Markets with Search and Switching Costs

By incorporating the additional existence of switching costs into an oligopoly search model by Stahl (1989), this paper dispels the misleading idea that search costs can simply be treated as a form of switching cost. Due to the assumption that search costs, unlike switching costs, are incurred unconditionally on the decision to switch suppliers it is shown that the anticompetitive effects of search costs are consistently larger than those from an equivalent level of switching costs. The finding suggests that obfuscation practices that aim to deter consumers from searching, such as competing on deliberately complex tariffs, may be particularly powerful relative to practices that increase the costs of substitution between firms, such as loyalty programs or termination fees.Search costs; Switching costs; Obfuscation

Conformity, deformity and reformity

In any given field of artistic practice, practitioners position themselves—or find themselves positioned—according to interests and allegiances with specific movements, genres, and traditions. Selecting particular frameworks through which to approach the development of new ideas, patterns and expressions, balance is invariably maintained between the desire to contribute towards and connect with a particular set of domain conventions, whilst at the same time developing distinction and recognition as a creative individual. Creativity through the constraints of artistic domain, discipline and style provides a basis for consideration of notions of originality in the context of activity primarily associated with reconfiguration, manipulation and reorganisation of existing elements and ideas. Drawing from postmodern and post-structuralist perspectives in the analysis of modern hybrid art forms and the emergence of virtual creative environments, the transition from traditional artistic practice and notions of craft and creation, to creative spaces in which elements are manipulated, mutated, combined and distorted with often frivolous or subversive intent are considered. This paper presents an educational and musically focused perspective of the relationship between the individual and domain-based creative practice. Drawing primarily from musical and audio-visual examples with particular interest in creative disruption of pre-existing elements, creative strategies of appropriation and recycling are explored in the context of music composition and production. Conclusions focus on the interpretation of creativity as essentially a process of recombination and manipulation and highlight how the relationship between artist and field of practice creates unique creative spaces through which new ideas emerge

Project management and music in education and related fields

Project Management (PM) is a well-established field of research with the scope of inquiry now ranging far beyond the industrial and corporate sectors from which it first emerged. Starting from the premise that PM expertise is a valuable professional attribute and life skill of relevance to many if not all educational disciplines, questions emerge both as to how relevant techniques can be most effectively applied in educational contexts, and how insights might potentially be drawn from the study of different disciplines to enrich the PM profession. This paper focuses initially on higher education (specifically university level study) within the United Kingdom (UK) and other countries, and provides a contextual analysis of the discourse and practice of PM in undergraduate degree subjects. Discussion then narrows in on the discipline of music, as a specific context for consideration of PM through the educational and professional continuum. Identifying a relative absence of explicit PM theory or terminology in the vast majority of degree subjects at least in the UK, there is, nevertheless, an underlying presence of project-based activity at least implicit in all university education and music, in particular, presents a distinctive example of a creative, cultural, educational, where PM is an integral component and experience of subject and discipline. This paper concludes by identifying significant value in the development of a more explicit approach to PM in educational contexts and considerable scope for the development of professional relationships between PM organizations and the higher education sector in particular

The business of invention: considering project management in the arts and industry

Project management has well developed theoretical constructs and is becom- ing increasingly well established in core strategy beyond the industrial and corporate sec- tors from which it first emerged. With a concurrent increase in the significance of innova- tion, project managing for creativity is an area of research and enquiry of considerable sig- nificance. Notionally occupying polar opposite cultural positions in terms of perspectives and processes of creativity, project management in the arts is widely considered to vary significantly from corporate strategy and process. If business were to be more generally characterised by ‘organisation’ and discipline, the arts are more commonly celebrated for disorganisation, indiscipline, and the fundamental challenge to organisation itself. Consid- ering both the confluences and variations between established project management theory in business and practice in the arts, this text introduces theoretical constructs pertaining to creative processes and highlights areas for consideration in the understanding and further development of project management theory

Creativity and authenticity: perspectives of creative value, utility and quality

This paper is written from the perspective of creative practitioners in sound, music and the visual arts teaching in UK higher education. Primarily concerned with the understanding of creativity as a developmental capacity and identifiable and measurable process and outcome, what began initially as a focused discussion about the assessment of creative artefacts developed progressively into a more general analysis of creative value in terms of reception and developmental experience. Recognising the impact of new technologies and the changing conceptions of creative technique and craft, collaboration and origination, and diversification of attendant interpretive meanings inherent with new artistic forms, the study is an attempt to establish a position from which pedagogic practices can be honed and refined to meet the expectations and needs of contemporary practitioners and educational contexts. The objective in any educational experience and any process of artistic creation being to enrich and to effectively inform further development steps, value is therefore a highly diverse and granular commodity, measurable on many different scales, and capable of understanding in many different ways. This is a study of considerations and perspectives and ways of understanding and working with creative value and an attempt to develop a framework through which to base creative decisions as educators and practitioners. Creativity models tend to emphasise utility and originality as the key factors in determining creative value; the wider recognition and impact of the outcomes of creative endeavour preeminent in the interpretation and attribution of quality and significance. Whilst most evident and analytically objectifiable in the study of reception and in the analysis of outcomes, creative practices and processes nevertheless feature more prominently in the interpretation of value in some fields. Whilst the products of the creative practice of artists, musicians and writers retain the centre ground in the discourse of creativity, the authentication of creative endeavour is nevertheless closely connected to the narratives surrounding the inception and development of the work and the security of the connection established between the creative object and the creative originator; the intangible and entirely conceptual matter of attribution and provenance often proving more significant than physical artefact in substantiating at least commercial value in many cases. Investigating the potential for a meaningful definition of ‘authentic creativity’, notions of novelty, ignorance, forgery, fakery, reproduction and patterning, provide a basis for consideration of creativity both as an unstable concept and in parallel as a metaphor for the human condition. Considering the discourse of authenticity and aesthetics, this paper explores different perspectives of creativity as lived experience and positions analysis in the narratives of insight, imagination, and the romanticism of discovery and talent. Introducing an analysis of creativity through a series of conceptual models to illustrate key concepts and ideas, this essay presents a discussion rooted in a context of collapsing distinctions between the natural and the artificial, the authentic and the inauthentic, the original and the copy, and develops a tentative definition of authentic creativity and creative authenticity for wider consideration. That creativity matters in education and society is widely acknowledged and appreciated. This paper argues for a greater focus on the lived experience of creativity and the significance of determining value in terms of human experience over productivity

The Effects of Consumer Protection on Sales Signs, Consumer Search and Competition

Within a one-shot, duopoly game, we show that firms cannot use false in- store price comparisons to deter rational consumers from further beneficial price search in an effort to create market power. However, by introducing a consumer protection authority that monitors price comparisons, we formalise Nelson’s (1974) conjecture by showing that ‘middle-order’ monitoring can actually facilitate the deception of fully rational consumers, to deter them from otherwise optimal search. Despite this effect, we show that no increase in monitoring can ever harm consumers due to a second, larger effect that improves consumer information and increases the intensity of price competition.Comparative Price Advertising, Deception, Obfuscation, Cheap Talk

Convergence towards diversity? Cohort dynamics in the transition to adulthood in contemporary Western Europe

This paper addresses the transition to adulthood in developed countries. It reviews the main theories that have been employed in recent years to explain trends in such variables as age ages at leaving home, union formation, first marriage and first birth. The paper then examines the median ages at which women in nine European countries experienced these events and the inter-quartile range within each cohort. The results do not provide unequivocal support for any of the main theories. In conclusion we offer some speculative remarks on what form an alternative theory might take.

How Far Does Economic Theory Explain Competitive Nonlinear Pricing in Practice?

Liberalisation of the British electricity market, in which previously monopolised regional markets were exposed to large-scale entry, is used to test the propositions of several recent theoretical papers on oligopolistic nonlinear pricing. Consistent with those theories, each oligopolist offered a single two-part electricity tariff, and a lump sum discount to consumers who purchased both electricity and gas. However, inconsistent with those theories, firms’ two-part tariffs are heterogeneous in ways that cannot be attributed to cost. We establish a series of stylised facts about the nature of these asymmetries between firms and use them to confront established theory