Focusing on the interaction between national brands and private labels, this paper has two main empirical contributions: i) a simultaneous system of demand (share), price and expenditure equations is estimated, and ii) differences in the structure of the local geographic market are incorporated...

Prices for nearly all basic commodity rose at unprecedented rates throughout early 2008, only to fall nearly as fast as financial markets and global economies began to collapse. Rising food prices in 2008 led to concerns that commodity price spikes would lead to more general food inflation, but...

Well-defined interfaces and standardization allow for the composition of single Web services into value-added complex services. Such complex Web Services are increasingly traded via agile marketplaces, facilitating flexible recombination of service modules to meet heterogeneous customer demands....

The fundamental paradigm shift from traditional value chains to agile service value networks (SVN) implies new economic and organizational challenges. This work provides an auction-based coordination mechanism that enables the allocation and pricing of service compositions in SVNs. The mechanism...

Game theoretic modeling involves making assumptions on agents' infinite hierarchies of beliefs. These assumptions are understood to be only approximately satisfied in the actual situation. Thus, the significance of game theoretic predictions depend on robustness properties of the solution...

This article deals with the optimal differentiation of agri-environmental contracts based on a self-selection mechanism. The paper demonstrates that both economic efficiency and effectiveness of public expenditures can be increased, if a menu of combinations of farming practices and payments are...

Paper removed by author 02/04/09.

Many conservation programs offer financialcompensation to farmers in exchange for socially desiredservices, such as soil conservation or biodiversity protection.Realization of the conservation objective at minimum costrequires payments to just cover the extra costs incurred byeach individual...

"In 1968, Hardin argued that all commonly-owned resources would tragically be depleted unless private ownership was granted. There are many case studies which prove Hardin wrong. Common-pool resources have been managed with success. However, this success does not imply (as some believe) that...

This paper is a theoretical analysis of incentive setting via civil litigation, with a focus on incentives for care in activities that may be harmful to others (torts). It makes two main contributions: one directly policy-relevant, one conceptual. In most existing research, litigation is modeled...