This article provides a review and critique of the empirical literature that examines the effects of incentive regulation on retail telephone service quality in the United States. The literature provides mixed findings. Some dimensions of service quality appear to improve under incentive...

This paper on the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) on the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR) explains macroeconomic, structural, and social policies in support of growth and poverty reduction, as well as associated external financing needs and major sources of financing. The...

We present an optimal-control model where tipping behavior creates reputation that affects future service. Tipping and reputation can evolve in four path prototypes: converging to an interior equilibrium; converging to minimum tips and reputation; and two prototypes that start differently but...

Online price comparison agents (shopbots) allow consumers to instantaneously receive price and other information from many online retailers. Online consumer clickstream data from ComScore Inc.demonstrate that consumers are increasingly using shopbots to conduct search. This phenomenon raises...

Service has traditionally been a forceful competitive tool in grocery retailing. Lately discount stores has proven to be a winning concept within North European grocery re-tailing and this has evoked a renewed interest in service quality and grocery retailing. The overall aim of this study is to...

The importance of direct marketing for high quality farm products has increased during the past few years. This paper analyses the impact of customer satisfaction and its driving forces for farmer- to-consumer direct marketing and is based on a customer survey in 33 organic and conventional...

This paper addresses the question of whether low cost carriers provide low quality service. Considerable work has been done on various aspects of airline service quality, including: examining the causes of flight delays and cancellations, investigating service quality during irregular airport...

This article reviews the major insights of the economics literature regarding the design of service quality regulation in public utility industries. The focus is on generic service quality issues of primary relevance in the industries, which include the electricity, telecommunications, and water...