abstract this paper sketches a model of product differentiation according to the hedonic hypothesis that is based on the theory of consumer behavior of lancaster (1971). lancaster suggested that utility is derived from the characteristics of the good and not the good itself. thus, from the perception of the consumer, every characteristic has a price. this is the hedonic (or implicit) price. we ...

This paper shows that even if all consumers face search costs, if these are below a certain level dependent upon the firm numbers and demand elasticity, the Diamond-type equilibrium with all prices at the monopoly level fails to exist. JEL Classification: D83, D11,

We consider preference relations over information that are monotone: more information is preferred to less. We prove that, if a preference relation on information about an uncountable set of states of nature is monotone, then it is not representable by a utility function. JEL Classification: C70, D11, D80

People are sometimes risk-averse in gains but risk-loving in losses. Such behavior and other anomalies underlying prospect theory arise from a model of local status maximization in which consumers compare their wealth with other consumers of similar wealth. This social explanation shares key features with the psychological explanation offered by Kahneman and Tversky. JEL Classification: D81, D11

We show that a steeply increasing workload before a deadline is compatible with time-consistent preferences. The key departure from the literature is that we consider a stochastic environment where success of effort is not guaranteed. JEL Classification: D91, J22, D81, D11.

Marshallian consumer surplus (MCS) is generally an inaccurate measure of welfare change because it neglects income effects. Suppose these effects overturn the usual demand response to a price change. Then, the deadweight loss from a distortionary tax or subsidy has the wrong sign, that is, there is a spurious deadweight gain. JEL Classification: D11, D6.

Data for discrete ordered random variables are often characterised by “excessive” zero observations. Traditional ordered probit models have limited capacity in explaining the preponderance of zero observations, especially when the zeros may relate to two distinct situations of non-participation and infrequent participation (or consumption), for example. We propose a zero-inflated ordered probit...

T his study investigates the impact of poverty, which is the direct effect of recent economic changes, on Iranians mental health to shed more light on the poverty and mental health nexus in developing countries. For the purpose of this study, we examine the existence of a possible association between poverty and mental health in urban districts of Iran by applying a double hurdle app...

We address the following question: When can one person properly be said to be more delay averse than another? In reply, several (nested) comparison methods are developed. These methods yield a theory of delay aversion which parallels that of risk aversion. The applied strength of this theory is demonstrated in a variety of dynamic economic settings, including the classical optimal growth and tr...

The logsum formula, which provides the expected maximum utility for the multinomial logit model, is often used as a measure of welfare. We provide here a closed form formula of the welfare measure of an individual who has not access to his first-best choice, but has access to his rth-best choice, r = 2, ...n, where n is the number of alternatives. The derivation is based on a standard identity ...