The Busse–Heikes dynamical model is described in terms of relaxational and non-relaxational dynamics. Within this dynamical picture a diverging alternating period is calculated in a reduced dynamics given by a time-dependent Hamiltonian with decreasing energy. A mean period is calculated which results from noise stabilization of a mean energy. The consideration of spatial-dependent amplitudes l...

This paper examines the motivations for the construction of consumer decision tools (CDTs). CDTs are Web-based decision support systems aimed at improving the quality of consumer decisions. CDTs are useful for high involvement choices, such as car or university programme selection, where the consumer is strongly affected by the outcome. Firms will supply CDTs only when they desire informed, mut...

Previous research has found that iconic gestures (i.e., gestures that depict the actions, motions or shapes of entities) identify referents that are also lexically specified in the co-occurring speech produced by proficient speakers. This study examines whether concrete deictic gestures (i.e., gestures that point to physical entities) bear a different kind of relation to speech, and whether thi...

This paper investigates bloatware bundling and product pricing decisions of a monopolistic firm when consumers can remove the bloatware from their electronic devices after purchase. We show conditions under which it is optimal for the firm not to bundle bloatware with their products. Furthermore, we show that even if the firm can make it harder for consumers to remove bloatware, the firm is not...

The Busse-Heikes dynamical model is described in terms of relaxational and nonre-laxational dynamics. Within this dynamical picture a diverging alternating period is calculated in a reduced dynamics given by a time-dependent Hamiltonian with decreasing energy. A mean period is calculated which results from noise stabilization of a mean energy. The consideration of spatial-dependent amplitudes l...

We analyze how increased use of electronic channels affects geographic price variance by enabling buyers to shift demand across locations. Using data from the wholesale automotive market from 2003 to 2008, we find that buyers use the reach of the electronic channels to shift purchases from high-price to low-price locations. This " arbitrage " reduces the variance of market prices, but not their...

Empirical studies on pharmaceutical pricing across countries have found evidence that prices vary according to per capita income. These studies are typically based on survey data from a subset of countries and cover only one year. In this paper, we study the international trade and price of insulin by using detailed trade data for 186 importing countries from 1995 to 2013. With almost 12,000 ob...

In this paper, we study the problem of online pricing for multi-type items. Given a seller with k types of items where the amount of each type is m, a sequence of users {u1, u2, ...} arrive one by one. Each user is single-minded, i.e., each user is only interested in a particular bundle of items. The seller must set the unit price and assign some amount of bundles to each user upon his/her arri...

We analyse the bidding for unit-price contracts, a very common procurement auction. With a unit price contract, not the provision of the good but the employment of several kinds of inputs is priced. The seller charges a unit price for the employed quantity of each input. To select one seller, a linear selection rule is used to rank submitted lists of unit prices. In this paper, we model heterog...

BACKGROUND Fourteen African countries are scaling up voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) for HIV prevention. Several devices that might offer alternatives to the three WHO-approved surgical VMMC procedures have been evaluated for use in adults. One such device is PrePex, which was prequalified by the WHO in May 2013. We utilized data from one of the PrePex field studies undertaken in Zim...