A stricter merger control policy increases the expectation of future price competition. In response, firms increase product differentiation to sustain higher prices. Failing to account for such policy-variant prices may lead to overestimation of the increase in consumer surplus due to the stricter merger policy, rendering the policy analysis subject to the Lucas Critique. D 2004 Elsevier B.V. A...

Rats and mice were studied for changes in meal-taking structure in a closed operant food economy, in which the consummatory or unit prices for food were increased. In experiment 1, as food price increased, male rats modestly decreased the number of meals per day and increased mean meal size. Female rats were similar to males but had smaller meal size and, at low costs, took more meals per day. ...

Evaluation of ecosystem services has become a hotspot in terms of research focus, but uncertainties over appropriate methods remain. Evaluation can be based on the unit price of services (services value method) or the unit price of the area (area value method). The former takes meteorological factors into account, while the latter does not. This study uses Kunyu Mountain Nature Reserve as a stu...

The old dictum says that if the Devil did not exist, the Church would have had to invent him. Similarly, if the regulator didn't exist, the airline industry would have had to invent him-and did in 1938. A current question is what would happen to the industry were it totally deregulated. One thesis is that there would be a rush by existing and new entrants to those routes thought to be profitabl...

The value of environmental assets such as biodiversity, unique locations and the atmosphere may be hard to quantify. The implications of the irreversibility of decisions to destroy these has been the subject of extensive discussion. We analyze the value of such assets under conditions of uncertainty about future preferences, and show that this uncertainty will imply a conservation motive if it ...

In recent years drug prices have increasingly become a topic of debate for patients, providers, payers and policy makers. To place the current drug price debate into historical context, we searched the New York Times and Wall Street Journal from 1985 - 2015 and found that concerns about drug prices have commonly featured in the press over the study period with recently stronger calls for change...

The directed search model (Peters, 1984) is static; its dynamic extensions typically restrict strategies, often assuming price or match commitments. We lift such restrictions to study equilibrium when search can be directed over time, without constraints and at no cost. In equilibrium trade frictions arise endogenously, and price commitments, if they do exist, are self-enforcing. In contrast to...

Education development is a critical component for a modern economy as the illiteracy rate can hinder economic growth. The illiteracy rate in China has decreased rapidly since 1980s, but there still exists an imbalance in distribution of educational resources among different regions. In order to explore the impacts of education quality on regional economic growth, we employ a quadratic direction...