Price System Research Articles

Assessing the total factor productivity of China’s thermal power industry using a network DEA approach with cross-efficiency

In the current tough business environment, improving total factor productivity (TFP) is essential to the survival and development of China’s thermal power industry. On the basis of a network production structure, this research uses a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach with cross-efficiency to measure the overall and two-stage (power generation and pollutant treatment) TFPs of this industry in China’s 30 provinces. Moreover, the Tobit regression method is introduced to recognize the impact factors on TFP changes. Empirical results reveal that: (1) The overall TFP of the eastern region is the highest (0.6269), and the TFP levels of the central and western regions are relatively close (0.5182 and 0.5378, respectively). (2) Generally, the TFP of the power generation stage is higher than that of the pollutant treatment stage. The mean values of the two stages are 0.5765 and 0.3998, respectively. (3) Economic development and fuel prices are positively associated with the TFP level, whereas technological progress is surprisingly negatively associated. (4) Major policy directions recommended include establishing the power auxiliary service market, implementing the flexibility transformation of small and medium thermal power units, reducing the cross-subsidy to household electricity consumption, removing interregional barriers of electricity transmission, reforming the electricity price system to mitigate the rebound effect, and reducing inefficient investment in pollution treatment retrofit of thermal power plants.

Serum: differential pricing of the Covid-19 vaccine

Learning outcomes The learning outcomes of this study are as follows: 1. the benefits of differential pricing over uniform pricing; 2. the differences between second- and third-degree price discrimination; 3. the rationale for charging different prices for segments having different willingness to pay; and 4. how different prices for the same product can lead to perceptions of unfairness and how companies might manage such an issue. Case overview/synopsis This case outlines the decisions that Adar Poonawalla, the CEO of Serum Institute of India (Serum), had to make in late April 2021 concerning its pricing for the COVID-19 (Covid) vaccine. Serum was the world’s largest manufacturer of vaccines, and its Covishield vaccine had received regulatory approval, but faced an unusual challenge and opportunity. In most countries, governments had procured Covid vaccines from manufacturers and then delivered the vaccines to consumers free of cost. But in India, there was a three-tier pricing system. While the Government of India had committed to free vaccines in government-run public hospitals, it also allowed vaccine makers to directly sell vaccines to state governments, as well as private hospitals, who were at liberty to charge consumers for the vaccines. This created an interesting pricing dilemma for Serum: as different customers had different willingness to pay, should Serum use differential pricing? Would such a tiered pricing system be considered fair? How many different price points should Serum maintain? By exploring these and related decisions that Poonawalla had to make, the case is intended to teach price discrimination. Complexity academic level The case is intended for graduate-level courses in marketing, pricing and economics. This case illustrates the principles of differential pricing/price discrimination. More specifically, it highlights pricing strategies motivated by second- and third-degree price discrimination in an emerging market’s health-care context. From the information in the case, the student can learn to apply the concepts of second- and third-degree price discrimination in marketing. After working through the case and assignment questions, instructors will be able to help students understand the following concepts: Teaching objective 1: the benefits of differential pricing over uniform pricing. Teaching objective 2: the differences between second- and third-degree price discrimination. Teaching objective 3: the rationale for charging different prices for segments having different willingness to pay. Teaching objective 4: how different prices for the same product can lead to perceptions of unfairness and how companies might manage such an issue. Supplementary material Teaching notes are available for educators only. Subject code CSS 8: Marketing

Defining Biometrics With Privacy and Benefits: A Research Agenda

This conceptual paper defines and gives examples of biometrics, explains how biometric tracking is currently used (e.g. to predict IQ), and presents innovative future uses of biometric tracking (e.g. to customize the price of products in real time). Specifically, this paper outlines a novel biometric pricing technology (BPT) which uses facial tracking to set the price of products using a new participatory dynamic pricing (vs. static pricing) system. Based on the privacy paradox, this paper addresses the acceptance, concerns and usage of a new emerging technology by consumers and its potential applications. To explore this, we develop a typology of perceived benefits and perceived privacy to predict consumer reactions to biometric technology. In addition, we present a research agenda to guide future research on biometric pricing technology. This research agenda offers new insights on how biometric tracking and specifically biometric price setting could be explored from multiple angles, including the consumer experience, technology acceptance, online profiling, governance, public policy, regulation, ethical and future usage-based perspectives.

Local electricity market pricing mechanisms’ impact on welfare distribution, privacy and transparency

Local energy communities and electricity markets have emerged as possibilities for interaction among prosumers. A substantial effort has been invested into creating efficient pricing mechanisms for various market arrangements, all of which take into consideration distinct characteristics of local electricity trading. However, since they are all evaluated in terms of various systems and market conditions, it is challenging to directly compare the mechanisms. In this research, three well-established pricing mechanisms from the literature are systematically compared and evaluated under identical settings on their influence on welfare distribution across various market participant groups, privacy protection, transparency and complexity level. According to the findings, the supply–demand ratio pricing system leads to the lowest costs for consumers and is also the most privacy compliant and transparent. Furthermore, prosumers obtain the highest cost-savings through the consensus alternating direction method of multipliers pricing mechanism, whereas the equilibrium pricing mechanism performs best regarding economic fairness. The aim of this article is to provide insight into the performance of different pricing mechanisms to energy regulators and local electricity market facilitators. The comparative analysis should aid in making informed decisions on the implementation of local electricity markets.

Implementation of Competition Law In Cooking Oil Price Trading For Public Interest

This study discusses the implementation of competition law in the trading system of cooking oil prices for the public interest in Indonesia. Business competition law aims to encourage healthy competition between business actors in the market, including in the cooking oil sector. However, the implementation of this law still faces various challenges, especially related to suboptimal law enforcement and lack of public understanding of consumer rights in the market. Through a literature study approach, this study discusses the concept of business competition law and its role in encouraging healthy competition in cooking oil price trading. The results showed that the implementation of competition law in cooking oil price trading can provide benefits for the public, such as more affordable prices and better product quality. However, this can only be achieved if the government, business actors, and the community work together to improve understanding and enforcement of business competition law. In conclusion, the implementation of business competition law in cooking oil price trading can have a positive impact on the public interest if carried out properly and optimally. Therefore, an active role from all relevant parties is needed to ensure the successful implementation of this law.

Struktur Perilaku Dan Kinerja Pasar Komoditi Karet Di Desa Manggala Kabupaten Melawi

<em>This study aims to identify marketing channels, find out the structure, behavior and performance of the rubber market in Manggala Village, Melawi Regency.The market structure approach uses market share (market share), concentration ratio, and market entry barriers. The approach to market behavior using qualitative descriptive analysis explains with regard to the pricing system, and cooperation between marketing agencies.while the market performance approach uses marketing margin analysis. The respondents to the study were 67 rubber farmers and 13 marketing agencies involved in distributing rubber from producers to factories. The results showed that the structure of the rubber market in Manggala Village, Melawi Regency, led to an oligopoly. Based on the results of a descriptive analysis of market behavior, results were obtained in the process of pricing at the farmer level that farmers are not as determinants of prices but rather prices are determined by collecting traders and wholesalers. At the level of farmers and marketing institutions, there are as many as 21 people who cooperate with collecting merchants who have grocery stores, namely in the form of basic food debt,and paid when farmers sell their rubber production At the level of marketing institutions with marketing agencies, the cooperation carried out is with the provision of business capital to buy rubber from farmers and in the form of transportation of rubber picks to the place of collecting traders. The performance of the rubber market has not been efficient because the margins and profits of marketing institutions are uneven and farmers are the most disadvantaged because farmers are only price takers.</em>

Timber and Forestry in Qing China: Sustaining the Market by Meng Zhang

Reviewed by: Timber and Forestry in Qing China: Sustaining the Market by Meng Zhang Faizah Zakaria (bio) Timber and Forestry in Qing China: Sustaining the Market By Meng Zhang. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2021. Pp. 280. Meng Zhang's engaging and empirically rich study deconstructs the "market," an institution that has surprisingly garnered little deep attention in Asian environmental history. More than an examination of the circulation of goods—in this case, timber—Timber and Forestry reveals how the timber market in Qing China was built at the intersection of a complex supply chain connected by multiple players along the Yangzi river and a rising demand for timber that fueled the felling of millions of trees. Deftly interweaving economic and environmental histories, the book demonstrates that—far from being an alternative to the state in forest management—the timber market worked with and around the state to produce self-regulating mechanisms that promoted sustainability. This core insight provokes a rethinking about the environmental impact of capitalism and the possibility of staking sustainability to profit. The book first establishes that the Qing state ruled the market with a light hand in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and, moreover, imposed a procurement system that "was in a market, not in replacement of it" (p. 47). This argument resonates with and extends recent conclusions reached by scholars that timber markets in China were sustainable up to the 1600s. But it also indirectly refutes contentions that this sustainability declined rapidly during the Qing period; instead, this chapter shows major continuities in the governing of the timber market during the Ming–Qing transition. What distinguished the Qing era, though, were the sheer volume of the timber trade and the pressing need to develop interregional transport and market routes that incorporated relatively undisturbed forests of southern China into a widening cross-regional timber network. The second chapter follows the infrastructure of this long-distance riverine trade, paying close attention to distinctive cultural features of the timber business such as the system of measurement and pricing. Pegging prices to a function of the circumference of the logs sold set in motion processes that enabled the cross-regional market legibility and enriched traveling merchants, with Hankou in the middle Yangzi area becoming the country's largest timber market by the nineteenth century. Zhang's work is at its most lively and innovative when tracking timber market players from below—cultivators, merchants, brokers, and trade associations—and their impact on the market. Here, historians of technology will find Zhang's depiction of Qing silviculture informative in demonstrating how fir planting could be made sustainable. Financing such efforts also involved innovation. Demystifying contracts that were used to create incentives for timber cultivators to rotate and replant to maintain supply, the third chapter [End Page 647] highlights that tradeable and divisible shares based on landownership and labor input were not only crucial in maintaining the level of long-term investment needed for this market but also in encouraging reforestation. Moreover, the market spurred participation across class and ethnic lines, incorporating players such as the Miao of the lower Qingshui region, who adopted Chinesestyle contracts and began profiting from—as well as replanting—pine and fir. The final chapters expand on the theme of market self-regulation through the perspectives of timber brokers and trade associations. The wide variety of sources ranging from legal digests, contract disputes, and local gazettes provide a persuasive basis of evidence for the argument that these players, when given full rein and direct stakes in the health of the forests, tended to move toward responsible management of woodland resources. The overall positive view of the market in this book might spark unease among market skeptics about the self-regulatory potential of such mechanisms as described in the book. Indeed, Zhang herself points out caveats to market success, including but not limited to the reduced biodiversity of reforested landscapes and the dual-faced nature of the market, which "could be devouring and enabling" unless there was "a careful deliberation over how to delineate and assign the bundle of rights … that constitute the abstract notion of 'property' to different entities" (p. 178). One could extrapolate then that such...

Production economy and industry studies

This paper explores the concept of production economy, or the contemporary version of plutology, the study of production and distribution of wealth originally found in classical economics, for the empirical analysis of industries as flows of specific value-carrying design information to the market. The concepts and logic discussed in this article include the following: industrial/manufacturing sites as basic economic agents; design information as the source of value-added; the combination of downward-sloping market demand curves and flat individual supply curves generated by design-based product differentiation; design as an additional variable to make profit and employment goals compatible; manufacturing capabilities and their evolutions; a substantial, flow-oriented view of industries; Sraffian steady-state price systems at the national level; the concept of industrial competitiveness; the Ricardian theory of international production cost comparison; design-based comparative advantage; the CAP (capability-architecture-performance) approach to industrial evolutionary analysis. The present framework of production economy is also applied to the case of global competition during the post-Cold-War era (1990s–2010s).

A Systematic Requirement Analysis for Dynamic Pricing in Retail E-Commerce

Abstract: Retail e-commerce has been exploding recently, with billions of people using the internet to buy goods and services. Due to the vast number of vendors selling similar products to consumers and the high degree of price transparency enjoyed by purchasers, the e-commerce sector is fiercely competitive. Vendors frequently use dynamic pricing, also known as discount pricing, to ensure they generate a healthy profit. In this paper, we present a systematic analysis of the requirements for a modern e-commerce dynamic pricing system. We cover the business, stakeholder, functional, and non-functional requirements of ecommerce dynamic pricing. We additionally offer a generic architecture blueprint based on what we have learned about the requirements for dynamic pricing

Marginal Cost in Private and Public Transport

For decades, different economic theories have been trying to find an answer to determining the total costs of road transport and the best way to internalise these costs, with the most widespread answer among experts being pricing concerning marginal cost. This article presents a classification of transport costs with their corresponding mathematical functions to finally obtain the marginal cost of both public and private transport to develop an optimal pricing system. Finally, a system of equations for determining the optimal price based on the short term and under the economic premise of maximising social welfare is presented.

Parity as radical pragmatism: Centering farm justice and agrarian expertise in agricultural policy

Rather than treating symptoms of a destructive agri-food system, agricultural policy, research, and advocacy need both to address the root causes of dysfunction and to learn from longstanding interventions to counter it. Specifically, this paper focuses on agricultural parity policies – farmer-led, government-enacted programs to secure a price floor and manage supply to prevent the economic and ecological devastation of unfettered corporate agro-capitalism. Though these programs remain off the radar in dominant policy, scholarship, and civil society activism, but in the past few years, vast swaths of humanity have mobilized in India to call for agri-food systems transformation through farmgate pricing and market protections. This paper asks what constitutes true farm justice and how it could be updated and expanded as an avenue for radically reimagining agriculture and thus food systems at large. Parity refers to both a pricing ratio to ensure livelihood, but also a broader farm justice movement built on principles of fair farmgate prices and cooperatively coordinated supply management. The programs and principles are now mostly considered “radical,” deemed inefficient, irrelevant, obsolete, and grievous government overeach—but from the vantage, we argue, of a system that profits from commodity crop overproduction and agroindustry consolidation. However, by examining parity through a producer-centric lens cognizant of farmers‘ ability, desire, and need to care for the land, ideas of price protection and supply coordination become foundational, so that farmers can make a dignified livelihood stewarding land and water while producing nourishing food. This paradox—that an agricultural governance principle can seem both radical and common sense, far-fetched and pragmatic—deserves attention and analysis. As overall numbers of farmers decline in Global North contexts, their voices dwindle from these conversations, leaving space for worldviews favoring de-agrarianization altogether. In Global South contexts maintaining robust farming populations, such policies for deliberate de-agrarianization bely an aggression toward rural and peasant ways of life and land tenure. Alongside the history of parity programs, principles, and movements in U.S., the paper will examine a vast version of a parity program in India – the Minimum Support Price (MSP) system, which Indian farmers defended and now struggle to expand into a legal right. From East India to the plains of the United States and beyond, parity principles and programs have the potential to offer a pragmatic direction for countering global agro-industrial corporate capture, along with its de-agrarianization, and environmental destruction. The paper explores what and why of parity programs and movements, even as it addresses the complexity of how international parity agreements would unfold. It ends with the need for global supply coordination grounded in food sovereignty and solidarity, and thus the methodological urgency of centering farm justice and agrarian expertise.

Dynamic analysis of a low-carbon maritime supply chain considering government policies and social preferences

With the goal of achieving carbon peak and neutrality, the government and enterprises are trying their best to speed up the decarbonization process in the shipping industry. To analyze the long-term game behaviors of a port, a shipping company, and a forwarder under simultaneous effects of government policies and social preferences, this paper considers a three-echelon maritime supply chain with carbon abatement investment and low-carbon service investment (LCMSC). We focus on constructing a dynamic Stackelberg game model with heterogeneous expectations. Based on nonlinear dynamics theory, the dynamic evolution of the game and the influences of government policies, social preferences, and cost-sharing behaviors are investigated. The results indicate that: (1) Bifurcations and chaos caused by dynamic adjustment of the port and the shipping company will lead to the disorder of the pricing system and the effect of chaos on the development trend of expected profits and social welfare varies under different paths of the LCMSC system into chaos. (2) Government subsidies for carbon abatement technology not only significantly improve greenness and expected profits of all parties, but also improve the stability of the LCMSC system. The carbon emission quota for the port has nothing to do with LCMSC members' optimal strategy and the evolution of the LCMSC system's stability. However, it indirectly affects the decision strategy of multiple stakeholders through the variation of the carbon price. (3) Excessive fairness concerns and the port's risk-aversion awareness have negative impacts on greenness, social welfare and the system's stability, while high risk-aversion awareness of the shipping company and the forwarder play opposite roles. (4) The shipping company can promote a tripartite-wins situation for LCMSC and improve the stability of decision-making by appropriately sharing the carbon abatement cost of the port. This study expands the application scenario of nonlinear dynamics theory in the LCMSC. It also provides theoretical guides for the government to formulate policies to encourage the promotion of green shipping.

Analisis Kelayakan Pendanaan Pembangkit Listrik Energi Baru Terbarukan (EBT) di Sulawesi Barat

This study aims to analyze the investment attractiveness of New Renewable Energy (NRE) power plants in West Sulawesi, which currently has not attracted the attention of investors to replace PLTU in the biomass sector with factors that influence investors in making investment decisions including capital budgeting factors. This study uses a qualitative research approach. The research method used is phenomonology in the form of an analysis of the attractiveness of investment in the development of the NRE electricity sector in West Sulawesi. Based on the results of the analysis, it can be concluded that the investment attractiveness of New, Renewable Energy (NRE) in West Sulawesi is quite attractive in the eyes of foreign investors, but there are obstacles that hinder the negotiation process, namely regulations that are less detailed in the pricing system for NRE generation. So it is necessary that capital budgeting method has an important role in influencing investor decisions in investment decisions.

Theoretical Analysis of Socialism: Mises vs. Brutskus (to the Centenary of thе Publications of Books)

The article is devoted to the centenary of the publication of books by L. von Mises and B.D. Brutskus dedicated to the criticism of the socialist system. The similarity of the theoretical arguments used by the authors in the analysis of the economic aspects of socialist society makes it possible to call the theorem on the impossibility of socialism the double name of Mises-Bruckus. The authors consider the abolition of the institutions of private property on the means of production, as well as the market as a mechanism for coordination, and entrepreneurship to be the main factor of the rational impossibility of the economic system of socialism. Without these institutions, it is impossible to form a price system as a signaling mechanism about the most efficient directions for the distribution of resources. Without this information, the planning body will not be able to determine the goods that should be produced. Mises' analysis does not focus exclusively on the form of socialism that was realized in Soviet Russia, however it can be applied to any pseudo-socialist system or form of interventionism. Brutskus confirms the theoretical arguments with examples from Soviet practice.

What Factors Influence the Price of Carbon Emission Trading in China? A Case of Beijing Carbon Market

As an efficient measure to deal with the intensification of the greenhouse effect, markets for carbon emission trading have been considered to establish by governments in developed countries. However, A stable price system has not yet developed for China's carbon trading market, which is still in its early stages. Therefore, to stabilize the price of carbon trading, enhance the carbon trading price system, and support the wholesome growth of the carbon trading market in China, it is essential to conduct research on the factors that affect carbon trading price. Based on the trading mechanism and the monthly data of the Beijing carbon trading market from 2014 to 2020, this paper investigates the influence patterns of energy price, industrial development, macroeconomic growth, and air quality on carbon price changes, and unit root test, Johansen cointegration test, and error correction model are used to analyze the patterns. The empirical results show that industrial development, economic growth, energy prices, and air quality have a long-run equilibrium relationship with carbon prices. While industrial development indicators are negatively correlated with the price of carbon, the price of energy, economic growth, and air quality are positively correlated with the price of carbon emission trading. Finally, some relevant development suggestions are proposed according to the empirical results.

The Electronic Road Pricing System Planning: A Scenario of Curbing Congestion Issues on an Arterial Road in Makassar City, Indonesia

This study aims to analyze the traffic performance on arterial roads in Makassar City in the present and future with the implementation of Electronic Road Pricing, as well as analyze how many tariffs can be applied when Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) is used. The data were collected from traffic surveys and questionnaires distributed to users of four-wheeled and two-wheeled vehicles. From the data, the existing traffic conditions on the road were analyzed, and the probability of moving road users was calculated during the implementation of ERP. Furthermore, the Willingness To Pay method determines the rates that can be applied. The results of the research show that when ERP is implemented on the Andi Pangeran Pettarani Road, there will be a 40% reduction in traffic flow due to the route changes and a 42% reduction in traffic flow due to the modal shifts. This affects improving traffic performance in the future, where the existing condition of this road segment which was initially at LoS D and E, can be increased to LoS B and C. The tariff that can be applied to the ERP system is Rp 8,838 for four-wheeled vehicles or more and Rp 4,343 for two-wheeled vehicles

Multi-cloud service provision based on decision tree and two-layer Restricted Monte Carlo Tree Search

Compared with traditional service provision methods, cloud computing has many advantages, such as on-demand services and flexible pricing systems, attracting widespread attention from both academia and industry. However, the abundance of cloud services makes it difficult for users to choose suitable ones. Furthermore, the cloud is usually a dynamically changing execution environment, requiring users to constantly switch service carriers for the best experience. Therefore, to improve the efficiency of service interactions in a multi-cloud environment and cope with the high concurrency demands, this paper proposes a multi-agent and distributed broker-based cloud service provisioning model. Equipped with a decision tree-based user preference learning module, brokers in the proposed model can continuously adjust their resource introduction strategy through training on historical data. In the process of cloud service interaction, brokers select the best cost-effective service for users within a limited time through a two-layer Restricted Monte Carlo Tree Search (RMTCS) algorithm. This paper develops a multi-cloud service interconnection system based on the Libcloud framework. Shielding the different interfaces of different cloud service providers in cloud virtual machine and storage services provides the most suitable services for users and realizes the unified cloud federation service supply. The experiment results prove that the proposed model achieves better performance over the traditional methods and can better meet the service requirements of users.

The perils of lax economic policy: The case of Chile during the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper examines the short- and long-term effects of lax economic policy in Chile during the COVID-19 pandemic and discusses whether they promoted or inhibited sustainable economic growth and development. The case of Chile is worth studying because it straightforwardly describes the effects of passive and active economic policy on the economy. It is argued that the active or lax economic policy generated a short-term boom period and a long-term recessive environment. Lax economic policy in Chile distorted the price system and the intertemporal allocation of resources, stimulating consumption and indebtedness. Investments became less capital intensive, stagnating labor productivity and reducing growth and development. Regardless of external factors, the research shows that the recession of the Chilean economy emerged from lax economic policies and institutional uncertainty. These findings recognize the causes of the recessive environment of emerging economies, offering new insights into promoting sustainable economic growth and development post-crisis.

Real-Time Pricing-Enabled Demand Response Using Long Short-Time Memory Deep Learning

Sustainable energy development requires environment-friendly energy-generating methods. Pricing system constraints influence the efficient use of energy resources. Real-Time Pricing (RTP) is theoretically superior to previous pricing systems for allowing demand response (DR) activities. The DR approach has been useful for correcting supply–demand imbalances as technology has evolved. There are several systems for determining and controlling the DR. However, most of these solutions are unable to control rising demand or forecast prices for future time slots. This research provides a Real-Time Pricing DR model for energy management based on deep learning, where the learning framework is trained on demand response and real-time pricing. The study data in this article were taken from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), and the learning framework was trained over 17 years of data to forecast the real future energy price and demand. To investigate the suggested deep learning-based dynamic pricing strategy, two prediction instances are addressed: actual–predicted demand and actual–predicted price. We estimated pricing and demand outcomes using long short-term memory (LSTM), which were then greatly improved by architectural changes in the model. The findings showed that the suggested model is suitable for energy management in terms of demand and price prediction.

Price estimation based on business model pricing strategy and fuzzy logic

Pricing, as one of the most important aspects of a business, should be taken seriously. Whatever affects a company's pricing system tends to affect its profits and losses as wall. Currently, many manufacturing companies fix product prices manually by member of an organization's management team. However, due to the imperfect nature of humans, an extremely low or high price may be fixed, which is detrimental to the company in either case. This paper proposes the developement of a fuzzy-based price expert system (Expert Fuzzy Price (EFP)) for manufacturing companies. This system will be able to recommend appropriate prices for products in manufacturing companies based on four major pricing strategic goals, namely : Product Demand, Price Skimming, Competition Price, and Target population.