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361. The Role of Effort Advantage in Consumer Response to Loyalty Programs: The Idiosyncratic Fit Heuristic

Author:
Ran Kivetz and Itamar Simpson
Publication Date:
12-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University
Abstract:
Over the past few years, customer relationship management and loyalty programs (LPs) have been widely adopted by companies and have received a great deal of attention from marketers, consultants, and, to a lesser degree, academics. In this research, we examine the effect of the level of effort required to obtain a LP's reward on consumers' perception of the LP's attractiveness. We propose that, under certain conditions, increasing the program requirements can enhance consumers' likelihood of joining the program, thus leading consumers to prefer a dominated option. Specifically, we hypothesize that consumer s often evaluate LPs based on their individual effort to obtain the reward relative to the relevant reference effort (e.g., the effort of typical other consumers). When consumers believe they have an effort advantage relative to typical others (i.e., an idiosyncratic fit with the LP), higher program requirements manify this perception of advantage and can therefore increase the overall perceived value of the program. This proposition was supported in a series of studies in which the perceived idiosyncratic fit was manipulated either by reducing the individual effort or by raising the reference effort. The findings also indicate that (a) idiosyncratic fit considerations are elicited spontaneously, (b) idiosyncratic fit mediates the effect of effort on consumer response to LPs, and (c) an alternative account for the results based on signaling is not supported. We conclude that these findings are part of a broader phenomenon, which we term the idiosyncratic fit heuristic, whereby a key factor that affects consumers' response to marketing programs and promotional offers is the perceived relative advantage or fit with the individual's idiosyncratic conditions and preferences.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Emerging Markets, and Industrial Policy

362. Sticky Prices, No Menu Costs

Author:
David Bowman
Publication Date:
12-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
A model that contains no costs to changing prices but in which prices do not respond to nominal shocks is presented. In models that do not feature superneutrality of money flexible price equilibria will allow certain types of monetary shocks to affect the real economy. Sticky price behavior may in fact be better at protecting the real economy from the effects of monetary shocks in such environments. This point is demonstrated in a standard monetary model with liquidity effects. An equilibrium in which sticky prices are supported without menu costs is then constructed. In equilibrium firms choose to keep prices fixed in response to nominal shocks because doing so provides a service to their customers, increasing profits by expanding the customer base.
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

363. The Road to Adopting the Euro: Monetary Policy and Exchange Rate Regimes in EU Candidate Countries

Author:
Fabio M. Natalucci and Federico Ravenna
Publication Date:
12-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
This paper examines the choice of exchange rate regime in EU candidate countries during the process of accession to the European Monetary Union (EMU). In the presence of real exchange rate appreciation due to the Balassa-Samuelson effect, candidate countries face a trade-off between trend appreciation of the nominal exchange rate and high inflation rates. In a general equilibrium model of an emerging market economy, we show that under a fixed or heavily managed exchange rate the Balassa-Samuelson effect might prevent compliance with the Maastricht inflation criterion, unless a contractionary policy is adopted. We then discuss how the real exchange rate appreciation shifts the output gap/inflation variance trade-off, increasing the cost of managing or fixing the exchange rate. As a consequence, the requirement of membership in the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM-II) and the Maastricht inflation criterion constrain the policy choice while providing no additional benefit to countries credibly committed to joining the Euro. Finally, we show that relaxing either the exchange rate requirement or the inflation criterion has sharply different business cycle implications for the accession countries.
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Europe

364. Identifying the Effects of Monetary Policy Shocks on Exchange Rates Using High Frequency Data

Author:
John H. Rogers, Jonathan H. Wright, Jon Faust, and Eric Swanson
Publication Date:
10-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
This paper proposes a new approach to identifying the effects of monetary policy shocks in an international vector autoregression. Using high-frequency data on the prices of Fed Funds futures contracts, we measure the impact of the surprise component of the FOMC-day Federal Reserve policy decision on financial variables, such as the exchange rate and the foreign interest rate. We show how this information can be used to achieve identification without having to make the usual strong assumption of a recursive ordering.
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

365. Are Depreciations as Contractionary as Devaluations? A Comparison of Selected Emerging and Industrial Economies

Author:
Steven B. Kamin, Shaghil Ahmed, Christopher J. Gust, and Jonathan Huntley
Publication Date:
09-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
According to conventional models, flexible exchange rates play an equilibrating role in open economies, depreciating in response to adverse shocks, boosting net exports, and stimulating aggregate demand. However, critics argue that, at least in developing countries, devaluations are more contractionary and more inflationary than conventional theories would predict. Yet, it is not clear whether devaluations per se have led to adverse outcomes, or rather the disruptive abandonments of pegged exchange-rate regimes associated with devaluations. To explore this hypothesis, we estimate VAR models to compare the responses to devaluation of developing economies and two types of industrial economies: those that have consistently floated, and those that have sustained fixed exchange-rate regimes as well. We find that both of these types of industrial economies exhibit conventional (i.e., expansionary) responses to devaluation shocks, compared with the contractionary responses exhibited by developing countries. This finding suggests that exchange rate movements may be more destabilizing in developing countries than in industrial countries, regardless of exchange rate regime.
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, Industrial Policy, and International Trade and Finance

366. Identifying the Role of Moral Hazard in International Financial Markets

Author:
Steven B. Kamin
Publication Date:
09-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
Considerable attention has been paid to the possibility that large-scale IMF-led financing packages may have distorted incentives in international financial markets, leading private investors to provide more credit to emerging market countries, and at lower interest rates, than might otherwise have been the case. Yet, prior attempts to identify such distortions have yielded mixed evidence, at best. This paper makes three contributions to our ability to assess the empirical importance of moral hazard in international financial markets. First, it is argued that because large international "bailouts" did not commence until the 1995 Mexican crisis, financial indicators prior to that time could not have reflected a significant degree of this type of moral hazard. Therefore, one test for the existence of moral hazard is that the access of emerging markets to international credit is significantly easier than it was prior to 1995. Second, the paper argues that because private investors expect large-scale IMF-led packages to be extended primarily to economically or geo-politically important countries, moral hazard, if it exists, should lead these countries to have easier terms of access to credit than smaller, non-systemically important countries. Finally, in addition to looking at bond spreads, the focus of earlier empirical analyses of moral hazard, the paper also examines trends in capital flows to gauge the access of emerging market countries to external finance. Looking at the evidence in light of these considerations, the paper concludes that there is little support for the view that moral hazard is significantly distorting international capital markets at the present time.
Topic:
International Relations, Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance

367. On the Fragility of Gains from Trade under Continuously Differentiated Bertrand Competition

Author:
Mario Marazzi
Publication Date:
09-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
One of the most widely accepted principles of economics is the existence of gains from trade for every nation under certain conditions including perfect competition. In the last twenty years, trade economists have revolutionized the field by firmly establishing the possibility of modeling imperfectly competitive international markets. Despite this development, most still agree there are good reasons to believe that gains from trade are still present. However, we show that in the absence of international redistributions the presence of a positive profit sector in a general equilibrium model can lead to a situation in which some nations may lose from the reduction of international trade barriers.
Topic:
International Relations, Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance

368. A Theory of the Currency Denomination of International Trade

Author:
Philippe Bacchetta and Eric van Wincoop
Publication Date:
07-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
Nominal rigidities due to menu costs have become a standard element in closed economy macroeconomic modeling. The "New Open Economy Macroeconomics" literature has investigated the implications of nominal rigidities in an open economy context and found that the currency in which prices are set has significant macroeconomic and policy implications. In this paper we solve for the optimal invoicing choice by integrating this microeconomic decision at the firm level into a general equilibrium open economy model. Strategic interactions between firms play a critical role in the analysis. We find that the less competition firms face in foreign markets, as reflected in market share and product differentiation, the more likely they will price in their own currency. We also show that when a set of countries forms a monetary union, the new currency is likely to be used more extensively in trade than the sum of the currencies it replaces.
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

369. Macroeconomics of International Price Discrimination

Author:
Giancarlo Corsetti and Luca Dedola
Publication Date:
07-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
This paper builds a baseline two-country model of real and monetary transmission under optimal international price discrimination. Distributing traded goods to consumers requires nontradables; because of distributive trade, the price elasticity of export demand depends on the exchange rate. Profit-maximizing monopolistic firms drive a wedge between wholesale and retail prices across countries. This entails possibly large deviations from the law of one price and incomplete pass-through on import prices. Yet, consistent with expenditure-switching effects, a nominal depreciation generally worsens the terms of trade. Moreover, the exchange rate and the terms of trade can be more volatile than fundamentals. For plausible ranges of the distribution margin, there can be multiple steady states, whereas large differences in nominal and real exchange rates across equilibria translate into small differences in consumption, employment and the price level. Finally, we show that with competitive goods markets international policy cooperation is redundant even under financial autarky.
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

370. Identifying VARs Based on High Frequency Futures Data

Author:
Jonathan H. Wright, Jon Faust, and Eric Swanson
Publication Date:
02-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
Using the prices of federal funds futures contracts, we measure the impact of the surprise component of Federal Reserve policy decisions on the expected future trajectory of interest rates. We show how this information can be used to identify the effects of a monetary policy shock in a standard monetary policy VAR. This constitutes an alternative approach to identification that is quite different, and, we would argue, more plausible, than the conventional short-run restrictions. We find that the usual recursive identification of the model is rejected, but we nevertheless agree with the literature's conclusion that only a small fraction of the variance of output can be attributed to monetary policy shocks.
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States