisely when the underlying optimization problem becomes much harder, which makes this approach particularly desirable

Discrete location planning

Two new models for discrete location planning under static competition are introduced. The empirical context is an enterprise that is planning to set up a number of stores in various locations. The probability that a customer chooses a specific store is obtained from a multinomial logit (MNL) model. In the first model we apply the basic MNL model where the choice set contains all potential locations. To obtain the choice probabilities of a reduced choice set, we take advantage of the property of constant substitution patterns which can be modelled by linear constraints. In the second model we consider the case where flexible substitution patterns are accounted for. The main idea is to simulate, for a given number of individuals, their alternative specific utility values. Thus for each individual, we can identify which locations have to be opened to attract an individual as a customer. We consider two parcel service providers in the City of Dresden. Both approaches can be solved very fast within few minutes with a small solution gap by a state-of-the-art solver

Short-term memory and long-term memory are still different.

A commonly expressed view is that short-term memory (STM) is nothing more than activated long-term memory. If true, this would overturn a central tenet of cognitive psychology-the idea that there are functionally and neurobiologically distinct short- and long-term stores. Here I present an updated case for a separation between short- and long-term stores, focusing on the computational demands placed on any STM system. STM must support memory for previously unencountered information, the storage of multiple tokens of the same type, and variable binding. None of these can be achieved simply by activating long-term memory. For example, even a simple sequence of digits such as "1, 3, 1" where there are 2 tokens of the digit "1" cannot be stored in the correct order simply by activating the representations of the digits "1" and "3" in LTM. I also review recent neuroimaging data that has been presented as evidence that STM is activated LTM and show that these data are exactly what one would expect to see based on a conventional 2-store view. (PsycINFO Database Recor

Maximal covering location problems on networks with regional demand

Covering problems are well studied in the Operations Research literature under the assumption that both the set of users and the set of potential facilities are finite. In this paper we address the following variant, which leads to a Mixed Integer Nonlinear Program (MINLP): locations of p facilities are sought along the edges of a network so that the expected demand covered is maximized, where demand is continuously distributed along the edges. This MINLP has a combinatorial part (which edges of the network are chosen to contain facilities) and a continuous global optimization part (once the edges are chosen, which are the optimal locations within such edges). A branch and bound algorithm is proposed, which exploits the structure of the problem: specialized data structures are introduced to successfully cope with the combinatorial part, inserted in a geometric branch and bound. Computational results are presented, showing the appropriateness of our procedure to solve covering problems for small (but nontrivial) values of p.Unión EuropeaMinisterio de Ciencia e InnovaciónJunta de Andalucí

Best practices and informal guidance on how to implement the Comprehensive Assessment at Member State level

This report details a methodology for performing a cost-benefit analysis (CBA) identifying the most resource and cost-efficient solutions to meet heating and cooling demands for a given country or region in accordance with Article 14(3) and taking in account Part 1 of Annex IX of the of the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) (EC, 2012). The methodology includes guidelines how to: (1) collect data about energy consumption and supply points needed to construct heat maps, (2) how to identify system boundaries, (3) assess the technical potential that can be satisfied by efficient technical solutions, including high efficiency cogeneration, micro-cogeneration and efficient district-heating and cooling. (4) define baseline and alternative scenarios, including quantifying the cost and benefits of both scenarios. This comprises for example the economic value of other effects is estimated, mainly, the changes in socio-economic and environmental factors. Cost-Benefit Analyses integrate all costs and benefits over a long period are integrated in a unique estimate, the Net Present Value, which provides information about the net change of welfare derived from the implementation of the different heating and cooling scenarios. In the end, the cost-benefit analyses shall provide information about which are the most cost-efficient solutions to meet the heating and cooling needs of a country or a region.JRC.F.6-Energy Technology Policy Outloo

Account of Different Views in Dynamic Choice Processes

Series: Discussion Papers of the Institute for Economic Geography and GIScienc