Consumer preferences towards beef cattle in Chile : Importance of country of origin, cut, packaging, brand and price

A study was carried out to evaluate preferences for two cuts, four countries of origin, two forms of presentation, brand and different prices of beef cattle among supermarket buyers in southern Chile, and to distinguish the existence of different market segments, through a survey of 800 people. Using a fractional factorial design for conjoint analysis, it was determined overall that the origin was more important (44.5%) than price (20.8%), form of presentation (12.2%), cut (12.0%) and brand (10.5%), with preference for Chilean and Argentinean striploin, packaged on trays, with no brand at medium price. Using a cluster analysis, three market segments were distinguished. The largest (52.3%) placed great importance on origin and preferred the highest price. The second (27.5%) also valued origin with the greatest preference for Argentinean beef, and it was the only group that preferred the ribeye as the cut. The third (20.5%) placed the greatest importance on price, and was the only group that preferred Paraguayan meat. The segments differed in the importance of eating meat for their personal well-being. The low importance of packaging and brand indicates poorly developed marketing of this product. In order to properly insert brand beef in the Chilean market, communication strategies must be implemented that identify the product with superior quality and that position the brand in the consumer's mind.

Nomadismos del decir: avatares de la identidad afroantillana en Así habló el tío de Jean Price-Mars y El reino de este mundo de Alejo Carpentier

El presente trabajo aborda comparativamente ejes de convergencia sobre la cultura afroantillana en Así habló el tío (1928) del antropólogo haitiano Jean Price-Mars y El reino de este mundo (1949) del escritor cubano Alejo Carpentier. Se focalizan los mecanismos narrativos peculiares que en cada texto convierten a los sujetos populares en objeto de conocimiento y de representación de una identidad étnica de raíz africana. Desde esta perspectiva, es posible analizar en qué medida esta apuesta discursiva de legitimación simbólica de las huellas culturales africanas en las islas de Cuba y Haití culmina en un proceso resemantizador que tiende a homogeneizar la compleja heterogeneidad afrocaribeña.

Nomadismos del decir: avatares de la identidad afroantillana en Así habló el tío de Jean Price-Mars y El reino de este mundo de Alejo Carpentier

El presente trabajo aborda comparativamente ejes de convergencia sobre la cultura afroantillana en Así habló el tío (1928) del antropólogo haitiano Jean Price-Mars y El reino de este mundo (1949) del escritor cubano Alejo Carpentier. Se focalizan los mecanismos narrativos peculiares que en cada texto convierten a los sujetos populares en objeto de conocimiento y de representación de una identidad étnica de raíz africana. Desde esta perspectiva, es posible analizar en qué medida esta apuesta discursiva de legitimación simbólica de las huellas culturales africanas en las islas de Cuba y Haití culmina en un proceso resemantizador que tiende a homogeneizar la compleja heterogeneidad afrocaribeña.

Nomadismos del decir: avatares de la identidad afroantillana en Así habló el tío de Jean Price-Mars y El reino de este mundo de Alejo Carpentier

El presente trabajo aborda comparativamente ejes de convergencia sobre la cultura afroantillana en Así habló el tío (1928) del antropólogo haitiano Jean Price-Mars y El reino de este mundo (1949) del escritor cubano Alejo Carpentier. Se focalizan los mecanismos narrativos peculiares que en cada texto convierten a los sujetos populares en objeto de conocimiento y de representación de una identidad étnica de raíz africana. Desde esta perspectiva, es posible analizar en qué medida esta apuesta discursiva de legitimación simbólica de las huellas culturales africanas en las islas de Cuba y Haití culmina en un proceso resemantizador que tiende a homogeneizar la compleja heterogeneidad afrocaribeña.

Transport Sector and Regional Price Differentials: A SCGE Model for Chinese Provinces

With regression formulas replaced by equilibrium conditions, a spatial CGE model can substantially reduce data requirements. Detailed regional analyses are thus possible in countries where only limited regional statistics are available. While regional price differentials play important roles in multi-regional settings, transport does not receive much attention in existing models. This paper formulates a spatial CGE model that explicitly considers the transport sector and FOB/CIF prices. After describing the model, performance of our model is evaluated by comparing the benchmark equilibrium for China with survey-based regional I-O and interregional I-O tables for 1987. The structure of Chinese economies is summarized using information obtained from the benchmark equilibrium computation. This includes regional and sectoral production distributions and price differentials. The equilibrium for 1997 facilitates discussion of changes in regional economic structures that China has experienced in the decade.

Cost Reduction Effects of "pseudo FTAs" in Asia -Application of a price model based on a multilateral I/O table-

This paper examines the repercussion effects on the production cost of industries in Asian countries when some countries eliminate tariffs and import commodity taxes on all imports. This kind of analysis is related in some sense to that measuring the effects of FTAs on economies, and thus may be considered as an analysis of “pseudo FTAs.” Examining a number of combinations of “pseudo FTAs” between China, Japan, and ASEAN, it is found that the case of China plus Japan plus ASEAN is the most effective “pseudo FTA” of the combinations in terms of production cost reduction. The method is a form of price model based on the Asian International Input-Output Table. Almost no studies on price models related to multilateral I/O tables have been implemented thus far.

Strategic trade policy and non-linear subsidy : in the case of price competition

In a strategic trade policy, it is assumed, in this paper, that a government changes disbursement or levy method so that the reaction function of home firm approaches infinitely close to that of foreign firm. In the framework of Bertrand-Nash equilibrium, Eaton and Grossman[1986] showed that export tax is preferable to export subsidy. In this paper, it is shown that export subsidy is preferable to export tax in some cases in the framework of Bertrand-Nash equilibrium, considering the uncertainty in demand. Historically, many economists mentioned non-linear subsidy or tax. However, optimum solution of it has not yet been shown. The optimum solution is shown in this paper.

The rise and fall in the price of food, fuel and manufactured goods : interdependency between prices and technology determining comparative advantages and development paths

Green innovation, which enables us to extract energy from food crops, caused a food shortage in 2008. Countries suffering severe damage started to reconsider their agricultural policy with the aim of becoming more autonomous. The food price hike of the time looks like a reversal of the celebrated Singer-Prebisch thesis proposed in the 1950s. This paper examines the consequences of this trend on the comparative advantages and development strategies of developing countries. For that purpose, first, trends and short-run fluctuations in the prices of fuel and bio-energy crops are investigated. It is shown that the price series of fuels and the crops are synchronized only after the fuel extracting technology came into effect. Second, the reversal of the Singer-Prebisch thesis is underpinned by the generic form of an endogenous growth model developed by Rebelo (1991). It is shown that as an economy grows, appreciation of the non-reproducible, such as mineral resources and raw labor, over the reproducible, such as capital goods, is the norm rather than an anomaly. Third, the consequences of the food price hike and underlying capital accumulation on the development strategies of labor-abundant and low-income countries are explored. It is concluded that the impact of the food price hikes on the alteration of a development strategy is only incremental, without reinforcement from raw-labor-saving innovation. A case study of inventions by JUKI Corporation, a world-leader in the sewing machine market exemplifies the fact that, of all the major inventions the company have made, raw-labor-saving inventions have not dominated, although JUKI's machines are sold to one of the most raw-labor-intensive industries.

Revisiting the determinants of unit values

This paper studies the issue of how traded quantities affect trade prices, which has been relatively unexplored in the trade literature. By reproducing previous literatures' regressions which are based on the general equilibrium trade theories, incorporating the role of traded quantities, this paper shows a possibility of prevalence of the second degree price discrimination (quantity discount) in international trade, rather than the pricing behaviour of the general equilibrium theories.

Spatial price equilibrium and the transport sector : a trade-consistent SCGE model

This paper presents a framework for an SCGE model that is compatible with the Armington assumption and explicitly considers transport activities. In the model, the trade coefficient takes the form of a potential function,and the equilibrium market price becomes similar to the price index of varietal goods in the context of new economic geography (NEG). The features of the model are investigated by using the minimal setting, which comprises two non-transport sectors and three regions. Because transport costs are given exogenously to facilitate study of their impacts, commodity prices are also determined relative to them. The model can be described as a system of homogeneous equations, where an output in one region can arbitrarily be determined similarly as a price in the Walrasian equilibrium. The model closure is sensitive to formulation consistency so that homogeneity of the system would be lost by use of an alternative form of trade coefficients.

Quasi-experimental evidence on the drivers of index-based livestock insurance demand in Southern Ethiopia

Microinsurance is widely considered an important tool for sustainable poverty reduction, especially in the face of increasing climate risk. Although index-based microinsurance, which should be free from the classical incentive problems, has attracted considerable attention, uptake rates have generally been weak in low-income rural communities. We explore the purchase patterns of index-based livestock insurance in southern Ethiopia, focusing in particular on the role of accurate product comprehension and price, including the prospective impact of temporary discount coupons on subsequent period demand due to price anchoring effects. We find that randomly distributed learning kits contribute to improving subjects' knowledge of the products; however, we do not find strong evidence that the improved knowledge per se induces greater uptake. We also find that reduced price due to randomly distributed discount coupons has an immediate, positive impact on uptake, without dampening subsequent period demand due to reference-dependence associated with price anchoring effects.

Is there any premium for unobservable quality? : a hedonic price analysis of the Malagasy rice market

This paper examines if consumers pay a premium for unobservable quality in the absence of quality standards and/or quality grading systems and, if so, how they assess that unobservable quality, using a rice retail market in Madagascar as an example. In Madagascar, the lack of quality standards and/or grading systems for rice makes is considered to be one of the causes of the rice market's spatial disintegration. Thus, quality standards and grading systems will be necessary to increase the market's efficiency. We hypothesize that consumers and retailers use product origin and rice name as observable indictors of unobservable quality and test the hypothesis using hedonic price regressions. We find that the interaction terms of product origin and rice name significantly affect the price after controlling for both observable quality and spatial and temporal price variation, but that the contribution of product origin and rice name to rice price variation is smaller than spatial and temporal factors. We thus conclude that consumers pay a premium for unobservable quality throughout Madagascar. This finding implies that quality standards and/or grading systems will work in the Malagasy market and that improving market infrastructure such as roads and storage will make them even more effective.

Price Formation and Real Estate Characteristics Residential Real Estate, Lisbon - Portugal

Análisis del proceso de formación de precios en el mercado residencial de Lisboa desde el punto de vista de la eliminación de los aspectos subjetivos de la apreciación por el tasador de las características de los inmuebles

Business model with discount incentive in a P2P-cloud multimedia streaming system

Today P2P faces two important challenges: design of mechanisms to encourage users' collaboration in multimedia live streaming services; design of reliable algorithms with QoS provision, to encourage the multimedia providers employ the P2P topology in commercial live streaming systems. We believe that these two challenges are tightly-related and there is much to be done with respect. This paper analyzes the effect of user behavior in a multi-tree P2P overlay and describes a business model based on monetary discount as incentive in a P2P-Cloud multimedia streaming system. We believe a discount model can boost up users' cooperation and loyalty and enhance the overall system integrity and performance. Moreover the model bounds the constraints for a provider's revenue and cost if the P2P system is leveraged on a cloud infrastructure. Our case study shows that a streaming system provider can establish or adapt his business model by applying the described bounds to achieve a good discount-revenue trade-off and promote the system to the users.