Economics Insights @ CBS

We investigate the dependence induced among multiple Markov chains when they are simulated in parallel using a shared Poisson stream of potential event occurrences. One expects this dependence to facilitate comparisons among systems; our results support this intuition. We give conditions on the transition structure of the individual chains implying that the coupled process is an associated Markov chain. Association implies that variance is reduced in comparing increasing functions of the chains, relative to independent simulations, through a routine argument.

The nature of competitive equilibrium is investigated for brands competing in a multi-attribute product space when consumer preferences for product attributes follow nonuniform distributions. Subgame-perfect equilibria are established in a 2-stage game, where firms choose positions in the first stage and prices in the 2nd stage. Two types of entry scenarios are investigated. In the first, the number of brands is given exogenously, and all of them choose positions simultaneously.

International differences in general, and cultural differences in particular, exert profound influence on what people buy. In modeling market response, highly visible international differences in purchase behavior seem to lead to an assumption by management scientists that there are large parallel international differences in market response to such things as price and advertising.