This paper applies the theory of aspiration adaptation to industrial economics. It is motivated by the question, frequently raised in the context of theoretical and empirical research on industrial innovation, of what triggers a firm's innovative activity. We develop a model of the management's...

The dynamics of individual characteristics of economic agents is modeled with the link structure influenced by this dynamics: links between agents with similar characteristics are more stable than those between agents with vastly different characteristics. A simple scaling law describes the...

A model of new-product diffusion is proposed in which a site-percolation dynamics represents socially-driven diffusion of knowledge about the product's characteristics in a population of potential buyers. A consumer buys the new product if her valuation of it is not below the price of the...

We empirically investigate distributions of individual consumption expenditure f or four commodity categories conditional on fixed income levels. The data stems from the Family Expenditure Survey carried out annually in the United Kingdom. W e use graphical techniques to test for normality and...

This paper proposes a percolation-based model of new-product diffusion in the spirit of Solomon et al. (2000) and Goldenberg et al. (2000). A consumer buys the new product if she has formed her individual valuation of the product (reservation price) and if this valuation is greater or equal than...

A model of new-product diffusion is proposed in which a site-percolation dynamics represents socially driven diffusion of knowledge about the product's characteristics in a population of consumers. A consumer buys the new product if her valuation of it—formed after her witnessing the product...

We propose a stochastic model of interactive formation of individual expectations regarding the business climate in an industry. Our model is motivated by a business climate survey conducted since 1960 in Germany by the Ifo-institute (www.ifo.de). In accordance with the data structure of this...

We investigated in the laboratory whether gender differences in decisions made under uncertainty without information on decisions of equally informed others are robust to the availability of that information. Participants specified in each of at most 60 periods four capital volumes making up the...

We benefit from the Bologna reform to show how course and program policies affect academic achievement. We examine two similar programs at the business school of a major European university, which were both reformed. Time lags in the reforms allow us to estimate the difference in the differences...

type="main" <title type="main">Summary</title> <p>Departing from the mostly skeptical view of privacy encountered in economics, we re-evaluate privacy from the perspective of economic liberalism. We argue that freedom is fundamental to economics and conceive privacy as a specific form of freedom. We then apply the principle...</p>