Search results

Salop and Stiglitz analyzed an equilibrium search model under a Stackelberg assumption that consumers could react to changes in the distribution of prices charged by firms even though they did not know which particular firms were charging the lowest price. In this chapter we assume that firms and consumers move simultaneously so that consumers cannot react to changes in the price distribution. We also assume that a firm cannot limit sales if demand exceeds its desired supply at the price it sets. In contrast to Salop and Stiglitz, a single-price equilibrium at the monopoly price always exists. For most distributions of consumer search costs, a range of two-price equilibria will also exist. In the two-price equilibria, the high price is always the monopoly price while the low price varies in a range above the minimum of average total cost.

We find equilibrium price distributions in a search model with asymmetric duopolists whose marginal costs differ. There are informed consumers who know both prices and buy at the lower one and uninformed consumers who, not knowing prices, choose a store arbitrarily. With asymmetries, pure strategy equilibrium can exist and, even when not, atoms can exist in the firms' price distributions. One surprising result is that increasing the low cost store's marginal cost can lower average prices and raise the expected utilities of both types of consumers. When the low cost firm is foreign, this could justify imposing a tariff.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

In dealing with the question of fixity of tenure as regards officers appointed by local authorities, among the more important points to be taken into consideration are the extent to which those officers are likely, in the course of their work, to run counter to the interests or the wishes of individual members of the body appointing them, the degree of specialisation of the work they have to perform, and the difficulty they would have in obtaining similar appointments or similar work if dismissed from their offices. In connection with the first of these points it must be obvious that those officers who are ultimately responsible for decisions involving prosecutions, under the criminal law, of individuals who may be members of the council employing them, are, of all others, most likely to find themselves involved in a course of action which will cause them to incur the secret, and, sometimes, the open enmity of such individuals. It may be said that decisions as to prosecutions ultimately rest with a committee. In theory this is possibly correct, but in actual practice the conditions are reversed—where, at any rate, the Acts are reasonably and properly administered—for correct decisions on matters with which the members of a committee are admittedly incompetent to deal must depend upon the advice of competent professional officials.

THE scientist and philosopher will tell us that the mind of man cannot in a lifetime fully grasp and understand any one subject. Consequently it is unreasonable to expect that the librarian—who, in spite of popular belief, is but man—can have a complete understanding of every department of knowledge relative to his work. He must, in common with his fellows in other callings, content himself with a more or less general professional knowledge, and may specialize, if he be so disposed, in certain branches of that knowledge. The more restricted this particular knowledge is, the greater will be its value from a specialistic point of view.

The Marquis de Sade wrote that people behave differently in separate spaces and that, in different environments, they more easily reveal their true predilections. Throughout de Sade's writings, he reveals ways that hidden rooms, closets, castles, brothels, and monasteries can be used as spaces to unleash inner evil. Conveyed within de Sade's writings are ways in which characters actively change their settings in order to create these heterotopias – or spaces that are separate from normal routines. The role that separate spaces play in maintaining alternative behaviors has not been adequately examined in either de Sade's writings or in heterotopia literature. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the inner workings of a heterotopia frozen in time and space – a small town family business. This query merits exploration because the incestuous, atemporal behaviors that de Sade enacted can manifest themselves in family businesses. To examine this facet of family business, a customized methodology will be introduced – the Sadean duography. This manuscript is beneficial to practitioners in family businesses who seek to understand the hazards of inherting or purchasing new businesses, and to scholars in entrepreneurship and organizational studies seeking a deeper understanding of the role of heterotopias, also known as third spaces.

OF old the public library was wont to take its reputation from the character of the newsroom. That room, as everyone knows, attracts every element in the community and it may be it attracts especially the poorer elements;—even at times undesirable ones. These people in some towns, but perhaps not so often now‐a‐days, have been unwashen and often not very attractive in appearance. It was natural, things being as they are, that the room should give a certain tone to the institution, and indeed on occasion cause it to be avoided by those who thought themselves to be superior. The whole level of living has altered, and we think has been raised, since the War. There is poverty and depression in parts of the country, it is true; but there are relief measures now which did not exist before the War. Only those who remember the grinding poverty of the unemployed in the days, especially the winter days, before the War can realise what poverty really means at its worst. This democratic levelling up applies, of course, to the public library as much as to any institution. At present it may be said that the part of the library which is most apparent to the public and by which it is usually judged, is the lending or home‐reading department. It therefore needs no apology if from time to time we give special attention to this department. Even in the great cities, which have always concentrated their chief attention upon their reference library, to‐day there is an attempt to supply a lending library service of adequate character. We recall, for example, that the Leeds Public Library of old was first and foremost a reference library, with a lending library attached; to‐day the lending library is one of the busiest in the kingdom. A similar judgment can be passed upon Sheffield, where quite deliberately the city librarian would restrict the reference library to works that are of real reference character, and would develop more fully the lending library. In Manchester, too, the new “Reference Library”—properly the new Central Library—has a lending library which issues about 1,500 volumes daily. There must be all over the country many libraries issuing up to a thousand volumes each a day from their central lending departments. This being the case the department comes in for very careful scrutiny.