Price Versus Quantity: Market-Clearing Mechanisms When Consumers are Uncertain about Quality

High-quality producers in a market where quality varies can reap superior profits by charging higher prices, selling greater quantities, or both. Empirical analyses of the mutual fund and automobile industries show that high-quality producers sell more units than their low-quality competitors, but at no higher price (or retail markup) per unit. Our theoretical models find that if qualities are known by consumers and production costs are constant, then having a higher quality secures the producer both higher price and higher quantity. The market may clear in a different fashion if there is "quality uncertainty"; that is, if some consumers can discern quality but others cannot. Then, high- and low-quality producers may end up setting a common price, which allows the high-quality producer to sell substantially more. In this context, quality begets quantity.     

Inspiration*

Au lieu d'écrire, la plupart des sociologues se conferment encore à l'orthodoxie de l'auteur et de l'éloquence en faisant des comptes rendus, en recopiant ou en prenant des notes. En évoquant des expériences d'ecriture bien connues, liées à la mort du sujet connaissant et de l'auteur éloquent, nous voulons montrer que le modèle expressif est seulement persuasif si nous réprimons ce que nos corps écrivants savent de l'inspiration, de la communion, de la méditation, de l'annonciation, du génie, de la prophétie, des anges, des fantômes, de la possession, de l'intuition, de la passion, du ravissement et de l'extase. Ces injonctions transformatives, que les écrivains expérimentent chaque jour, sont les fondements de la créativité et de la socialité. Elles viennent appuyer l'hypothèse de Levinas voulant que la possession ou l'enthousiasme soient dissimulés au coeur de l'écriture et d'autres activity, qu'un délire plus profond que la pensee sous-tende la pensée. Instead of writing, most sociologists still adhere to an authorial and expressive orthodoxy by writing up, writing out or writing down. By evoking familiar writerly experiences of the death of the knowing subject and the expressive author, I want to show that the expressive model is only persuasive if we repress what our writing bodies know of inspiration, communion, muses, annunciation, genius, prophecy, angels, ghosts, possession, intuition, passion, rapture and ecstasy. These transformative summonses, experienced daily by writers, are the bases of creativity and sociality. They support Levinas' suggestion that enthusiasm or possession are concealed at the heart of writing and other activities, that “a delirium more profound than thought” supports thought.     

THE EFFECT OF DIRECT TO CONSUMER TELEVISION ADVERTISING ON THE TIMING OF TREATMENT

We examine how direct to consumer advertising affects the delay between diagnosis and pharmacological treatment for patients suffering from a common chronic disease. The primary data for this study consist of patients diagnosed with osteoarthritis (N = 18,235) taken from a geographically diverse national research network of 72 primary care practices with 348 physicians in 27 states over the 1999–2002 time period. Brand‐specific advertising data were collected for local and network television at the monthly level for the nearest media markets to the practices. Results of duration models of delay to treatment suggest advertising does affect the length of time that patients and physicians wait to initiate therapy. This evidence suggests that these effects may be welfare enhancing in that advertising tends to encourage more rapid adoption among patients who are good clinical candidates for the therapy and leads to less rapid adoption among some patients who are poor clinical candidates. (JEL D12, I11)     

Response-Order Effects and the Early Gallup Split-Ballots

A meta-analysis of split-ballots conducted by the Gallup Organizationin the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s shows that response-ordereffects were generally small in magnitude when averaged acrossa great variety of topics and questions—and as comparedwith many of those reported in the response-effects literaturetoday. When analyzed by various question characteristics, theresults provided some support for predictions derived from currentcognitive models of response-order effects, particularly thosefrom satisficing theory. As predicted, questions asked orallywere more likely to generate a statistically significant patternof recency effects if the response alternatives or the questionsas a whole were longer rather than shorter. Other predictedpatterns of primacy and recency effects failed to materialize,however, perhaps largely because of the inherent design limitationsand partial confounding of question attributes in any such secondaryanalysis of archival survey data, but perhaps, too, becauseof simple chance variations. The data from these early experimentsnonetheless provide a partial, albeit limited, test of rivalhypotheses and explanations of response-order effects in theliterature.     

WHY UNDERSTANDING SMOKING BANS IS IMPORTANT FOR ESTIMATING THEIR EFFECTS: CALIFORNIA'S RESTAURANT SMOKING BANS AND RESTAURANT SALES

A large literature has sought to determine whether smoking bans help or hinder restaurants. Much of the literature improperly specifies its econometric equations and thus mistakenly infers causality. Examining the relationship between restaurant smoking bans and restaurant revenues in 267 California communities, we reach two main conclusions. First, California's municipal restaurant smoking bans are endogenous in a critical way—restaurant sales growth (or something correlated with restaurant sales growth) appears to cause restaurant bans, not vice versa. Consequently, failure to control properly for trends can produce spurious "evidence" of causation. Second, ban heterogeneity (e.g., state versus local) can be exploited to sort out—or rule out—causal effects. In other words, pooling data and treating smoking bans implemented at different levels as homogenous (as many studies do) ignores an important source of information and is likely to lead to erroneous conclusions. Our analysis holds lessons for the many studies that have examined the arguably more important question of how smoking bans affect smoking rates. ( JEL L51)     

Autism, Empathy and Questions of Moral Agency

In moral psychology, it has long been argued that empathy is a necessary capacity of both properly developing moral agents and developed moral agency ( Blair, 2008 ; Hume et al., 1978 ). This view stands in tension with the belief that some individuals diagnosed with autism—which is typically characterized as a deficiency in social reciprocity (including empathy)—are moral agents. In this paper we propose to explore this tension and perhaps trouble how we commonly see those with autism. To make this task manageable, we will consider whether high functioning individuals diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder are capable of empathetic responses. If they are, then they possess a capacity that, on the view above, is required for moral agency. If they are not so capable, and yet sometimes engage in moral behaviour, this casts some doubt on the claim that empathy is required for moral agency. This second possibility will necessitate an exploration of the capacity of some individuals with autism to engage in moral behaviour, giving us further grounds to re-see these individuals as moral agents.     

Accounting for Poverty: Conflicting Constructions of Family Survival in Scotland, 1855–1925

Abstract  As in England, the moral implications of pauperism were significant in the operation of the Scottish Poor Law. While the ways in which kin were distributed reflect patterns of survival embedded in local cultures, those failing to conform to an idealised family model, especially unmarried mothers, were disadvantaged, as contested relief claims indicate. Analysis considers encounters between local Inspectors and applicants using a framework that draws upon perspectives from political, moral, and particularly social economy. The outcomes of negotiation reveal how individual agency was compromised by adaptation to circumstances as much as by official and popular frames of reference.     

From Inclusive Policy to the Exclusive Real World: an international review

The characteristics of policy in special education are examined in a number of international settings via an analysis of policy documents and commentaries on policy implementation. Through a constant comparative method a number of 'ideal types' are identified which characterise policy and exemplify the problems involved in the realisation of policy, particularly when that policy is progressive and especially when it promotes inclusive principles. Tensions particularly emerge between the interests of administrative and professional groups on the one side and the deprofessionalising, devolutionary pressures inherent in inclusion on the other. The types are used to analyse specific policy initiatives in Australia, New Zealand and the UK.