In this dissertation, we show how the firm can improve its revenue and competitiveness through segmenting the market by exploring consumer heterogeneity. In the first essay, we show that asymmetric assortment breadth among two competing retailers can emerge as an equilibrium when consumers differ in their prior knowledge about their product preferences and their shopping costs. Under this equilibrium, the full line retailer expands the market demand by attracting the uninformed consumers with large shopping costs and the single product retailer passes on the savings from a streamlined assortment to the informed consumers by setting a lower price. Therefore, the two retailers soften the competition between them and both achieve higher profits. In the second essay, we consider a setting in which consumers experience distinct instances of need for a durable product at random intervals and derive random amount of utility from each instance. Consumers are differentiated according to the frequency with which they experience instances of need. For a firm that provides a durable product to such a market, we consider the implications of selling versus renting on a per-usage basis. Selling minimizes transaction costs, but may result in inefficient utilization of units that are produced. Alternatively, per-usage rentals allow more utility to be generated per unit of product that is produced. Focusing on these trade-offs, we identify conditions under which the firm should sell, offer per-usage rentals, or offer a combination of the two. In the third essay, we continue to use the durable good framework to study how various forms of government subsidy programs shift consumer's demand patterns and thus generate different magnitude of additional savings in resource consumption. We give the conditions under which each type of cash rebate programs does the best in generating resource savings per dollar spent. / text

Product upgrade, achieved through the improvement of the functionality of reused or remanufactured products, is often accepted as an effective way to attain a competitive service life extension (SLE). The upgradability of a product is characterised as its ease-of - upgrade virtue. Whether a product can be soundly and easily reutilised and upgraded is strongly influenced by the configurations of its essential characteristics which are determined during the design stages. Design for Upgradability (DFU) is a tool that primarily focuses on enhancing a product's functional, as well as, physical fitness for ease-of-upgrade and reutilisation. / Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2006.

O presente trabalho teve como objetivo estudar a dinâmica (dispersão e variação) dos preços de um conjunto de bens duráveis praticados pelos varejistas em lojas virtuais brasileiras. As informações foram coletadas por um sistema automático de captura, ao longo de um ano completo (2014). Três hipóteses foram formuladas. A primeira hipótese estabeleceu que, apesar das características homogêneas dos produtos comercializados, deveriam persistir diferenças significativas entre os preços praticados pelos diferentes varejistas. A segunda hipótese propôs a ideia de que, para produtos tecnologicamente mais simples, as diferenças de preços entre os competidores deveriam ser menos acentuadas quando comparadas com itens mais complexos. A terceira hipótese provém de uma ideia semelhante, entretanto, fixa-se na comparação de preços praticada em diferentes períodos do ano. Supôs-se que, em momentos nos quais a sazonalidade é de aumento forte das vendas (por exemplo, \"Black Friday\" ou o Dia das Mães), as variações de preços devem ser menores que as registradas em outros períodos do ano. A análise dos modelos, utilizando 767481 observações concluiu pela não rejeição das três hipóteses. / The purpose of this work is to study the dynamics of retail durable goods prices. A set of representative products traded on the Internet channel was chosen. The information set was surveyed with the use of an automatic data collection system, throughout the whole year of 2014. Three hypotheses were proposed. The first hypothesis states that despite the fact that the products are relatively homogeneous, meaningful prices differences among the retailers should be found. The second hypothesis affirms that durable goods which are technologically simpler than other ones, more sophisticated, should unveil fewer price differences. The third and the last hypothesis proposes that in periods when the demand is more intense (Mother´s Day in May, or Black Friday in November, for instance), the price differences should be less pronounced. The tests carried out, using 767481 cases, did not reject the three hypotheses.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Economics, 1976 / Bibliography: leaves 115-121. / by Frederic S. Mishkin. / Ph. D. / Ph. D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Economics

Este estudo aborda a adequação do Marketing de Relacionamento (MR) ao mercado de bens duráveis que, por definição, apresenta baixa taxa de recompra e interação entre cliente e empresa. O tema é relevante dado que o MR é pouco explorado nesse campo ao contrário dos serviços e negócios entre empresas (business to business), mercados com alto grau de recompra e/ou interações entre empresa e cliente. A proposta do estudo é verificar se e como o MR pode ser aplicado ao mercado de bens duráveis, a partir do entendimento do próprio MR, da cadeia produtiva de um mercado de bem durável e da atuação de uma empresa nesse mercado. Para se atingir os objetivos do estudo foi realizado um estudo de caso no mercado imobiliário residencial. A apresentação do caso está dividida em quatro partes principais: a parte introdutória discute a atuação da empresa em relação a diversos tópicos de marketing; a segunda parte descreve a cadeia produtiva da indústria da construção civil residencial; a terceira parte discute a natureza do produto imobiliário; e a quarta parte sumariza os principais pontos do programa de relacionamento com o cliente da empresa estudada no caso. Como resultados, descobriu-se que o mercado estudado é diferente de outros mercados de bens duráveis, principalmente pelo fato dos imóveis serem intangíveis no momento da venda. Além disso, os processos da cadeia produtiva da indústria da construção civil residencial se mostraram propícios para a aplicação do MR, pois os clientes dessa indústria são obrigados a se relacionar com a empresa durante o período de construção. Soma-se a esse fato o interesse do cliente em manter um relacionamento com a empresa, devido ao alto grau de envolvimento verificado na compra de imóveis. Ademais, a venda de um imóvel na planta apresenta características de serviços, campo em que o MR já é consolidado e, de forma complementar, a complexidade do processo de compra, recebimento e utilização do imóvel cria diversos encontros entre os clientes e as partes envolvidas, oportunidades para as empresas do setor criarem e cultivarem os relacionamentos. / The subject of this study concerns the relationship marketing applied to the durable goods market that presents, by definition, a low rate of repurchase and interaction between industry and clients. It becomes a relevant subject due to the fact that relationship marketing it is not well explored in this field unlike the services and business to business markets, that are well known by their high rate of repurchase and/or interactions. The proposition of this study is to verify if and how the relationship marketing can be applied to the durable goods market, from the understanding of the relationship marketing theory, of the production chain of the durable good market, and the operation of an industry of this segment. To accomplish the goals a case study in the residential real estate market was used. It is shown in four parts: the introductory part demonstrates how the company studied manages marketing, the second part shows how the production chain of the residential real estate market works, the third one discuss the nature of the real estate industries product, and finally, the fourth part summarizes the relationship marketing program of one big player of this market. The conclusions showed that the residential real estate market works differently from others durable goods, mainly due to the intangibility of the real estate under construction at the sales moment. And Also that the processes of the production chain of the residential real estate industry provide an extremely favorable environment for the application of the relationship marketing, because the clients of this industry are obligated to keep a relationship with the company during the construction time and the fact that the purchase of a real estate is a high involvement type turns the clients more interested in a relationship than ever. Other factor that contributed to support the findings were the fact that the selling of a residential real estate presents the services characteristics, field where the relationship market is consolidated and finally the complexity of the purchase, receive and use process creates many encounters between the clients and the other parts involved, opportunities for the companies of the sector to start and cultivate a relationships with the customers.

Este trabalho desenvolve um modelo para explicar a expansão de consumo que freqüentemente sucede planos de estabilização baseados em congelamento de preços ou câmbio. A perspectiva adotada centra no consumo de bens duráveis e na dificuldade dos domicílios de proteger seus ativos da inflação. Uma redução repentina da inflação leva a uma queda do preço efetivo do bem de consumo durável, o que gera a expansão de consumo. O modelo é calibrado para o Brasil do período do plano Cruzado e são realizadas simulações supondo uma estabilização de preços permanente, uma com duração de 10 meses e outra de 3 meses. As duas primeiras apresentam uma expansão próxima, mas superior ao observado nos dados. A terceira simulação, porém, mostra uma expansão em torno de um quarto do observado. Também são discutidas variações no tempo médio de poupança para aquisição do bem durável e no consumo de bens não-duráveis. / This thesis presents a model to explain consumption booms after inflation stabilization plans centered on price and exchange rate controls. The focus is directed to durable goods and the difficulty for households to protect themselves from inflation. A sudden decrease in the inflation rate reduces durable goods effective price of consumption, leading to a boom. The model is then calibrated for mid-80s Brazil and three simulations are presented: one for a permanent stabilization of inflation and two temporary stabilizations, with a length of 10 and 3 months each. The first two present an expansion in the ownership of consumer durables that is slightly higher than what is shown in the data. The third simulation, on the other hand, presents a growth in ownership that is a quarter of the total seen in the data. Changes in the average savings period and in non-durables consumption are also discussed.

Thesis advisor: Peter Ireland / Thesis advisor: Matteo Iacoviello / The dissertation is composed by two chapters. In the first one, I study the role of credit constraints and incomplete markets in the short run transmission of monetary shocks, using the superneutrality result that would obtain from preference separability in the Sidrauski model under complete markets as a benchmark. I find that money demand heterogeneity stemming from binding credit constraints invalidates the superneutrality result. I show this result under two alternative settings. In a simple two agents model, with heterogeneity in the rates of time preference, whether positive shocks to the growth rate of money are expansionary or contractionary crucially depends on the transfer scheme adopted by the monetary authority to rebate seigniorage transfers: redistributional effects implied by symmetric lump-sum transfers are contractionary, while wealth-neutral transfers are expansionary. In a model with uninsurable idiosyncratic risk, the approximate aggregation property fails to hold due to the high degree of heterogeneity of money demand and to the properties of the cross-sectional distribution of money holdings, suggesting the inadequacy of the representative agent assumption and the need for a more elaborate approximation of the wealth distribution to predict prices. In the second chapter, we propose a real business cycle model with labor and credit market frictions in which borrowing is conditional on employment status. Relative to a conventional set up, and as long as credit is valued positively, our model generates a non-standard labor/leisure trade off that induces job applicants to accept lower wages and firms to post more vacancies, ultimately increasing employment. A shock to the demand of durable goods, by increasing the collateral value, reduce the opportunity cost of working, and generates an increase in employment and output. The transmission of a financial shock that increases the loan to value ratio, is dampened by the costs, in terms of leisure, incurred by the borrowers. We show that this mechanism is able to generate the positive comovement between outstanding household debt and employment observed in the data, whereas a conventional model, in which employment status is irrelevant for obtaining credit, predicts a counterfactual negative comovement. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

<p>This thesis consists of a summary and four papers. The first two papers are theoretical contributions within the area of optimal taxation and public expenditures under asymmetric information between the government and the private sector, and the last two are empirical contributions to the literature on local public expenditures.</p><p>Paper [I] concerns the optimal use of publicly provided private goods in an economy with equilibrium unemployment. The paper points out that imperfect competition in the labor market gives rise to additional policy incentives associated with the self-selection constraint, which motivates adjustments in the public provision of private goods. It also addresses employment related motives behind publicly provided private goods.</p><p>Paper [II] addresses optimal income and commodity taxation in a dynamic economy, where used durable goods are subject to second-hand trade. In our framework, the government is unable to directly control second-hand transactions via commodity taxation. We show how the appearance of a second-hand market affects the use of commodity taxation on the new durable goods as well as the use of income taxation.</p><p>Paper [III] relates the existence and size of the flypaper effect to observable municipal characteristics. The analysis is based on a political economy model, which implies that the effect of a change in the tax base on the majority voter's tax share will be crucial for finding a flypaper effect. The empirical part is based on Swedish data on municipal expenditures and revenues for the period 1996-2004. The results show that the size of the flypaper effect varies among municipalities depending on the relative composition of grant and tax base.</p><p>In Paper [IV], the composition of municipal expenditures in Sweden is analyzed by estimating a demand system for local public services, in which tax revenue collection is treated as endogenous. The estimation is based on the QAIDS specification and uses panel data for the period 1998-2005 and for six local public services. The results show that the point estimates of the income elasticities are positive (with one exception), whereas the point estimates of the own-price elasticities are negative and less than one.</p>

In this dissertation we use Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium DSGE) models to explain empirical regularities and policy implications related to (1) durable goods, interest rates and small open economy business cycles, (2) Terms-of-Trade (ToT) and economic fluctuations in small open economies and (3) Budget Stabilization Funds (BSFs) and States’ business cycles. In the first essay, we document that durable spending in developed small open economies constitutes a large share of their total income. Their spending is highly procyclical, sensitive to interest rates, and leads the business cycle. We address these regularities with a RBC model with durable goods. The model successfully replicates the observed business cycle regularities and explains many anomalies not explained in the existing literature. It also emphasizes the role of interest rates uncertainty in explaining the dynamics of the small open economies. The second essay addresses the impacts of the ToT fluctuation on the business cycles of various small open economies. We argue that differences in the degree of durability in domestic production and imports may make these economies more or less sensitive to an identical ToT shock. We found that economies with higher durability usually enjoy more stable business cycle comparing with economies with lower degree of durability. Differences in the persistence of the ToT do affect the dynamic of the external accounts but it cannot explain the observed differences business cycles across small open economies. In the last essay, we evaluate the economic impacts of the Budget Stabilization Funds (BSF) on State-level business cycles. We lay out a State economy RBC model in which a State’s government applies a designated saving rule consistent with households’ optimization. Given the suggested rule we find that the BDFs become a significant automatic stabilizer. It is not only mitigates the procyclicality of the government spending but it also smooth the State’s business cycle.

This thesis consists of a summary and four papers. The first two papers are theoretical contributions within the area of optimal taxation and public expenditures under asymmetric information between the government and the private sector, and the last two are empirical contributions to the literature on local public expenditures. Paper [I] concerns the optimal use of publicly provided private goods in an economy with equilibrium unemployment. The paper points out that imperfect competition in the labor market gives rise to additional policy incentives associated with the self-selection constraint, which motivates adjustments in the public provision of private goods. It also addresses employment related motives behind publicly provided private goods. Paper [II] addresses optimal income and commodity taxation in a dynamic economy, where used durable goods are subject to second-hand trade. In our framework, the government is unable to directly control second-hand transactions via commodity taxation. We show how the appearance of a second-hand market affects the use of commodity taxation on the new durable goods as well as the use of income taxation. Paper [III] relates the existence and size of the flypaper effect to observable municipal characteristics. The analysis is based on a political economy model, which implies that the effect of a change in the tax base on the majority voter's tax share will be crucial for finding a flypaper effect. The empirical part is based on Swedish data on municipal expenditures and revenues for the period 1996-2004. The results show that the size of the flypaper effect varies among municipalities depending on the relative composition of grant and tax base. In Paper [IV], the composition of municipal expenditures in Sweden is analyzed by estimating a demand system for local public services, in which tax revenue collection is treated as endogenous. The estimation is based on the QAIDS specification and uses panel data for the period 1998-2005 and for six local public services. The results show that the point estimates of the income elasticities are positive (with one exception), whereas the point estimates of the own-price elasticities are negative and less than one.