Video Game Sales: Does Diversity Pay?
By Hai Lin “Helena” Wu The video game industry has grown into a mature market in the past decade, surpassing the size of the U.S. film industry in 2009. As a result of the rise in popularity of video gaming amongst many demographic groups of the American population, the underrepresentation of female and ethnic minorities […]
Debunking the Cost-Shifting Myth: An Analysis of Dnamic Price Discrimination in California Hospitals
By Omar Nazzal Cost-shifting, a dynamic form of price discrimination, is a phenomenon in which hospitals shift the burden of decreases in government-sponsored healthcare reimbursement rates to private health insurers. In this paper, I construct a data set spanning 2007 – 2011 that matches financial metrics of California hospitals to hospital- and market-specific characteristics with […]
Price Partitioning and Consumer Rationality in Internet Retail Markets
By Katherine Bodnar This paper seeks to further understand the bounds of consumer rationality and search on the Internet. Specifically this paper focuses on how consumers respond to partitioned prices when making their purchasing decisions. The goal of the paper is to determine if consumers are as sensitive to explicitly stated shipping prices, as they […]
Empirical Evidence of Airline Merger Waves Based on A Selective Entry Model
By Peichun Wang Ever since the Deregulation Act in 1978 in the U.S. airline industry, there have been series of major airline mergers and acquisitions, notably three major waves in the 1980’s, 1990’s, and late 2000’s. These mergers, especially the more recent multi-billion mergers (e.g. Delta- Northwest, United-Continental) have shown a trend of substantial market […]
