This instructional case examines quantitative and qualitative information in the decision to acquire a franchise store of a Gourmet Deli chain. In particular, it illustrates to students how commonly requested quantitative information in practice, such as an income statement, needs to be tailored...

The European Commission has produced precise rules governing the computation of the cost of services of general economic interest (SGEI). The Commission has adopted a fully distributed cost approach where the SGEI can bear a "reasonable" share of the common cost. We highlight a possible...

In this paper we consider the question of allocating costs and setting prices for customers in a variety of queuing systems. We will focus on the problem of setting users fees within an organization for a shared resource, such as a computer center. We argue that both the Aumann-Shapley pricing...

Cost allocation problems arise in many contexts in economics and management science. In a typical problem that we have in mind, a decision maker must decide how to allocate the joint cost of production among several commodities using prices. Furthermore, these prices must satisfy certain...

Recent years have seen a dramatic shift from mutual funds into hedge funds even though hedge funds charge management fees that have been decried as outrageous. While expectations of superior returns may be responsible for this shift, this article shows that mutual funds are more expensive than...

In U.S. antitrust, pricing below some level of cost has become almost necessary to a finding of predatory pricing. The case law is ambiguous on this, and the Circuits have differing standards, but many courts require a showing that price is, or was, below marginal (sometimes called incremental)...