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This study identifies consumer welfare from new brand introductions in the potato chip market. Price and variety effects of new brand introduction are measured by estimating a demand system underlying an expenditure function. Variety effects are positive in most cities, while price effects are generally negative when consumers exhibit some variety preference. Variety effects dominate price effects in most cities; an opposite effect observed in some cities may indicate high entry barriers or joint brand- and price-based marketing strategies. Results indicate that consumers and producers gain from product innovations, but substantial regional variation exists in the distributional effects of new brand introduction.

The theory of virtual quantities, the dual to virtual prices, provides a framework to analyze competitive multiproduct firm behavior under multiple quantity controls on inputs and outputs, including command-and-control quotas and transferable property rights. The framework addresses the firm׳s reactions to regulatory controls, impacts of adding or dropping quantity controls, inferring unrationed from rationed production, and conversion from command-and-control quotas to cap-and-trade systems with transferable property rights and secondary market behavior. The paper develops reasons for failure of quasi-concavity of technology, extends the elasticity of intensity׳s properties, and integrates the virtual price and virtual quantity frameworks. Virtual quantities are applied to assess potential firm responses to quantity controls and a potential transferable property right in a Malaysian fishery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Family budget data for East and West Germany over the past decade are analyzed in the light of the convergence of relative price structures and the elimination of quantity constraints in the East during the process of eastern economic reconstruction. Exact cost-of-living indexes for generalized Cobb- Douglas preferences are calculated for the missing (index) link between the end of the old German Democratic Republic and the beginning of German economic unification. Exact deflators are provided for the period 1989 through 1998 for low to high income family budgets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]