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We introduce a measure of the severity of violations of the revealed preference axioms, themoney pump index(MPI). The MPI is the amount of money one can extract from a consumer who violates the axioms. It is also a statistical test for the hypothesis that a consumer is rational when behavior is observed with error. We present an application using a panel data set of food expenditures. The data exhibit many violations of the axioms. Mostly, the MPI for these violations is small. The MPI indicates that the hypothesis of consumer rationality cannot be rejected.

Humans have restructured food webs and ecosystems by depleting biomass, reducing size structure and altering traits of consumers. However, few studies have examined the ecological impacts of human-induced trait changes across large spatial and temporal scales and species assemblages. We compared behavioural traits and predation rates by predatory fishes on standard squid prey in protected areas of different protection levels and ages, and found that predation rates were 6.5 times greater at old, no-take (greater than 40 years) relative to new, predominantly partial-take areas (approx. 8 years), even accounting for differences in predatory fish abundance, body size and composition across sites. Individual fishes in old protected areas consumed prey at nearly twice the rate of fishes of the same species and size at new protected areas. Predatory fish exhibited on average 50% longer flight initiation distance and lower willingness to forage at new protected areas, which partially explains lower foraging rates at new relative to old protected areas. Our experiments demonstrate that humans can effect changes in functionally important behavioural traits of predator guilds at large (30 km) spatial scales within managed areas, which require protection for multiple generations of predators to recover bold phenotypes and predation rates, even as abundance rebounds.

Consumer advocates and regulators in Australia have long been concerned about prevalent business models that prey upon vulnerable consumers. This paper considers both the types of factors that might justify consumer protection legislation responding to business models that take advantage of the reduced ability of consumers to protect their own interests in the transaction in question and the type of legislative response that might be utilized. In particular, the paper explores the role of standard-based “safety net” prohibitions on unconscionable or unfair conduct. The paper considers the approach taken by Australian courts to the prohibition on “unconscionable conduct” in the Australian Consumer Law and compares this provision with the general prohibition in the Directive on Unfair Commercial Practices. The paper argues that, while Australian courts have made effective use of the prohibition on unconscionable conduct in responding to predatory business models, a safety net provision based on the Directive would have merit in the Australian context as providing better guidance to consumers and businesses alike as to the limits of acceptable market conduct.

Individualism leading to more consumerism seems to be a bit of truism nowadays in the media. The USA is particularly indicted for being too individualistic and consumerist. Past research has mostly indicated a positive relationship between the two. However, past research has not suggested a negative association between individualism and consumerism. This paper offers support for such a negative relationship by showing that an individual's ethical values can temper the consumerist nature of individualists. Data were collected in the USA and Taiwan. Structural equation models demonstrate that our hypothesized model fits our data well. A key result over the global sample is the stability of the linear path from individualism to work ethic to consumer ethic to consumerism. The two-nation comparison also supports differences in how Taiwanese and Americans differ in their belief that consumption benefits society.

The best pricing method for any company in a perfectly competitive market is the pricing scheme with regards to the marginal cost. In contrast to this environment, there is a market with imperfect competition. In this market, the price can be affected by some players in the generation/demand side (i.e., suppliers and/or buyers). In the economic literature, “market power” refers to a company that has the power to affect prices. In fact, market power is often defined as the ability to divert prices from competitive levels. In the electricity market, especially because of the integration of intermittent renewable energy resources (RESs) along with the inflexibility of demand, there are levels of market power on the supply side. Hence, implementation of demand response (DR) programs is necessary to increase the flexibility of the demand side to deal with the intermittency of renewable generations and at the same time tackle the market power of the supply side. This paper uses economic theories and mathematical formulations to develop a flexible responsive load economic model (FRLEM) based on real-time pricing (RTP) to show modification of the load profile and mitigation of the energy costs for an industrial zone. This model was developed based on constant elasticity of the substitution utility function, known as one of the most popular utility functions in microeconomics.

For many years in the wholesale electricity market, the generation companies would only seek to compete with each other to sell electric energy to customers in a way to make more profit. Moreover, there was no mechanism in such an environment to enable demand-side participation especially for residential building units with relatively high power consumptions. This caused the increasing market power of generation companies and soon to realize that the demand side would yield to any price to purchase the required energy. Having gradually identified this issue, demand response (DR) programs were introduced as confronting tools to help consumers being away from such situations. This paper proposes an effective market-oriented DR model for residential consumers to change their consumption patterns over the time for getting maximum benefits based on their own utility functions. According to the results of simulated case studies, it is demonstrated that the proposed model is able to adapt to different consumers with different levels of flexibility against the price signals. Moreover, simulation results demonstrate that the residential consumption levels can be easily adjusted during the examined period in a way not only to meet the user’s objectives, but also to reshape and smooth the system’s aggregated load profile.

This paper proposes a real‐time interactional pricing scheme to maximize the social welfare of players in real‐time demand response program in smart grids. Lagrangian relaxation–based dual decomposition is used to separate the social welfare optimization problem into a retailer's problem along with many consumers' subproblems, and the gradient projection method is adopted to solve them. First, the consumers' subproblems are solved to determine the optimal demand responses to the price announced by the retailer. To obtain the optimal demand response, a comprehensive mathematical function is developed on the basis of a combination of 5 costumer's utility functions reported in literature (ie, linear, potential, logarithmic, exponential, and hyperbolic). Afterward, the retailer calculates a real‐time price in response to the consumers' reactions to maximize its profit. In terms of practical implementation, the consumers and the retailer interact with each other via a limited number of control messages exchanges to find the optimal solution at each hour. The proposed method is evaluated considering the various retailer's cost functions and the consumers' behaviors. Also, the results of elasticity sensitivity analysis are presented from the retailer and consumer viewpoints.

There is increasing interest in the impacts of pulsed resource inputs (e.g., seasonal fluctuations in primary production) on ecosystem properties. However, theoretical models have focused on the ecosystem role of consumers only in stable environments. We investigated how the consumption rate affects ecosystem properties when resource supplies are pulsed using a simple model with numerical simulations. We initially investigated how primary production responds to resource supply shortages under various consumption rates and found that a vigorous consumer attenuates a rapid reduction in primary production. We next examined ecosystem properties under pulsed resource supplies. Intermediate consumption enhances primary production. The consumption rate that maximizes productivity differs for producers and consumers in a given resource supply environment, irrespective of the pattern of pulsation. The enhancement of primary production and the maximization of secondary production occur simultaneously in a stable environment but are not always the same when the resource supply is pulsed. We also investigated the variability of primary production and found that intermediate consumption rates reduce its coefficient of variation. In addition, we found that consumers with either very low or very high consumption rates are vulnerable to extinction when resource supplies are pulsed. Therefore, consumers with intermediate consumption rates contribute not only to the enhancement and stabilization of primary production but also to the stability of the consumer population itself.

There is increasing interest in the impacts of pulsed resource inputs (e.g., seasonal fluctuations in primary production) on ecosystem properties. However, theoretical models have focused on the ecosystem role of consumers only in stable environments. We investigated how the consumption rate affects ecosystem properties when resource supplies are pulsed using a simple model with numerical simulations. We initially investigated how primary production responds to resource supply shortages under various consumption rates and found that a vigorous consumer attenuates a rapid reduction in primary production. We next examined ecosystem properties under pulsed resource supplies. Intermediate consumption enhances primary production. The consumption rate that maximizes productivity differs for producers and consumers in a given resource supply environment, irrespective of the pattern of pulsation. The enhancement of primary production and the maximization of secondary production occur simultaneously in a stable environment but are not always the same when the resource supply is pulsed. We also investigated the variability of primary production and found that intermediate consumption rates reduce its coefficient of variation. In addition, we found that consumers with either very low or very high consumption rates are vulnerable to extinction when resource supplies are pulsed. Therefore, consumers with intermediate consumption rates contribute not only to the enhancement and stabilization of primary production but also to the stability of the consumer population itself.

Demand-side management (DSM) has been introduced as the first choice in all energy policy decisions because of its potential benefits at operation and economic levels. After restructuring, the DSM programs were expanded to include demand response programs (DRPs). In this study, in order to solve generation scheduling problem, demand-side resources (DSRs) are linked to supply-side resources (SSRs) and the DRPs are intelligently implemented by ISO with the aim of minimising the total cost of unit commitment (UC) problem (UCDSR). In order to investigate the effects of connection of DSRs to the SSRs on the UCDSR problem, some of the most important voluntary DRPs are considered and also in order to investigate the effect of responsive loads models on the UCDSR problem, linear and non-linear models of responsive loads such as potential, exponential, and logarithmic models are considered and implemented. In this study, the economic models of responsive loads are derived based on price elasticity of demand and consumers’ surplus function. The proposed method is intelligently applied on a ten-unit system to determine the best scheme for implementing DRPs and commitment status of units. It is shown that obtaining the minimum cost for system using an unsuitable scheme of DRPs or unreal model for responsive loads is not possible.