Pricing and Capacity Rationing with Customer Disappointment Aversion

Customers are averse to disappointment that arises when economic outcomes fall short of expectations. In this study, we study a two‐period model in which the firm may create rationing in either period. In the anticipation of possible disappointment due to stock‐outs, strategic customers decide when to purchase and the firm determines the prices and rationing levels in each period. We explore the impact of disappointment aversion on customers' strategic purchasing behavior and the firm's pricing and rationing decisions. Without disappointment aversion, it is optimal for the firm to adopt a uniform pricing policy without rationing. However, when strategic customers are averse to disappointment, a firm may be able to increase profits with an appropriate level of rationing. We analyze both the mark‐up and mark‐down policies. We show that, in a mark‐down scenario, the firm always benefits from disappointment aversion behavior by using an appropriate level of rationing in a low‐price period. However, in a mark‐up scenario, whether it is beneficial for the firm to induce disappointment aversion behavior depends on how customers frame payoffs in different periods when forming utilities. Particularly, when customers compartmentalize payoffs in different periods to form utilities, the firm should not induce disappointment aversion behavior.     

EDUCATION AND MOBILITY

We show that the length of compulsory education has a causal impact on regional labor mobility. We reach this conclusion from an analysis of a quasi‐exogenous staged Norwegian school reform, using register data on the whole population. Based on the results, we conclude that part of the US–Europe difference, as well as the European North–South difference in labor mobility, is likely to be due to differences in levels of education in the respective regions.     

Appointment Overbooking in Health Care Clinics to Improve Patient Service and Clinic Performance

The problem of no‐shows (patients who do not arrive for scheduled appointments) is particularly significant for health care clinics, with reported no‐show rates varying widely from 3% to 80%. No‐shows reduce revenues and provider productivity, increase costs, and limit patient access by reducing effective clinic capacity. In this article, we construct a flexible appointment scheduling model to mitigate the detrimental effects of patient no‐shows, and develop a fast and effective solution procedure that constructs near‐optimal overbooked appointment schedules that balance the benefits of serving additional patients with the potential costs of patient waiting and clinic overtime. Computational results demonstrate the efficacy of our model and solution procedure, and connect our work to prior research in health care appointment scheduling.     

基于健康保护的环境规制--以?环境保护法?修订案第三十九条为中心

我国现行以行政区划为基础、以部门分权为特色、以达标排放为核心的环境规制权配置,实际上是建立在经典科学还原论和决定论图景之上,难以契合环境健康问题所具有的风险与不确定特色,导致环境健康规制处于高度碎片化状态。?环境保护法?修订案第三十九条对此做出了回应,初步体现了健康优先、风险转向与整合取向的特点,标志着我国由基于污染防治的环境规制向基于健康保护的环境规制过渡。但由于该条仅是环境健康规制的纲领性条款,有必要通过专门立法予以具体化;在未进行专门立法之前,应通过对?环境保护法?修订案的体系解释推动该项工作。     

Social Policy Excellence – Peer Review or Metrics? Analyzing the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise in Social Work and Social Policy and Administration

A metrics‐based assessment can predict reasonably well the overall outcome of the Research Assessment Exercise 2008 for social work and social policy and administration in terms of research environment, but not in terms of research outputs. It is not possible to replicate peer review of the research outputs using existing data. It is sometimes argued that citation counts provide an alternative approach that might help research assessment, but it is one fraught with difficulties. Academics did not, in fact, routinely chose to submit their most cited work. At least in this subject, metrics are more suited as handmaiden to peer review than its replacement.     

Teamworking and organizational performance: A review of survey‐based research

This paper presents a review of recent survey‐based research looking at the contribution of teamwork to organizational performance. In particular, it focuses on empirical studies in which both teamwork and performance are directly measured in a quantitative way. The paper begins by identifying four interrelated dimensions of teamwork effectiveness: attitudinal, behavioural, operational and financial. The first two represent transmission mechanisms by which organizational performance can be improved. The latter two provide direct measures of organizational outcomes. The review shows that teamworking has a positive impact on all four dimensions of performance. It also reveals that, when teamwork is combined with structural change, performance can be further enhanced. The paper concludes by highlighting some important research gaps that future studies could address.     

CHOICE,COMPETITION, AND PUPIL ACHIEVEMENT

Choice and competition in education have recently found growing support from both policy‐makers and academics. Yet evidence on the actual benefits of market‐orientated reforms is at best mixed. Moreover, although the economic rationale for choice and competition is clear, in existing work there is rarely an attempt to distinguish between the two concepts. In this paper, we study whether pupils in Primary schools in England with a wider range of school choices achieve better academic outcomes than those whose choice is more limited; and whether Primary schools facing more competition perform better than those in a more monopolistic situation. In simple least squares regression models we find little evidence of a link between choice and achievement, but uncover a small positive association between competition and school performance. Yet this could be related to endogenous school location or pupil sorting. In fact, an instrumental variable strategy based on discontinuities generated by admissions district boundaries suggests that the performance gains from greater school competition are limited. Only when we restrict our attention to Voluntary Aided schools, which have more freedom in managing their governance and admission practices, do we find some evidence of a positive causal link between competition and pupil achievement. (JEL: I20, H70, R5)     

Contrast analysis for scale differences

Research on tests for scale equality, that are robust to violations of the distributional normality assumption, have focused exclusively on an overall test statistic and have not examined procedures for identifying specific differences in multiple group designs. The present study compares four contrast analysis procedures for scale differences in the single factor four group design. Two data transformations are considered under several conbinations of variance difference, sample sizes, and distributional forms.The results indicate that no single transformation or analysis procedure is uniformly superior in controlling the familywise error rate or in statistical power. The relationship between sample size and variances is a major factor in selecting a contrast analysis procedure.