Information Diffusion Effects in Individual Investors' Common Stock Purchases Covet Thy Neighbors' Investment Choices

We study the relation between households' stock purchases and stock purchases made by their neighbors. A ten percentage point increase in neighbors' purchases of stocks from an industry is associated with a two percentage point increase in households' own purchases of stocks from that industry. The effect is considerably larger for local stocks and among households in more social states. Controlling for area sociability, households' and neighbors' investment style preferences, and the industry composition of local firms, we attribute approximately one-quarter to one-half of the correlation between households' stock purchases and stock purchases made by their neighbors to word-of-mouth communication.

Sequences of purchases in credit card data reveal life styles in urban populations

Zipf-like distributions characterize a wide set of phenomena in physics, biology, economics and social sciences. In human activities, Zipf-laws describe for example the frequency of words appearance in a text or the purchases types in shopping patterns. In the latter, the uneven distribution of transaction types is bound with the temporal sequences of purchases of individual choices. In this work, we define a framework using a text compression technique on the sequences of credit card purchases to detect ubiquitous patterns of collective behavior. Clustering the consumers by their similarity in purchases sequences, we detect five consumer groups. Remarkably, post checking, individuals in each group are also similar in their age, total expenditure, gender, and the diversity of their social and mobility networks extracted by their mobile phone records. By properly deconstructing transaction data with Zipf-like distributions, this method uncovers sets of significant sequences that reveal insights on collective human behavior.Comment: 30 pages, 26 figure

A conceptual and empirical framework to analyze the economics of consumer food waste

We develop a microeconomic model to understand food waste of consumers. We capture at-home and away-from home food consumption and distinguish between food purchases and food consumption. We allow the consumer to choose the rate of food waste at home optimally to maximize her utility. We show that consumer purchases can decline or increase with a cut in the rate of consumer waste, depending on the elasticity of food demand. Using the UK data for poultry in 2012, we also show a case where for a price elastic demand food consumption increases with a reduction in the food waste rate, but food purchases (retail sales) increase

Farmers' Supply-Purchasing Practices

Farmers' purchasing characteristics, reasons for choosing suppliers, and purchasing strategies were different for fertilizer, fuel, feed, and pesticide purchases of 100 commercial sized farmers. With fuel, few price discounts were received and few supplier changes made. More price adjustments and supplier changes occurred with fertilizer and pesticide purchases. Distribution systems influenced feed purchases. Fertilizer and pesticide purchases with quantity discounts or supplier negotiations were twice as large. Large farmers have more purchasing options. Cooperatives were valued as business organizations. Farmer purchasing strategies affect cooperatives and other supply organizations.Purchasing practices, farm supplies, buying strategies, price discounts, cooperatives, Agribusiness,

DEMAND AND QUALITY UNCERTAINTY IN PECAN PURCHASING DECISIONS

A generalized Heckman model of purchase decisions incorporating perceived consumer quality attributes, ease of purchase, and familiarity with marketing outlets as factors influencing pecan purchases is estimated. Marketing efforts that encourage consumers to expand expenditures on nut products increase both the probability of pecan purchases and the amount purchased. Consumers who use all types of nuts in a wider variety of foods tend to purchase pecans more frequently. A diverse set of marketing outlets provides consumers with convenient sources of purchasing pecans and has a significant influence on the probability of pecan purchases but not the amount of pecans purchased.generalized Heckman model, pecan purchases, Tobit, Demand and Price Analysis,

Net Gains from 'Net Purchases? Farmers' Preferences for Online and Local Input Purchases

E-commerce represents both threats to and opportunities for rural communities. This study addresses one element of the issue: farmers' willingness to substitute online merchants or national farm input stores for local businesses. Results of a conjoint analysis of contingent choice experiments suggest that farmers are willing to purchase from online or national stores outside their communities if compensated with lower prices or greater services. Results also demonstrate that the context of the input purchase, such as time constraints, was very important not only in valuing these services, but, more broadly, in terms of the farmer's loyalty to a local merchant.e-commerce, farm input purchase, willingness to pay, contingent choice, rural communities, Farm Management, Marketing,

Buying Local in Union County and Creston: An Economic Impact Assessment

Many communities worry about sales leakages. This report helps to explain the potential local area economic impacts of buy local campaigns for both business purchases and for household purchases

Consumer Cohorts and Milk Purchases

Fluid milk is the most important product of Norwegian agriculture, and the decline in milk purchase has impact in many rural communities. By decomposing the milk purchase into cohort effects, age effects and year effects we show that the reason for the decline is that older generations purchase more milk than younger generations, and during lifetime consumption decline with age. Consequently, as younger generations replace older generations milk purchase decline. We show that towards 2021 the milk purchase will continue to fall.Milk, Purchases, Cohorts, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,