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This paper seeks to explain two related phenomena: (i) it is often the case that when the newvariety of a product is launched, some consumers do not purchase the latest variety and (ii)the quality of the latest variety of a product is often not significantly superior compared to the existing variety. We consider a simple model of monopoly with two types of consumers:“regular” (typeR) who cares only about the absolute quality of the product and “fastidious”(typeF) who cares about therelativequality vis-a-vis the existing variety. We show thatit is never optimal for the monopolist to exclusively serve typeF. Moreover, we identifysituations where although it is optimal for the monopolist to upgrade the quality of theproduct, this upgrade is not sufficient to meet the standards of typeF.As a result, only typeR buys the upgraded variety while typeF chooses not to buy it.

This paper uses laboratory experiments to directly test a central prediction of disclosure theory: that market forces can lead businesses to voluntarily provide information about the quality of their products. This theoretical prediction is based on unraveling arguments, which require that consumers hold correct beliefs about non-disclosed information. Instead, we find that receivers are insufficiently skeptical about non-disclosed information, and as a consequence, senders do not always disclose their private information. However, when subjects are informed about non-disclosed information after each round, behavior slowly converges to full unraveling. This convergence appears to be driven by an asymmetric response in receiver actions after learning that they were profitably deceived. Despite the change in receiver behavior, stated beliefs about sender strategies remain insufficiently skeptical, which suggests that while direct and immediate feedback induces equilibrium behavior, it does not reduce strategic naïveté.

Both the number and types of mobile applications have been seeing a significant increase in the last few years. Such an increase can lead to an overwhelming situation for researchers, users, and developers who are trying to understand them from many different viewpoints. One way to create a more tractable treatment of both the current as well as the emerging mobile applications is to develop a taxonomy of mobile applications. This paper describes an on-going work towards developing such a taxonomy, which could also lead to the design and development of new mobile applications to fit in the voids identified by the taxonomy.

Public procurement bodies increasingly resort to pay-for-performance contracts to promote efficient spending. We show that firm responses to pay-for-performance can widen the inequality in accessing social services. Focusing on the quality bonus payment initiative in Medicare Advantage, we find that higher quality-rated insurers responded to bonus payments by selecting healthier enrollees with premium differences across counties. Selection is profitable because the quality rating fails to adjust for differences in enrollee health. Selection inflated the bonus payments and shifted the supply of high-rated insurance to the healthiest counties, reducing access to lower-priced, higher-rated insurance in the riskiest counties.

In this paper, I show the existence and the characteristics of equilibrium in a non-renewable resource market where extraction costs are non-convex and market price is subject to stochastic shocks, an empirically relevant setting. In my model firms may be motivated to hold inventories to facilitate production smoothing, which allows them to continue producing at a smooth pace at any instant when extraction ceases, e.g. when reserves are exhausted. This aspect of the model then supports a competitive equilibrium in the presence of non-convex costs. Casual empirical evidence is provided that supports the central features of my model for a variety of non-renewable resources, lending credence to the explanation for equilibrium I propose.

We examine some of the factors that might influence the quality of information produced in discussion groups on the internet, such as USENET and the WELL. In particular, we look at the impact of various different pricing structures, and compare regimes in which anonymity is enforced with regimes in which all contributors must identify themselves. Our main finding is that the flow of quality-weighted information within the group is maximized by a regime which front loads the cost of sending messages, and identification is required. If there is a positive spillover from the intra-group transmission of good quality information, however, benefiting society at large, then the social value of the flow of quality-weighted information may be maximized by a different regime, in which all replying is anonymous. Reputation effects play a key role in our analysis: posters who have sent high quality messages in the past are considered more likely to send high quality messages in the future, and are thus more likely to be taken notice of.

We analyze a two-sender quality-signaling game in a duopoly model where goods are horizontally and vertically differentiated. While locations are chosen under quality uncertainty, firms choose prices and advertising expenditures being privately informed about their types. We show that pure price separation is impossible, and that dissipative advertising is necessary to ensure existence of separating equilibria. Equilibrium refinements discard all pooling equilibria and select a unique separating equilibrium. When vertical differentiation is not too high, horizontal differentiation is at a maximum, the high-quality firm advertises, and both firms adopt prices that are distorted upwards (compared to the symmetric-information benchmark). When vertical differentiation is high, firms choose identical locations and ex post, only the high-quality firm obtains positive profits and signals its type through advertising only. Incomplete information and the subsequent signaling activity are shown to increase the set of parameters values for which maximum horizontal differentiation occurs.

News media operate in two-sided markets, offering bundles of content to readers as well as selling readers' attention to advertisers. Technological innovations in content delivery, such as the advent of broadcast television or of the Internet, affect both sides of the market, threatening the basic economic model of print news operations. We examine how the entry of television affected local newspapers as well as consumer media diets in the United States. We develop a model of print media and show that entry of national television news could adversely affect the provision of local news. We construct a novel dataset of U.S. newspapers' economic performance and content choices from 1944 to 1964. Our empirical strategy exploits quasi-random variation in the timing of the entry of television in different markets. We show that the entry of television was a negative shock for newspapers, particularly evening newspapers, in both the readership and advertising markets. Further, we find a drop in the total quantity of news printed, in particular original reporting, raising concerns about the provision of local news.

We develop a model of dynamic platform formation under positive platform externalities. Users can switch between an incumbent and entrant platforms, switching opportunities arise stochastically and users can choose whether to accept or reject an opportunity to switch. For homogeneous users, we characterize the incumbency advantage implied by a given equilibrium realization of the switching process. For linear utility, incumbency advantage increases in the mean and dispersion of the incumbent’s share during the switching process, which captures the momentum and coordination of the process. Heterogeneity in preferences may lead some users to delay their switching or never switch at all. Assuming that switching opportunities arrive according to a Poisson process, users switch to the entrant platform if the average preference favors the entrant and if preferences are not too polarized.

News production requires investment, and competitors’ ability to appropriate a story may reduce a media’s incentives to provide original content. Yet, there is little legal protection of intellectual property rights in online news production, which raises the issue of the extent of copying online and the incentives to provide original content. In this article, we build a unique dataset combining all the online content produced by French news media during the year 2013 with new micro audience data. We develop a topic detection algorithm that identifies each news event, trace the timeline of each story, and study news propagation. We provide new evidence on online news production. First, we document high reactivity of online media: one quarter of the news stories are reproduced online in under 4 min. We show that this is accompanied by substantial copying, both at the extensive and at the intensive margins, which may constitute a severe threat to the commercial viability of the news media. Next, we estimate the returns to originality in online news production. Using article-level variations and media-level daily audience combined with article-level social media statistics, we find that original content producers tend to receive more viewers, thereby mitigating the newsgathering incentive problem raised by copying.

New technologies such as product simulators and virtual reality now allow firms to provide realistic product usage experiences and reduce buyer uncertainty about product quality. We argue that today’s firms should view product design and investments to reduce buyer uncertainty as an integrated process, which is in turn influenced by how much information buyers can obtain from third-party infomediaries. We introduce a game-theoretic model of a competitive market where both quality production and quality disclosure are endogenous decisions, affected by information made available by third parties. We show that quality investment under uncertainty never exceeds the level of quality investment under perfect information. Furthermore, we show that information availability by third parties allows firms to free ride, and it especially favors lower quality firms, who can reduce their information disclosure investments more so than higher-quality firms. Finally, we show that the intuitive argument that firms must improve their product quality when overall information availability in the market improves does not always hold. Instead, improved information availability may enable firms to reduce their quality in some situations. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016.2634 . This paper was accepted by Chris Forman, information systems.

Certifiers of quality often report only coarse grades to the public despite having measured quality more finely, e.g., “Pass” or “Certified” instead of “73 out of 100.” Why? We show that coarse grades result in more information being provided to the public because the coarseness encourages those of middling quality to apply for certification. Dropping exact grading in favor of the best coarse grading scheme reduces public uncertainty because the extra participation outweighs the coarser reporting. In some circumstances, the coarsest meaningful grading scheme, pass-fail grading, results in the most information. (JEL D83, L15, Q48)

How does consumer misperception of competing eco-labels affect environmental and economic efficiency of eco-labels? This article provides a theoretical insight into this issue by using a double-differentiation model, where three products are potentially in competition: an unlabeled product and two eco-labeled products of medium and high environmental qualities (with distinct labels). We compare the case of perfect information, where consumers can perfectly assess the environmental quality of the three products, and the case of imperfect information, where consumers cannot fully assess the environmental quality associated with each label while perceiving all eco-labels as a sign of high environmental quality and each label as a particular variety of a product. We show that consumer confusion can affect the market structure by weakening the firm that provides the greenest product. Paradoxically, consumer misperception is not always detrimental to social welfare because, when th e perceived quality of both eco-labeled products is relatively high, it can improve the quality of the environment and raise global profits and consumer surplus. Moreover, although firms would harmonize their demanding eco-labeling criteria if they face full-informed consumers, they turn to greenwashing when they know the way the consumers form their belief on environmental quality. Finally, we show that an NGO faced with consumer misperception will require less stringent standard than in the perfect information case, while conclusions on the regulator eco-labeling strategy are not clear-cut.

With a large nationwide retailer, we run a natural field experiment to measure the effects of energy use information disclosure, customer rebates, and sales agent incentives on demand for energy-efficient durable goods. Although a combination of large rebates plus sales incentives substantially increases market share, information and sales incentives alone each have zero statistical effect and explain at most a small fraction of the low baseline market share. Sales agents strategically comply only partially with the experiment, targeting information to more interested consumers but not discussing energy efficiency with the disinterested majority. These results suggest that seller-provided information is not a major barrier to energy-efficiency investments at current prices in this context. Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2015.2327 . This paper was accepted by John List, behavioral economics.

Pay-for-performance is commonly employed to improve the quality of social services contracted out to firms. We show that insurer responses to pay-for-performance can widen the inequality in accessing social services. Focusing on the U.S. Medicare Advantage market, we find that high-quality insurance contracts responded to quality-linked payments by selecting healthier enrollees with premium differences across counties. The selection is profitable because the quality rating fails to adjust for pre-existing health differences of enrollees. As a result, quality improved mostly due to selection, and the supply of high-quality insurance shifted to the healthiest counties. Revising the quality rating could prevent these unintended consequences.

On the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) market, buyers and sellers resort to experts in order to secure deals. But as these experts might be prone to opportunism, firms need to find a way to build trust. We identify two trust devices: social ties and public rankings. We explore whether these personal and impersonal devices are substitutes, independent or complementary. We study the French M&A market through a mixed-method approach. We show that both previous contacts and league table rankings of firms contribute to trust and to making deals. These trust devices are all the more likely to be used if the deal is risky, especially within the sell side (more at risk). We also find that firms tend to make deals only with other firms at the same level in the rankings. Finally, we find some evidence of substitution between rankings and personal ties, especially for low-value deals. 1. Introduction 2. Trusting intermediaries in opaque business-to-business markets 3. Ethnographic fieldwork 4. Statistical data and method 5. Results 6. Conclusions Footnotes Acknowledgements Funding References Appendix

This paper documents the extent of copying and estimates the returns to originality in online news production. We build a unique dataset combining all the online content produced by French news media (newspaper, television, radio, pure online media, and a news agency) during the year 2013 with new micro audience data. We develop a topic detection algorithm that identi_es each news event, we trace the timeline of each story and study news propagation. We unravel new evidence on online news production. First, we show that one quarter of the news stories are reproduced online in less than 4 minutes. Second, we _nd that only 32.6% of the online content is original. Third, we show that reputation e_ects partly counterbalance the negative impact of plagiarism on newsgathering incentives. By using media-level daily audience and article-level social media statistics (Facebook and Twitter shares), we _nd that original content represents between 54 and 62% of online news consumption. Reputation mechanisms actually appear to solve about 30 to 40% of the copyright violation problem.

We experimentally investigate the role of second opinions in markets where experts such as physicians both diagnose and provide the services. Physicians may exploit their informational advantage and overtreat their patients by providing a more costly and expensive treatment than necessary. We show that introducing costly second opinions significantly reduces the level of overtreatment. Lowering search costs leads to significantly more second opinions, but the overtreatment level does not decrease. Under low but not under high search costs, market efficiency rises with the introduction of second opinions, as the reduction in treatment costs due to less overtreatment exceeds the increase in incurred search costs.

Our understanding of the determinants of physician skill and the extent to which skill is valued in the marketplace is superficial. Using a large, detailed panel of new obstetricians, we find that, even though physicians’ maternal complication rates improve steadily with experience, initial skill (as measured by performance in a physician's first year of practice) explains more of the variation in physician performance over time than experience does. At the same time, we find that the trajectories of new physicians’ delivery volume develop in a way consistent with Bayesian learning about physician quality. As physicians gain experience, their volume becomes increasingly sensitive to the information in their accumulated prior belief, while responses to information on recent performance are detectable in only selected settings (e.g., vaginal delivery, commercially insured patients).

Casual empiricism suggests that deceptive advertising about product quality is prevalent, and several classes of theories explore its causes and consequences. We provide some unusually sharp empirical evidence on the extent, mechanics, and dynamics of deceptive advertising. Ski resorts self-report substantially more natural snowfall on weekends. Resorts that plausibly reap greater benefits from exaggerating do it more. Data on website visits suggests that consumers are appropriately skeptical of weekend reports. We find little evidence that competition restrains or encourages exaggeration. Near the end of our sample period, a new iPhone application feature makes it easier for skiers share information on ski conditions in real time. Exaggeration falls sharply, especially at resorts with better iPhone reception.

In the present paper, we develop a monopoly model of vertical product differentiation for analysing the monopolist's decision about the possibility of versioning goods as substitutes or complements when consumers can buy them simultaneously. In this context, we find that versioning goods as substitutes or complements is optimal for the monopolist if the cost of designing the bundle (the purchase of one unit of each version) is increasing, which implies that making variants of closer substitutes reduces costs. However, if making variants of closer substitutes is costly, the monopolist versions goods as complements only. The final result also depends on the degree of concavity and convexity of the cost function.

We use data from restaurants in Shanghai, China to conduct a new empirical analysis of prices and coupons. Our results show a positive relationship between prices and online coupons. Moreover, the price premium from couponing is higher for restaurants about which consumer values appear to be more uncertain. When consumer uncertainty is high, restaurants that offer coupons have an average price that is about 60 percent higher than similar restaurants that do not issue coupons. When uncertainty is low, restaurants that offer coupons have an average price that is about 10 percent higher. These findings are consistent with online couponing in the restaurant industry being used for price discrimination and as a promotional device in the presence of higher uncertainty in consumer valuations.

Taxes and subsidies on products embodying environmental qualities often coexist with certified private labels---like Ecocert, Scientific Certification System, or OEKO-TEX. Their interaction is yet quite unexplored. We analyze a duopoly where consumers value an environmental quality, with an externality. A certifier sets the quality standard for a label. The fee for granting the label is either set by the certifier (certifier power), or in a noncooperative bidding game (firm power). Taxes and subsidies then affect the fee, depending upon how this is set, and the standard. This channel can produce distorted or even reversed effects. If firm power exists, for instance, a subsidy to the labeled good ends up decreasing the environmental quality and welfare. Conversely, absence of firm power nullifies the effects of ad valorem taxing the unlabeled "dirty" product. Only a per unit tax has similar, but always worsening, effects.

Two forces have reshaped global securities markets in the last decade: Exchanges operate at much faster speeds and the trading landscape has become more fragmented. In order to analyze the positive and normative implications of these evolutions, we study a framework that captures (i) exchanges’ incentives to invest in faster trading technologies and (ii) investors’ trading and participation decisions. Our model predicts that regulations that protect prices will lead to fragmentation and faster trading speed. Asset prices decrease when there is intermediation competition and are further depressed by price protection. Endogenizing speed can also change the slope of asset demand curves. On normative side, we find that for a given number of exchanges, faster trading is in general socially desirable. Similarly, for a given trading speed, competition among exchange increases participation and welfare. However, when speed is endogenous, competition between exchanges is not necessarily desirable. In particular, speed can be inefficiently high. Our model sheds light on important features of the experience of European and U.S. markets since the implementation of MiFID and Reg. NMS, and provides some guidance for optimal regulations.

In this paper we develop a theory of patenting in which a firm preserves its reputation by only applying for a patent whenever a truly patentable idea has been generated. Firms have a short-run incentive to deviate and receive additional rents from unworthy pending patents, as well as potential rents from PTO mistakes in granting patents. We provide conditions for reputation to be preserved in equilibrium and analyze which market environments are favorable for such an equilibrium to exist. In particular, we analyze the merits of different patent systems.

When consumers sign contracts, expectations about future usage of the product or service matter. For instance, the value provided by car insurance depends on how likely a consumer believes she is to file a claim; the value provided by a gym membership depends on how often a consumer anticipates going to the gym; and the value provided by a cellular phone contract depends on how many gigabytes of data a consumer anticipates using. The standard modeling paradigm makes the expedient assumption that consumers have rational expectations. Imposing rational expectations drastically simplifies models and eliminates the need to directly measure beliefs as they coincide with the distribution of observed outcomes. Yet a large literature shows that consumer beliefs often deviate substantially from rational expectations in systematic ways. This has important consequences for contract design, firm profits, consumer welfare, and public policy. The term overconfidence is used broadly in the psychology literature, referring to both overoptimism and overprecision. Overoptimistic individuals overestimate their own abilities or prospects, either in absolute terms or in comparison to others. In contrast, overprecise individuals place overly narrow confidence intervals around forecasts, thereby underestimating uncertainty. These biases can lead consumers to misforecast their future product usage, or to overestimate their abilities to navigate contract terms. In consequence, consumer overconfidence causes consumers

Card payment systems are sometimes accused of taking from the poor and giving to the rich. The argument is as follows: High card fees are leading to higher retail prices for both, card users and cash users. However, high-income card holders are receiving rewards when purchasing by card. The result may be a net transfer of, mostly low-income, cash users to, mostly high-income, card users. In this article, models with product differentiation are used to show that rich card-holders may actually be paying for their card rewards themselves. In this case, there is no perverse distribution effect.

There are two competing sellers of an experience good, one offers high quality, one low. The low-quality seller can engage in deceptive advertising, potentially fooling a buyer into thinking the product is better than it is. Although deceptive advertising might seem to harm the buyer, we show that he could be better off when the low-quality seller can engage in deceptive advertising than not. We characterize the optimal deterrence rule that a regulatory agency seeking to punish deceptive practices should adopt. We show that greater protection against deceptive practices does not necessarily improve the buyer welfare.

This paper aims to evaluate the complications occurred during and after the hemodialysis sessions made in a private hemodialysis center in terms of their sigma levels and severity. Complications with sigma levels under 4.00 indicate that the sessions need improvement and corrective actions. Vital few and trivial many critical to quality (CTQ) factors are determined and some improvement suggestions are made for the process based on the vital few CTQ factors. Consequently, it is found that the hemodialysis process operates at a 3.5342 sigma level.

A wide range of media provide information on many products based on reviews or expert opinions. A natural question is, whether these reviews and expert opinions have any effect on sales. A small but growing literature in economics and marketing science deals with this issue, by testing the relevance of such product information for goods such as financial instruments, wine, books and movies. However, most of these products have in common that quality is very difficult to measure. It is always also a matter of taste whether these products can be seen as high- or low-quality goods. Based on a unique data set, we test whether test scores published in a major German car magazine have significant impact on registrations of new cars in Germany. We find that test scores for certain cars have statistically significant impact on the number of new cars sold by several leading manufacturers on the German car market.

Market outcomes depend on the quality of information available to its participants. We measure the effect of information disclosure on market outcomes using a large-scale field experiment that randomly discloses quality information in wholesale automobile auctions. We argue that buyers in this market are horizontally differentiated across cars that are vertically ranked by quality. This implies that information disclosure helps match heterogeneous buyers to cars of varying quality, causing both good and bad news to increase competition and revenues. The data confirm these hypotheses. These findings have implications for the design of other markets, including e-commerce, procurement auctions, and labor markets. (JEL C93, D44, D82, L15)

The international accounting regulations regarding sales revenues have been changed. In May 2014, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the US regulator, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), published together new revenue recording regulations, which will be applied in IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) as well as in US-GAAP (United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles). The core principle of the new IFRS 15 is that an entity will recognize revenue to depict the transfer of promised goods or services to customers in an amount that reflects the consideration to which the entity expects to be entitled in exchange for those goods or services. IFRS 15 (Revenue from Contracts with Costumers) replaces fully all the existing US-GAAP and IFRS regulations on revenue recording. The new standard IFRS 15 combines all the former regulations on revenue recording in a single standard. Application of the standard is mandatory for annual reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2017. Since the changes are significant, it is essential for companies to prepare for the application of new standards on time.

Disclosure programs exist in many industries in which consumers are poorly informed about product quality. We study a disclosure program for airline on-time performance, which ranks airlines based on the fraction of their flights that arrive less than 15 minutes late. The program creates incentives for airlines to focus their efforts on flights close to this threshold. We find that firms in this industry are heterogeneous in how they respond to these incentives. Moreover, this heterogeneity correlates with internal firm characteristics. Our findings highlight the importance of interactions between incentives created by a disclosure program and firms' internal organizational practices. (JEL D22, L15, L25, L93)

We examine the global operations of multi-product firms. We present a flexible heterogeneous-firm trade model with either limited or strong scope for quality differentiation. Using customs data for China during 2002-2006, we empirically establish that firms allocate activity across products in line with a product hierarchy based on quality. Firms vary output quality across their products by using inputs of different quality levels. Their core competence is in varieties of superior quality that command higher prices but nevertheless generate higher sales. In markets where they offer fewer products, firms concentrate on their core varieties by dropping low-quality peripheral goods on the extensive margin and by shifting sales towards top-quality products on the intensive margin. The product quality ladder also governs firms ’ export dynamics, both in general and in response to the exogenous removal of MFA quotas on textiles and apparel. Our results inform the drivers and measurement of firm performance, the effects of trade reforms, and the design of development policies.

Este estudio presenta evidencia empírica sobre los determinantes de la adopción de certificaciones internacionales de calidad (ISO) y sus efectos sobre el desempeño de las empresas argentinas en los años 2006 y 2010. Los resultados indican que las firmas exportadoras, extranjeras y de mayor tamaño en términos de empleados presentan mayor nivel de adopción, mientras que aquellas empresas que tienen problemas de acceso al financiamiento tienen una adopción menor. Por otro lado, la obtención de certificaciones tiene un efecto positivo en la probabilidad de exportar y el monto exportado, y, además, genera una reducción en la restricción al crédito de las empresas. Sin embargo, no se encuentra ningún efecto sobre ventas locales ni sobre distintas medidas de productividad de las firmas. Estos hallazgos sustentan la hipótesis de que mediante la señalización de calidad las certificaciones permiten resolver principalmente un problema de información asimétrica con respecto a clientes externos e instituciones de crédito.

We study how government green procurement policies influence private-sector demand for similar products. Specifically, we measure the impact of municipal policies requiring governments to construct green buildings on private-sector adoption of the US Green Building Council׳s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standard. Using matching methods, panel data, and instrumental variables, we find that government procurement rules produce spillover effects that stimulate both private-sector adoption of the LEED standard and investments in green building expertise by local suppliers. These findings suggest that government procurement policies can accelerate the diffusion of new environmental standards that require coordinated complementary investments by various types of private adopter.

This paper examines the relationship between misinformation about product quality and quality standards, such as minimum quality standards (MQSs) and certification criteria, when products are vertically differentiated in terms of their health/safety aspects. We investigate the welfare effect of regulating misinformation and strengthening MQSs. We find that the welfare effect of a decrease in misinformation crucially depends on the existing amount of misinformation; moreover, a more stringent MQS either improves or deteriorates welfare. Two effects figure strongly throughout our results. First, changes in misinformation and/or an MQS make price competition between firms more or less serious, causing changes in price and quantity. Second, these changes influence some consumers’ choices, leading them to change the products that they purchase. This change in consumption behavior increases or decreases inappropriate choices when misinformation is present. We extend the analysis to the case in which a high-quality firm’s quality investment is endogenously determined.

1. IntroductionGlobal trade has increased manifold in the last 15-20 years with countries such as China, India, and Bangladesh having increased their exports significantly since 2000. The overall economic contribution of a country's export sector should not be underestimated: Pakistan's exports, for instance, are a major source of foreign exchange earnings and a key source of employment (Table 1).The opportunities arising from increased global trade are accompanied by numerous challenges both for manufacturers and exporters. One of these is meeting strict quality and compliance requirements, not only from a product-specific and technical perspective, but also from regulatory, social, environmental, performance, and customer-specific standpoints. This paper provides an overview of quality standards and certification with reference to Pakistan's principal export categories: textiles (specifically cotton cloth, knitwear, cotton yam, readymade garments, and towels) and rice. It assesses their level of compliance with global requirements, identifies any gaps, and presents some policy recommendations for improving the situation. Chemicals and pharmaceuticals are seen as a potential category of export growth and thus included in our analysis in some cases.Historically, the textiles sector has dominated Pakistan's exports with respect to value as well as volume (Table 2). Rice represents the country's important agriculture sector and has shown significant export growth in recent years, increasing almost threefold from 2005/06 to 2011/12 (Table 2 and Figure 1). Figure 1 shows growth trends for textiles, rice, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, and total exports.Table 3 shows the structure of major exports from 2005 to 2012. Figure 2 shows that the textiles sector still leads among export categories, followed by rice.Figure 3 shows the overall growth trends for all textile categories; of fliese, cotton cloth has consistently trended upward.2. Key Dimensions of International Quality RequirementsThis section examines the main international quality standards that apply to textile and rice exports.2.1. TextilesThe requirements and standards that apply to textile exports can be categorized broadly as (i) regulatory (safety, labeling, origin, or other); (ii) product-specific (durability, performance, appearance); (iii) customer- specific (physical, chemical, or other); (iv) social (labor, facility, and work environment); and (v) environmental.2.1.1. Key International Quality Standards ApplicableThe main international quality standards for textile exports include the following (see Small and Medium Enterprise Development Authority, n.d.):* ISO 9001/2000 (gaining competitive advantage through quality)* ISO 14001 (proving the producer's environmental responsibility)* OHSAS 18001 (demonstrating the ability to manage risk)* SA 8000 (enhancing a company's reputation through social responsibility)* ISO 17799/BS 7799/BS 15000 (improving the security of a business)* WRAP (certification of lawful, human, and ethical manufacturing)* Eco-labels (eco-labels differ in many respects. Based on the product's scope and familiarity with the textiles sector, two labels are selected that could add value to the Pakistani industry.)* Oeko-Tex 100 (a label that focuses on minimizing the presence of dangerous chemicals in textile products)* EU Eco-Label for Textiles (sometimes referred to as the "European flower," it takes into account the complete lifecycle of a textile product)* Customer-specific requirements related to facility, product, labor, and environment.Compliance with these standards is likely to boost textile exports. They cover a range of dimensions, including technical, product-specific, safety/regulatory, performance-related, and social and environmental standards. Larger firms, particularly those conscious of their corporate image, identify their own codes of conduct, employ their own auditors, and do not rely solely on international certifications such as ISO. …

With crowdfunding, an entrepreneur raises external financing from a large audience (the “crowd”), in which each individual provides a very small amount, instead of soliciting a small group of sophisticated investors. This article compares two forms of crowdfunding: entrepreneurs solicit individuals either to pre-order the product or to advance a fixed amount of money in exchange for a share of future profits (or equity). In either case, we assume that “crowdfunders” enjoy “community benefits” that increase their utility. Using a unified model, we show that the entrepreneur prefers pre-ordering if the initial capital requirement is relatively small compared with market size and prefers profit sharing otherwise. Our conclusions have implications for managerial decisions in the early development stage of firms, when the entrepreneur needs to build a community of individuals with whom he or she must interact. We also offer extensions on the impact of quality uncertainty and information asymmetry.

This paper considers price competition in a duopoly with quality uncertainty. The established firm (the `incumbent') offers a quality that is publicly known; the other firm (the `entrant') offers a new good whose quality is not known by some consumers. The incumbent is fully informed about the entrant's quality. This leads to price signalling rivalry because the incumbent gains and the entrant loses if observed prices make the uninformed consumers more pessimistic about the entrant's quality. When the uninformed consumers' beliefs satisfy the `intuitive criterion' and the `unprejudiced belief refinement', prices signal the entrant's quality only in a two-sided separating equilibrium and are identical to the full information outcome.

In this paper we describe a real-time rolling stock rescheduling model for disruption management of passenger railways. Large-scale disruptions, e.g., due to malfunctioning infrastructure or rolling stock, usually result in the cancellation of train services. As a consequence, the passenger flows change, because passengers will look for alternative routes to get to their destinations. Our model takes these dynamic passenger flows into account. This is in contrast with most traditional rolling stock rescheduling models that consider the passenger flows either as static or as given input. Furthermore, we describe an iterative heuristic for solving the rolling stock rescheduling model with dynamic passenger flows. The model and the heuristic were tested on realistic problem instances of Netherlands Railways, the major operator of passenger trains in the Netherlands. The computational results show that the average delay of the passengers can be reduced significantly by taking into account the dynamic behavior of the passenger flows on the detour routes, and that the computation times of the iterative heuristic are appropriate for an application in real-time disruption management.

Successfully implementing and maintaining a quality management system in tourism facilities in which you can practice balneotherapeutic tourism can contribute to tourism development especially in the coastal and mountain area (but also in other areas that enjoy the presence of balneotherapeutic tourism establishments), thus creating the conditions for a Romanian tourism focused on providing quality services at international standards for the benefit of both foreign tourists and the Romanians. One of the advantages of balneotherapeutic tourism refers to the fact that this form of tourism is characterized by a level of seasonality much lower other forms of tourism, as it is based on a potentially permanent, highly complex, which is practically inexhaustible and independent of weather conditions. Through this study we tried to present the characteristics / features of Romanian balneotherapeutic tourism, the problems faced by this kind of tourism and, not least, the benefits of implementing quality systems in organizations providing such services.

This paper investigates the existence of a possible media bias by analyzing the impact of automobile manufacturers’ advertisements on automobile reviews in a leading German car magazine. By accounting for both endogeneity and sample selection using a two-step procedure, we find a positive impact of advertising volumes on test scores. The main advantage of our study is the measurement of technical characteristics of cars to explain test scores. Due to this kind of measurement, we avoid serious biases in estimating media bias caused by omitted variables.

We can say that you cannot maintain yourself on the current market of rural tourism operators unless you provide customers with quality products and services, prepared foods safe for consumption, and, not least, if you do not prove you are concerned with ensuring a healthy and clean environment, environmental protection. In this paper we intend to present some aspects of implementing an integrated management system of quality - food security - the average level of tourist pension, and highlight the benefits brought by this ongoing process to the respective operators in rural tourism. To this end, we studied the standards, references available in this area, and documents produced within guesthouses with the implementation of various management systems components of an integrated quality - environment - food security management system.

The responsibility of organizations to the consumer has now become a permanent concern, the principles of ethics in their activities result in attracting new customers and thus in their remaining within competition. The present study aims to highlight the importance of producers’ accountability in ensuring the quality of foodstuffs obtained through sustainable methods of production and to correctly and completely inform the consumers. The research follows the quality analysis of a product with an “organic image” addressed to the market/consumers, by testing the physicochemical and microbiological characteristics in the laboratory of the National Research and Development Institute for Food Bio- Resources in Bucharest, as well as comparing the obtained results with the values stated in the producer’s specifications; the main purpose is checking the conformity and establishing the validity of the published nutritional information and the statements regarding the product’s quality made on the printed label.

This research aims to identify the attitudes of university students, who are assumed to keep up with innovative changes and developments, towards technology. It is also aimed to test and improve the validity and reliability of the scale through methods such as factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Students are asked questions about their purpose in following up the technology, the effect of innovation on their lives as well as the questions about their level of using Internet and smart phone, which have a significant place in technology. Considering the answers of students having participated in the research, it is possible to state that their reactions to the concepts of technology and innovation are at the medium level. They also think that technology is now a lifestyle rather than a madness and they see technology as a part of their lives. It is possible to say assume that the uncertainty in their answers is the indicator of this fact.

The purpose of this study is to show how a private eye care center in Turkey initiated Six Sigma principles to reduce the number of complications encountered during and after intravitreal injections. Data were collected for 30-months. To analyse the complications among 229 injections administered on 106 patients, main tools of Six Sigma’s Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control (DMAIC) improvement cycle such as SIPOC table, Fishbone Diagram and, Failure, Mode and Effect Analysis were implemented. Sources and root causes of seven types of complications were identified and reported. For a successful intravitreal injection, experience of the retina specialist, attention of the retina specialist and patient’s ocular pathology were determined to be the “critical few” factors whereas, sterilization and hygiene, dosage of drug/agent and chemical properties of drug/agent were found to be the “trivial many”factors. The most frequently occuring and the complication with the highest hazard score was found to be subconjunctival haemorrhage. The process sigma level of the process was measured to be 3.2657. The surgical team concluded that six of the complications (out of seven) should be significantly reduced by taking the necessary preventative measures.

This paper studies the common pricing practice of firms selling a durable good at a low price and a complementary consumable good at a high price. In our model, consumers discount future payments while firms receive a steady-state flow of revenues from selling the durable and consumable goods. As a result, there are potential gains from deferring consumers' payments to the future. We show that when firms commit to constant prices and consumer lock-in is possible, firms choose pricing consistent with the practice in monopoly and competition. Our result provides a new efficiency argument in the aftermarket literature.

The goal of the paper is to present a new way for scheduling the processes within and not limited to manufacturing companies. The aim of the paper is to offer the management of SMEs a revolutionary way for increasing the company’s productivity using a better planning and usage of the available resources. Author’s sequencing rules are presented together with their implementation methodologies and then are put to work into a Romanian middle size manufacturing company. Obtained data is statistically worked and conclusions are drawn. The paper is part of the authors’ yet not published work and represents partial results of their research in the field of Operational and Supply Chain Management.

Resumen El cómputo de alto rendimiento es una necesidad para el desarrollo deinvestigaciones con grandes volúmenes de datos. La creciente demanda de este tipo deresultados ha impulsado a varios centros de investigación a poner en funcionamientorecursos de cómputo de alto rendimiento. En Cuba no existe una solución definitiva quepermita a todos los centros de investigación disponer de los recursos de cómputonecesarios para desarrollar sus proyectos. Este trabajo propone el empleo de un clúster decomputadoras de la Universidad de Griffith a través de una interfaz basada en el correoelectrónico. Esta solución permite disponer de recursos de cómputo de alto rendimientosin necesidad de una alta conectividad. Como caso de estudio se analizan los resultadosobtenidos en un proyecto de optimización global en grandes dimensiones desarrollado enla Universidad de La Habana. Para experimentos con un mes de duración (en unacomputadora estándar) los resultados muestran que al utilizar el recurso de altorendimiento es posible alcanzar un incremento en el rendimiento relativo superior al1300%. Abstract: Research with large volumes of data usually require access to High Performance Computing. The increasing demand for this kind of research has led many institutions to develop their own computer clusters. However, in Cuba there is no definitive solution for the High Performance Computing requirements of institutions such as the University of Havana. The expenses of building a computer cluster disallows many institutions to have their own, while the low connectivity limits the use of international high performance computing services. This research presents an alternative solution based on the development of an email-based platform for accessing a computer cluster at Griffith University in Australia. This new communication interface has been successfully used on a Large Scale Optimization research project at the University of Havana. Computational results show that by using the remote cluster it is possible to improve upon the performance of a personal computer by up to 1300%.