Exploiting the Installed Base Using Cross-Merchandising and Category Destination Programs

We investigate two ways to increase sales and customer loyalty by taking advantage of a store\u27s installed base of current customers. We propose a classification of products into two types. Products of Type 1 are products for which consumers have a loyalty to a specific retailer and, as far as possible, always shop at that retailer for these products. The other products (Type 2) are not associated with any retailer and are bought at whichever retailer consumers happen to shop when they plan or remember to buy the product. With this in mind, we test the potential of two marketing tools to help retailers increase their share of sales of the Type 2 segment. Using a category destination program we show that one can successfully transform Type 2 into Type 1 products. Using cross-merchandising promotions, we show that one can increase the sales of Type 2 products thereby gaining a larger share of discretionary purchases than what one would receive from a straight random allocation. Both series of tests yielded significant increases in sales and profits and were deemed successful by the retailers who implemented them

Shelf Management and Space Elasticity

Shelf management is a difficult task in which rules of thumb rather than good theory and hard evidence tend to guide practice. Through a series of field experiments, we measured the effectiveness of two shelf management techniques: “space-to-movement,” where we customized shelf sets based on store-specific movement patterns; and “product reorganization” where we manipulated product placement to facilitate cross-category merchandising or ease of shopping. We found modest gains (4%) in sales and profits from increased customization of shelf sets and 5–6% changes due to shelf reorganization. Using the field experiment data, we modeled the impact of shelf positioning and facing allocations on sales of individual items. We found that location had a large impact on sales, whereas changes in the number of facings allocated to a brand had much less impact as long as a minimum threshold (to avoid out-of-stocks) was maintained

Demographic Responses To Famines In South Asia

Summary This article examines demographic responses to major famines in the Indian subcontinent, including the Bengal famine of 1943–44, the Bangladesh famine of 1974–75 and food crises in Bihar and Maharashtra. It argues that while a decline in conceptions (and, subsequently, births) is a prompt and virtually universal response to famine situations, the relationship of a rise in death rates to circumstances of famine is both much more complex and less certain. Increases in mortality due to famine ? when they occur ? are conditioned not just by food problems, but also by an array of factors such as current patterns of disease, migration, relief and rainfall. Knowledge about the normal prevailing seasonal distribution of mortality is especially helpful in anticipating when famine death rates may rise. Relatedly, information about malaria and rainfall regimes can also be particularly important. The article also addresses famine mortality differentials according to their patterns by age and sex. Study of neglected historical data sources underscores the complexity and interrelated nature of the main elements ? fertility, mortality and migration ? of famine demography. Resumé Les Résponses Démographiques A La Famine En Asie Du Sud Le présent article examine les réponses démographiques face aux famines majeures qui se sont déclarées dans le sous?continent indien, y compris la famine de 1943–44 au Bengale; la famine de 1974–75 au Bangladesh; et les crises d'approvisionnement alimentaire dans les états du Bihar et du Maharashtra. L'auteur estime que, si une diminution dans le taux de conceptions (et, par la suite, de naissances) est une réponse rapide et pratiquement universelle aux cas de famine, le rapport entre les augmentations dans le taux de mortalité et ces cas de famine est un phénomène à la fois bien plus complexe ? et beaucoup moins certain. Les augmentations dans le taux de mortalité dues à la famine, lorsque celle?ci se déclare, ont pour préconditions non seulement les problèmes de l'alimentation mais aussi, tout un éventail d'autres facteurs tels que les mouvements dans les taux de maladie; la migration; la lutte contre la famine; et la hauteur des précipitations. Une connaissance de la distribution saisonnière normale ? pour la period sous considération ? des taux de mortalité est surtout utile si l'on veut essayer d'anticiper à quel stade les taux de mortalité dûs à la famine seront susceptibles de s'élever. Parallèlement, les renseignements concernant le paludisme et les pronostics de hauteur des précipitations seront éventuellement tout aussi importantes. Le présent article s'adresse également aux différentiels de mortalité par la famine en termes de leurs tranches d'age et en termes des genres. Une étude des sources négligées de données historiques sert à souligner la complexité et l'interdépendance des principaux éléments de la démographie de la famine: la fertilité, la mortalité et la migration. Resumen Respuestas Demográficas Al Problema Del Hambre En Asia Del Sur Este artículo examina las respuestas demográficas a las peores situaciones de hambre en el sub?continente indio, incluyendo la crisis de Bengal en 1943–1944, la de Bangladesh en 1974–1975, y otras crisis de alimentos en Bihar y Maharashtra. Se argumenta que si bien la declinación en cincepciones (y, subsecuentemente, nacimientos) es una respuesta immediata y vitualmente universal a las situaciones de hambre, la relación entre el aumento de tasas de mortalidad y las circunstancias de hambre es a la vez mucho más compleja y mucho menos segura. El incremento en la mortalidad como consecuencia del hambre ? cuando ocurre ? está condicionado no sólo por problemas de alimentos, sino también por una serir de factores como los patrones de enfermedad, migración, ayuda externa y cantidad de illuvia. El conocimiento de la distribución predominante de la mortalidad de acuerdo a la época del año ayuda especialmente para anticipar el momento en que las tasas de mortalidad por hambre pueden aumentar. En conexión con ésto último, la información sobre malaria y regímenes de cantidad de lluvia puede ser también particularmente importante. El artículo también explora las diferenciales en la mortalidad por hambre de acuerdo a la edad y al sexo. El estudio de fuentes de datos históricamente relegados subraya la complejidad y naturaleza interrelacionada de los prioncipales elementos de la demografía del hambre: fertilidad, mortalidad y migración

What is Socialism Today? Conceptions of a Cooperative Economy

Socialism is back on the political agenda in the United States. Politicians and some economists who identify as socialists, however, do not discuss property relations, a topic that was central in the intellectual history of socialism, but rather limit themselves to advocacy of economic reforms, funded through taxation, that would tilt the income distribution in favor of the disadvantaged in society. In the absence of a more precise discussion of property relations, the presumption must be that ownership of firms would remain private or corporate with privately owned shares. This formula is identified with the Nordic and other western European social democracies. In this article, I propose several variants of socialism, which are characterized by different kinds of property relation in the ownership of society’s firms. In addition to varying property relations, I include as part of socialism a conception of what it means for a socialist society to possess a cooperative ethos, in place of the individualistic ethos of capitalist society. Differences in ethea are modeled as differences in the manner in which economic agents optimize. With an individualistic ethos, economic agents optimize in the manner of John Nash, while under a cooperative ethos, many optimize in the manner of Immanuel Kant. It is shown that Kantian optimization can decentralize resource allocation in ways that neatly separate issues of income distribution from those of efficiency. In particular, remuneration of labor and capital contributions to production need no longer be linked to marginal-product pricing of these factors, as is the key to efficiency with capitalist property relations. I present simulations of socialist income distributions, and offer some tentative conclusions concerning how we should conceive of socialism today

Constraints on profit income distribution and production efficiency in private ownership economies with Ramsey taxation

Author's draft published as discussion paper by University of Exeter Department of Economics. The original publication is available at www.springerlink.comIn economies with Ramsey taxation, decreasing returns to scale, and private ownership, we show that second-best production efficiency is desirable when the grouping of private firms induced by the profit taxation power of the government is at least as fine as the grouping of firms induced by the institutional rules of profit distribution in the economy. The classic results of Dasgupta and Stiglitz [1972] (of firm-specific profit taxation) and Diamond and Mirrlees [1971] and Guesnerie [1995] (of uniform one-hundred percent profit taxation) follow as special cases of our model. Moreover, second-best analysis shows that optimal profit taxation is a substitute for optimal intermediate input taxation. In smooth economies, proportional, lump-sum, and affine modes of profit taxation are equivalent. We rework Mirrlees [1972] counterexample, which is posed in the context of a non-smooth economy, to show that second-best production efficiency continues to remain desirable under an affine structure of profit taxation

Furthering alternative cultures of valuation in higher education research

The value of higher education is often implicit or assumed in educational research. The underlying and antecedent premises that shape and influence debates about value remain unchallenged which perpetuates the dominant, but limiting, terms of the debate and fosters reductionism. I proceed on the premise that analyses of value are not self–supporting or self-referential but are embedded within prevailing cultures of valuation. I contend that challenging, and providing alternatives to, dominant narratives of higher education requires an appreciation of those cultures. I therefore highlight some of the existing cultures of valuation and their influence. I then propose Sayer’s concept of lay normativity as a culture of valuation and discuss how it translates into the practices of research into higher education, specifically the practice of analysis. I animate the discussion by detecting the presence of lay normativity in the evaluative space of the capability approach

Topological Price of Anarchy bounds for clustering games on networks

We consider clustering games in which the players are embedded in a network and want to coordinate (or anti-coordinate) their choices with their neighbors. Recent studies show that even very basic variants of these games exhibit a large Price of Anarchy. Our main goal is to understand how structural properties of the network topology impact the inefficiency of these games. We derive topological bounds on the Price of Anarchy for different classes of clustering games. These topological bounds provide a more informative assessment of the inefficiency of these games than the corresponding (worst-case) Price of Anarchy bounds. As one of our main results, we derive (tight) bounds on the Price of Anarchy for clustering games on Erdős-Rényi random graphs, which, depending on the graph density, stand in stark contrast to the known Price of Anarchy bounds