Failure time models correcting for heterogeneity are used to explain the length of participation in a risky career. Using data from the National Football League, first we employ a class of techniques which ignore unobserved heterogeneity; hence these methods impose severe restrictions on the estimate hazard. We then examine a second class of techniques which correct for unobservables and thereby allow greater flexibility in the estimated hazard. Within this second class, we find that the estimated hazard using the Burr-12 density is much more accurate than densities in the first class, which include the exponential and Weibull. We expect that this density could be employed to successfully explain career duration in other high-risk, high-stress careers as well.

The simple Shapley allocation has been recently proposed by several authors as a useful allocation scheme in the joint cost allocation problem. However, while satisfying several useful allocation axioms, it does have a least two debilities. First, it is a unique solution and does not permit any flexibility by management. Second, it may fail to satisfy the core conditions in many relevant situations, causing independent action by subcoalitions of divisions which is to the detriment of the corporation. A generalization of the simple Shapley allocation is proposed which maintains most of the favorable properties of the simple Shapley allocation while removing these two weaknesses.

Numerous studies have estimated hedonic price functions for durable goods. In this paper we apply the methodology to breakfast cereals, a nondurable good. We employ maximum likelihood to estimate the hedonic price functions using data from three large supermarkets. The price function depends on characteristics that provide tastes, nutrition and convenience to consumers, and the estimates yield insights into pricing policies, consumer preferences and consumer use of information.

The problem of joint cost allocation is examined with particular emphasis on the possibility that some allocation schemes may result in divisional decisions which are suboptimal at the corporate level. Such decisions may arise whenever the marginal cost function for the allocated cost is decreasing, and the joint cost allocation scheme results in a charge to a division (or group of divisions) which exceeds the charge which that division (or group of divisions) could incur by acting independently. The theory of the core is used to establish criteria that any cost allocation scheme should meet if it is to avoid encouraging these suboptimal decisions. Four cost allocation schemes are studied and evaluated using the core criteria. It is shown that three of these schemes, including the activity level allocation scheme, satisfy the core criteria; however, a fourth scheme, which was recently proposed, is satisfactory in only certain cases.

The purposes of this paper are twofold. The first is to demonstrate that the expected utility hypothesis is a reasonable description of behavior for consumers who face a low-probability, high-loss natural hazard event, given that they have adequate information. The second is to demonstrate that in California information non earthquake hazards was generated by a 1974 state law that created a market for safe housing that previously did not exist.