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In recent years, produce imports to the United States from the southern hemisphere made wintertime consumption common. Focusing on imports of fresh berries - strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries - this study asks what is the value to consumers of increasing the availability of berries in winter? The study adapts Hausman's new product introduction methods. The largest benefits were associated with initiating trade. Further increases suggest smaller benefits. Among the four berries, consumer benefits of initiating trade are largest for strawberries at $2.5 billion, over twice current expenditures. Further price reductions might generate further benefits of $520 million annually. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Eliminating rationing in the United Kingdom following the Second World War was a concern for policy-makers because of potentially large fluctuations in post-war prices and the impact on unrationed goods. This study shows that in using virtual prices, elasticities can be estimated from a ‘free’ demand system consistent with observed consumer choices. Substitution estimates without accounting for rationing are misleading. In contrast, using virtual prices and estimating a ‘free’ market system yield results similar to those of the pre-war period. Results show that food rationing affected expenditure across unrationed goods. Rationing on other services had little effect on expenditure across unrationed goods. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, I estimate a structural demand model for a product category in a supermarket chain. I use the model to infer manufacturers' side payments to obtain shelf access in the supermarket and I estimate the impact of these fees on product assortment.The results suggest that the supermarket carries some unprofitable products. Instead of eliminating them, it charges slotting fees to the manufacturers of those products.Since the absence of slotting fees would lead the retailer to discontinue some products, this paper argues that forbidding slotting fees would harm consumers. Welfare calculations reveal that product assortment in this market is close to socially optimal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of rationing on firm behavior. A virtual price approach is adopted to derive the rationed elasticities of variable input demands and output supply under a translog profit function. To illustrate the difference between the rationed and unrationed elasticities, we conduct an analysis using a firm-level annual survey data of China over the period 1985-88. Our estimation results indicate that the values of most elasticities would have been affected significantly if the government had imposed rationing on material inputs. The behavior of Chinese firms would have been seriously distorted in a complicated way. The firms would have over-responded to market signals in making some of their input or output decisions and, at the same time, might have under-reacted, or would have not changed their reaction, in making the other input or output decisions, under a rationing regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]