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We investigate the impact of pricing policies (i.e., flat pricing versus peak pricing) on the investment levels of a utility firm in two competing energy sources (renewable and conventional), with a focus on the renewable investment level. We consider generation patterns and intermittency of solar and wind energy in relation to the electricity demand throughout a day. Industry experts generally promote peak pricing policy as it smoothens the demand and reduces inefficiencies in the supply system. We find that the same pricing policy may lead to distinct outcomes for different renewable energy sources due to their generation patterns. Specifically, flat pricing leads to a higher investment level for solar energy, and it can lead to still more investments in wind energy if a considerable amount of wind energy is generated throughout the day. We validate these results by using electricity generation and demand data of the state of Texas. We also show that flat pricing can lead to substantially lower carbon emissions and a higher consumer surplus. Finally, we explore the effect of direct (e.g., tax credit) and indirect (e.g., carbon tax) subsidies on investment levels and carbon emissions. We show that both types of subsidies generally lead to a lower emission level but that indirect subsidies may result in lower renewable energy investments. Our study suggests that reducing carbon emissions through increasing renewable energy investments requires careful attention to the pricing policy and the market characteristics of each region. This paper was accepted by Serguei Netessine, operations management .

Geographic price discrimination is generally considered beneficial to firm profitability. However, theoretical results point to conditions under which firms might prefer to price across markets uniformly in oligopolistic settings. This paper provides an empirical analysis of competitive price discrimination and quantitatively assesses the profitability of national pricing relative to store-level pricing policies under different market conditions. Specifically, we construct and estimate a model of retail competition using extensive data from the digital camera market. A series of counterfactuals show that, under reasonable commitment mechanisms, two leading chains would benefit from employing national pricing policies, whereas a discount retailer should target prices in each local market. Additional results explore the boundary conditions of these findings and evaluate hybrid pricing policies. The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2018.1100 .

The effective management of energy consumption and the reduction of emissions are crucial to sustainable supply chain management. Sustainability can be approached in a new way through smart energy. Smart energy combines traditional and renewable energy sources through a smart system that is more efficient than conventional energy for sustainability. The model creates a closed-loop supply chain management for tires production to find the efficiency of smart energy utilization and the remanufacturing of end-of-life tires to achieve the sustainability goal. The model determines the policy for using smart energy by finding the ratio of renewable to traditional energy. The players include a manufacturer, multiple retailers, and third-party logistics that consume energy for production and management. The manufacturer follows a manufacturing-remanufacturing strategy to produce new and remanufactured tires and supplies those tires to all retailers by following an optimal delivery schedule. The formulated profit function of the developed model is a mixed-integer nonlinear function. A classical optimization method is used to solve the model. The most important finding is that using 42% smart energy increases total profit by 12.71% and pulls down emissions by 41.98%. A mixed production strategy with variable remanufacturing earns 13.91% more profit.

During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, in France, people cleared the shelves of butter; in Italy, it was pasta; in Great Britain, it was chicken. While there may be cultural disagreement on what is essential, clearly, in times of crisis, consumers stockpile the ‘essentials’. We address the problem of “panic buying”, which is characterized by increasing demand in the face of diminishing inventory. In such cases, prices may hike and firms (retailers) selling the high-demand product are quantity takers, in terms of supply, and price setters. We consider a manufacturer who sells a scarce product to a single retailer. The retailer seeks to maximize her profit, while in contrast, the manufacturer pursues a social objective of regulating and lowering the amount that the end customer (consumer) pays (including the cost of traveling to obtain the scarce product). By analyzing the competition between the two parties, retailer and manufacturer, we find that even when the regulator (manufacturer) makes a significant social commitment, neither subsidizing the retailer nor subsidizing the consumers necessarily curbs price hikes. Furthermore, there is a threshold ratio (i.e., proportion of the end price subsidized by the regulator) that determines the minimal budget that the regulator would need to allocate in order for subsidization to make a difference to consumers.

The analysis of residential water demand has long attracted attention from researchers. However, the central topics at issue have evolved considerably, transitioning from estimating price and income elasticities to using experimental techniques that assess how to motivate households towards water conservation. In this literature review, we contribute to the existing literature by giving an updated overview of the state of the art in the central topics regarding residential water demand. Moreover, we present some interesting lines of research to be explored in the future. Thus, we first review some traditional key drivers of residential water demand. Second, we discuss the role of public policies when managing residential water demand, paying special attention to pricing tools. Next, we briefly review some of the methodological issues with respect to traditional econometrics and discuss related modeling. We then discuss the role of experimental designs and nudging on residential water use. Finally, we include a summary of the main literature findings, and close the discussion introducing some emerging and promising research topics.

Cloud computing has gained popularity at a breakneck pace over the last few years. It has revolutionized the way businesses operate by providing a flexible and scalable infrastructure for their computing needs. Cloud providers offer a range of services with a variety of pricing schemes. Cloud pricing schemes are based on functional factors like CPU, RAM, and storage, combined with different payment options, such as pay-per-use, subscription-based, and non-functional aspects, such as scalability and availability. While cloud pricing can be complicated, it is critical for businesses to thoroughly assess and compare pricing policies along with technical requirements to ensure they design an investment strategy. This paper evaluates current pricing strategies for IaaS, CaaS, and PaaS cloud services and also focuses on the three leading cloud providers, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. To compare pricing policies between different services and providers, a hedonic price index is constructed for each service type based on data collected in 2022. Using the hedonic price index, a comparative analysis between them becomes feasible. The results revealed that providers follow the very same pricing pattern for IaaS and CaaS, with CPU being the main driver of cloud pricing schemes, whereas PaaS pricing fluctuates among cloud providers.

Background High medicine prices contribute to increasing cost of healthcare worldwide. Many patients with limited resources in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are confronted with out-of-pocket charges, constraining their access to medicines. Different medicine pricing policies are implemented to improve affordability and availability; however, evidence on the experiences of implementations of these policies in SSA settings appears limited. Therefore, to bridge this knowledge gap, we reviewed published evidence and answered the question: what are the key determinants of implementation of medicines pricing policies in SSA countries? Methods We identified policies and examined implementation processes, key actors involved, contextual influences on and impact of these policies. We searched five databases and grey literature; screening was done in two stages following clear inclusion criteria. A structured template guided the data extraction, and data analysis followed thematic narrative synthesis. The review followed best practices and reported using PRISMA guidelines. Results Of the 5595 studies identified, 31 met the inclusion criteria. The results showed thirteen pricing policies were implemented across SSA between 2003 and 2020. These were in four domains: targeted public subsides, regulatory frameworks and direct price control, generic medicine policies and purchasing policies. Main actors involved were government, wholesalers, manufacturers, retailers, professional bodies, community members and private and public health facilities. Key contextual barriers to implementation were limited awareness about policies, lack of regulatory capacity and lack of price transparency in external reference pricing process. Key facilitators were favourable policy environment on essential medicines, strong political will and international support. Evidence on effectiveness of these policies on reducing prices of, and improving access to, medicines was mixed. Reductions in prices were reported occasionally, and implementation of medicine pricing policy sometimes led to improved availability and affordability to essential medicines. Conclusions Implementation of medicine pricing policies in SSA shows some mixed evidence of improved availability and affordability to essential medicines. It is important to understand country-specific experiences, diversity of policy actors and contextual barriers and facilitators to policy implementation. Our study suggests three policy implications, for SSA and potentially other low-resource settings: avoiding a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, engaging both private and public sector policy actors in policy implementation and continuously monitoring implementation and effects of policies. Systematic review registration PROSPERO CRD42020178166

In recent years, the demand for collective mobility services registered significant growth. In particular, the long-distance coach market underwent an important change in Europe, since FlixBus adopted a dynamic pricing strategy, providing low-cost transport services and an efficient and fast information system. This paper presents a methodology, called DA4PT (Data Analytics for Public Transport), for discovering the factors that influence travelers in booking and purchasing bus tickets. Starting from a set of 3.23 million user-generated event logs of a bus ticketing platform, the methodology shows the correlation rules between booking factors and purchase of tickets. Such rules are then used to train machine learning models for predicting whether a user will buy or not a ticket. The rules are also used to define various dynamic pricing strategies with the purpose of increasing the number of tickets sales on the platform and the related amount of revenues. The methodology reaches an accuracy of 95% in forecasting the purchase of a ticket and a low variance in results. Exploiting a dynamic pricing strategy, DA4PT is able to increase the number of purchased tickets by 6% and the total revenue by 9% by showing the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

In response to the challenges of water scarcity in agricultural irrigation in plain areas, especially in the context of the urgent need to improve water resource management efficiency, this study introduces an innovative “electricity-driven water conservation” management concept. The core idea is to accurately calculate water usage by analyzing irrigation electricity consumption data and formulate water pricing strategies based on this to effectively control the total irrigation water usage. This approach is of significant importance for promoting agricultural water conservation and enhancing water resource utilization efficiency. To achieve this goal, we propose an “electricity-driven water conservation” control method based on an agricultural irrigation coordination management system. This method is simple to operate, has low labor costs, and provides grassroots managers with transparent water usage information through an intelligent platform, enabling real-time remote control of irrigation facilities. In 2022, this control method was tested in a specific area of Shuyang County, Suqian City, Jiangsu Province, China. The results demonstrated that the annual water-saving rate in the region improved from −1.71% before implementation of the control method to 0.09%, proving the effectiveness of this approach in enhancing irrigation water conservation in plain areas. This study provides valuable insights for promoting the efficient utilization and sustainable development of agricultural water resources.

We study the selection and dynamics of two popular pricing policies—fixed price and flexible price—in competitive markets. Our paper extends previous work in marketing, for example, Desai and Purohit (2004) by focusing on decentralized markets with a dynamic and fully competitive framework while also considering possible noneconomic aspects of bargaining. We construct and analyze a competitive search model, which allows us to endogenize the expected demand depending on pricing rules and posted prices. Our analysis reveals that fixed and flexible pricing policies generally coexist in the same marketplace, and each policy comes with its own list price and customer demographics. More specifically, if customers dislike haggling, then fixed pricing emerges as the unique equilibrium, but if customers get some additional satisfaction from the bargaining process, then both policies are offered, and the unique equilibrium exhibits full segmentation: haggler customers avoid fixed-price firms and exclusively shop at flexible firms, whereas nonhaggler customers do the opposite. We also find that prices increase in customer satisfaction, implying that sellers take advantage of the positive utility enjoyed by hagglers in the form of higher prices. Finally, considering the presence of seasonal cycles in most markets, we analyze a scenario in which market demand goes through periodic ups and downs and find that equilibrium prices remain mostly stable despite significant fluctuations in demand. This finding suggests a plausible competition-based explanation for the stability of prices. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2922 . This paper was accepted by J. Miguel Villas-Boas, marketing.