This paper investigates dynamic interactions in the US beef market using phase space reconstruction, which has been developed to analyze nonlinear dynamical systems. This approach provides important and unique empirical insights into consumers behavior in the beef market. Our results from a...

Differentiating strains of a pathogen is often central to investigating its epidemiological aspects. The genetic similarity of a group of strains can be assessed by calculating a matrix of dissimilarities from their DNA fingerprinting profiles. The mean dissimilarity for each strain across other...

Phase space reconstruction is investigated as a diagnostic tool for uncovering structure of nonlinear processes in regression residuals. Results in the form of phase portraits (e.g. scatter plots of reconstructed dynamical systems) and descriptive statistics provide information that can identify...

Replaced with revised version of paper 06/08/11.

Certain aspects of advertising–especially on television–are not easily explained with conventional economic models. In particular, much of the imagery and repetitive thematic content seen in advertisements seem “psychological” in nature, as opposed to “informative.” To understand the...

It is often assumed (for analytical convenience, but also in accordance with common intuition) that consumer preferences are convex. In this paper, we consider circumstances under which such preferences are (or are not) optimal. In particular, we investigate a setting in which goods possess some...

Theories of rational addiction posit that certain habit -forming goods "characterized by an increasing marginal utility of consumption "generate predictable dynamic patterns of consumer behavior. It has been suggested that attendance at sporting events represents an example of such a good, as...

Something about being poor makes people fat. Though there are many possible explanations for the income-body weight gradient, we investigate a promising butlittle-studied hypothesis: that economic insecurity acts as an independent cause of weight gain. We use data on working age men from the...