the environmental economic impact of woodland a two stage hedonic price model of the amenity value of forestry in britain woodland is an important part of the environment providing economic benefits through its use in commercial timber production and through its value as an amenity as well as providing recreation for visitors woodland is also important to local residents for whom it provides leisure opportunities and a source of aesthetic enjoyment it is well known that the price of a house may reflect a household s willingness to pay to live near an environmental amenity such as a forest and to gain access to it the nature of this relationship may be examined by applying the hedonic price technique an econometric method which investigates house prices and the variation in structural and environment characteristics over space this study uses a two stage hedonic price model to explore the impact of forest type on house price and to estimate the demand for broadleaved woodland for a sample of houses adjacent to forestry commission land

product introduction decisions in a duopoly abstract in this paper we model a dynamic environment with two firms that fight for share of industry sales and profit in a market with constant size they capture share by repeatedly introducing new products price changes from period to period reflecting each firm s learning we formulate the problem as a repeated game where each player s decision at each period is to introduce a new product we find that in general each firm s frequency of product introductions clockspeed in equilibrium decreases as its fixed product introduction cost increases further we find that a higher rate of manufacturing learning results in a higher clockspeed and in a higher market share and also results in significantly worse profits for the competitor the results underscore the importance of manufacturing expertise in a firm s ability to introduce new products

the competitive effects of vertical agreements for many years there were few distinctions drawn between horizontal and vertical agreements both were considered anticompetitive and subject to per se condemnation under the antitrust laws recently however this approach has come under attack and what was once the conventional wisdom is no longer so indeed there is growing acceptance of the view that vertical agreements can rarely have anticompetitive consequences per se legality would then be the appropriate standard in this paper we investigate the competitive implications of a particular vertical agreement the imposition of exclusive dealing requirements by a manufacturer on his distributors however to maintain the focus of the analysis we do not consider ultimate welfare gains or losses in an early application of economic analysis to this practice aaron director and edward levi 1956 suggest that exclusive dealing would be anticompetitive if it raised entry costs for rivals our object following this conjecture see their p 293 is to examine the market conditions under which exclusive dealing impedes entry howard marvel 1982 dealt with the practice of exclusive dealing he provides an efficiency rationale for exclusive dealing ignores the prospect that anticompetitive effects may follow and concludes that exclusive dealing ought therefore to be treated as legal per se p 25 this paper examines the possible anticompetitive effects neglected by marvel i market conditions for exclusive dealing

german demand for tourism in spain abstract since germany has traditionally been one of the most important sources of tourism for spain a deep knowledge of the main determinants of the demand may be useful for policy makers and agents of the industry in this paper a dynamic model is used to examine german demand for tourism in spain the proposed model is applied to a panel data set consisting of inbound german tourism in each of the 17 spanish destinations autonomous communities for the period 1991 2003 the empirical results suggest that tourism demand in the previous period has an important effect on current tourism demand the results also indicate that the demand for tourism in spain is a luxury for the germans and highly dependent on the evolution of relative prices and cost of travel between germany and the destination

contracts as a barrier to entry it is shown that an incumbent seller who faces a threat of entry into his or her market will sign long term contracts that prevent the entry of some lower cost producers even though they do not preclude entry completely moreover when a seller possesses superior information about the likelihood of entry it is shown that the length of the contract may act as a signal of the true probability of entry

tourism demand forecasting models choice of appropriate variable to represent tourists cost of living abstract price is generally regarded as a major determinant of demand tourism has two price elements the cost of travel to the destination and the cost of living for tourists in the destination previous studies where econometric forecasting models have been developed for international tourism demand usually take the consumer price index in a country to be a proxy for the cost of tourism in that country owing to lack of appropriate data this article attempts to evaluate the performance of proxy variables compared with a specific tourists cost of living variable within the context of tourism demand forecasting models

remodeling international tourism demand old theory and new evidence abstract the purpose of this study is to advance the tourism demand theory by excluding simultaneous effects of exchange rates and prices in empirical models formulating an alternative pricing modus operandi consistent with recent research in the area and demonstrating the efficacy of the use of an industrial production index ipi as a proxy for income a panel fully modified ordinary least squares fmols method is employed to estimate the inbound tourism demand for turkey study findings suggest that the inclusion of exchange rates and prices as mutually exclusive components can be misleading the ipi is not a good proxy for income and country specific coefficients need to be analyzed to accurately explain determinants of tourism demand for countries in the panel

a micro analysis of business travel demand this study tests two hypothesis 1 that tax deductibility and the dual benefit nature of goods on the business pleasure borderline increases the demand for business travel and 2 that this dual benefit decreases price elasticity the study uses expenditure microdata and contrasts the behaviour of business travellers and pleasure travellers both groups are assumed to have indentical tastes but the expenditure behaviour of business travellers is modified by the role of the business trip as a factor of production the linear expenditure system les allocation model is applied to expenditures on individual goods at a particular tourist destination business travellers are shown to have higher expenditures than pleasure travellers for food lodging and local transportation minimum quantities estimated by the les are also higher for business travellers uncompensated price elasticities of business travellers are significantly smaller than that of pleasure travellers for local transportation clothing a

technological expectations and adoption of improved technology abstract attention is focused upon the adoption demand rather than the creation supply of new technology which improves from time to time based on the expected flow of technological progress over which the firm demander has no control it must decide either to adopt the current best available technology or to postpone adoption the distinguishing features of the model are that more than one technological innovation is anticipated and expectations about the likelihood of such innovations are revised as time passes since the last innovation our analysis shows that the firm will adopt the current best practice if its technological lag exceeds a certain threshold moreover as time passes without new technological advances it may become profitable to purchase a technology that has been available even though it was not profitable to do so in the past

coexistence of strategic vertical separation and integration abstract this paper gives conditions under which vertical separation is chosen by some upstream firms while vertical integration is chosen by others in the equilibrium of a symmetric model a vertically separating firm trades off fixed contracting costs against the strategic benefit of writing a two part tariff exclusive dealing contract with its retailer coexistence emerges when more than two vertical cournot oligopolists supply close substitutes when vertical integration and separation coexist welfare could be improved by reducing the number of vertically separating firms the scope for coexistence diminishes when assumptions on contract observability and commitment are relaxed

the competitive effects of vertical agreements comment recent economic analyses of vertical restraints and integration emphasize the circumstances under which these arrangements are socially efficient efficiency claims have proven contentious however for exclusive dealing a vertical restraint that prohibits any outlet carrying a manufacturer s product from stocking substitute brands this paper analyzes the impact of exclusive dealing on competition and allocative efficiency opinions expressed on the impact of exclusive dealing range from the extreme view that it is invariably anticompetitive to the view that it is always procompetitive the u s supreme court has concluded that in hundreds if not thousands of communities where there is a single retailer for a product

the competitive effects of vertical agreements comment in a recent paper comanor and frech 1985 cf claim that a manufacturer enjoying a product differentiation advantage could impose exclusive dealing on distributors while also raising its wholesale price the two consumer groups in the model would then pay higher prices than under nonexclusive dealing cf also suggest that exclusive dealing is more likely to emerge when product differentiation is relatively strong cf s analysis does not carefully incorporate the constraints imposed by dealer rationality doing so within cf s model i reach opposite conclusions exclusive dealing will be accepted only if the manufacturer reduces its wholesale price to dealers relative to nonexclusive dealing price rises to one group of consumers but falls to the other moreover exclusive dealing is more likely to emerge when product differentiation is relatively weak

strategic timing of adoption of new technologies under uncertainty abstract in this paper we introduce experience effects into a duopoly game of timing of adoption of new technologies which exhibit exogenous technological progress departing from the existing literature with this model we obtain continuous and downward sloping reaction functions we find that a higher level of uncertainty increases the extent of dispersion between the equilibrium timings of adoption furthermore we find that the equilibrium timings are even more dispersed when the leader takes the follower s reaction into account when firm roles are made endogenous we find that if there is an incentive to lead follow the equilibrium timings are more less dispersed finally we show that it is possible for collusive adoption to improve welfare

uncertainty competition and the adoption of new technology faced with the decision of whether or not to adopt a new technology whose economic value cannot be gauged with certainty the manager of the firm may elect to decrease the uncertainty by sequentially gathering information at a unit cost of c 0 updating his prior beliefs in a bayesian manner uncertainty regarding the actions of a competitor however cannot be reduced our model allows a manager to account for potential competition either substitute or complementary by inclusion of strategic considerations modelled in a game theoretic setting we show that the firm s best response mapping satisfies a dynamic programming recursion even when the one period reward function is unbounded providing management with a familiar tool to solve its problem best response behavior is characterized by a monotone sequence of pairs of threshold numbers which give rise to a cone shaped continuation region the continuation region is shown to shift up down with increases in the expected level of substitute complementary competition making the firm less more likely to adopt the innovation finally the existence of a nash equilibrium in cone shaped strategies is established

adoption and diffusion of an innovation of uncertain profitability the argument has frequently been made that the pattern of diffusion associated with most new innovations will typically have certain characteristics a diffusion curve for an innovation is usually defined as the proportion of its potential users who have already adopted as a function of time measured from the first adoption many empirical studies by both economists and other social scientists have shown that diffusion curves nearly always have two distinct characteristics i they are s shaped the proportion adopted is an increasing function of time which is initially convex but eventually becomes concave and ii they tend to be right hand skewed the inflection point occurs at a time corresponding to a proportion adopted which is less than one half so that the function is concave over the greatest amount of time in fact this skewing is occasionally severe enough to make the diffusion curve appear concave everywhere the focus of most empirical studies of innovation diffusion has centered on identification of either the major determinants of the speed of diffusion or the characteristics of firms which determine how long they delay adoption the seminal contributions are griliches 6 study of hybrid corn and mansfield s 121 study of 12 industrial innovations these studies and most of the similar ones following conclude that diffusion is faster for innovations with higher profitability and that large firms tend to be the earliest adopters some studies e g mansfield 121 herregat 71 have attempted to ascertain

cost raising strategies advantage rivals by raising their costs in this paper we show that strategies designed to raise rivals costs have a number of advantages over predatory pricing they are credible do not necessarily require the victim to exit and do not necessarily require the existence of classical market power the paper sets up a general model proves a number of general results and then applies the model to specific strategies involving overbuying inputs and vertical integration

consumer behaviour theory and empirical evidence a survey this survey is designed to emphasize the relationship between empirical a nd theoretical considerations in the analysis of consumer behavior a lthough it focuses primarily on analysis at the individual or micro l evel it tries where possible to draw implications for the estimati on of aggregate relationships the importance of micro level analysis stems from the rapid expansion in available panel and survey data se ts this development has generated its own theoretical and empirical issues many of which are raised in this survey copyright 1988 by royal economic society

observable contracts strategic delegation and cooperation the role of commitments in noncooperative games is well acknowledged and documented one way to achieve commitments is by letting delegates represent the players of a game in this paper the authors study a delegation game in which the players can use agents strategically to play on their behalf and the contracts they sign with them are common knowledge they show that in such cases every pareto optimal outcome of the game can become the unique subgame perfect nash equilibrium of the delegation game the authors demonstrate this result by discussing the cournot type duopolistic game copyright 1991 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

resale price maintenance and interlocking relationships dampening of interbrand as well intrabrand competition is often advanced to justify per se illegality of rpm we analyze this argument in a context where rival manufacturers distribute their products through the same competing retailers we show that rpm indeed limits the exercise of competition at both levels and can generate industry wide monopoly pricing the impact on prices depends on the extent of potential competition at either level as well as on the parties influence in determining the terms of the contracts our analysis sheds a new light on ongoing legal developments and is supported by recent empirical studies

concentration potential entry and performance in the airline industry airline markets do not satisfy the theoretical conditions for perfect contestability and theory does not indicate which deviations from perfect contestibilty significantly affect performance thus the effect of potential entry on performance in airline markets is explored empirically the best model for explaining fares is found to be one in which the measure of market concentration takes into account not only the number and size distribution of incumbents but also the number of potential entrants not significantly disadvantaged due to economies of scale and scope the hypothesis that all city pair markets are perfectly contestable is rejected coauthors are richard l johnson andrew s joskow gregory j werden and michael a williams copyright 1989 by blackwell publishing ltd

a tourism demand function for the okanagan bc abstract this study examines the relative importance of the existing determinants of tourism demand in the okanagan because national coefficients cannot be used intercnageable with regional coefficients it is hypothesized that the values of the okanagan demand elasticities are likely to be lower than that of the province and the nation five major markets for okanagan tourism with identified and separate regressions run to determine the relative importance of the determinants of demand for okanagan tourism with respect to these markets empirical results indicate that national coefficient will tend to overestimate the regional coefficient values contrary to the results of other studies for the nation as a whole the exchange rate and travel cost did not seem to be significant determinants of okanagan tourism receipts

vertical restraints and producers competition this paper examines the rationale for vertical restraints it shows that there are important circumstances under which these restrictions have significant anti competitive effects the paper focuses on the consequences of exclusive territorial arrangements among the retailers of two products which are imperfect substitutes such arrangements are shown to increase consumer prices under plausible conditions the increase in consumer prices is sufficiently large to more than offset the deleterious effects from double marginalization resulting from reduced competition among retailers the imposition of exclusivity provisions is may be part of a nash equilibrium among producers these results hold whether there are or are not franchise fees this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

revisiting the convergence hypothesis for tourism markets evidence from turkey using the pairwise approach abstract this paper empirically revisits the tourism markets convergence hypothesis narayan 2006 for the case of turkey by employing the newly developed pairwise approach to the analysis of stochastic convergence pesaran 2007 pesaran et al 2009 this new approach allows for unit root tests to be conducted on all possible pairs of tourist arrival differentials across turkey s 20 major tourist source markets thus avoiding the need to choose a base source market or total tourist arrivals figure as the benchmark using monthly data over the period january 1996 to december 2009 the main finding is that despite considerable co movement of international tourist arrivals in turkey there is no evidence of long run convergence among turkey s major tourism markets cluster based club convergence analyses alongside bivariate pairwise estimations confirm the lack of convergence and highlight specific tourist source markets with considerable untapped potential these findings have profound policy implications for turkey s inbound tourism planning and promotion

forecasting long haul tourism demand for hong kong using error correction models forecasting accuracy is particularly important when forecasting tourism demand on account of the perishable nature of the product this study compares a range of forecasting models in the context of predicting annual tourist flows into hong kong from the major long haul markets of the us the uk germany and major short haul markets of china japan and taiwan econometric forecasting models considered included error correction models ecms based on permanent income life cycle pi lc hypothesis pi lc ecm and alternative cointegration approaches engle and granger 1987 johansen 1988 and ordinary least square ols approaches both autoregressive integrated moving average arima and no change model hereafter naive models are used as a benchmark time series model for accuracy comparisons it was hypothesized that pi lc ecm is a better forecasting model particularly for long haul tourism demand the objective of this article is to investigate whether the application of pi lc ecm could improve the

the demand for tourism in north east england with special reference to northumbria an empirical analysis abstract this paper examines the trends of tourism in north east england in particular we focus on the area of northumbria to show the potential of tourism for economic development in the region within this analysis we concentrate on the demand for tourism in the region and in particular we are concerned with tourism by uk residents in northumbria domestic tourism the long run relationship between domestic tourism demand and a number of economic factors effecting this demand is considered using the johansen and juselius 1990 1992 multivariate cointegration analysis an error correction model is then proposed for short run forecasting of domestic demand for tourism in northumbria

information and profitability estimates modelling the firm s decision to adopt a new technology this paper uses a response surface based on catastrophe theory to examine the interaction of information and profitability estimates on the firm s adoption of a new technology or innovation as such the paper builds on the conceptual ideas behind mccardle s 1985 work an illustrative example using simulated data is presented to indicate how one might operationalize the key constructs for the purpose of estimating the model

the strategic value of partial vertical integration we investigate the strategic incentives for partial vertical integration namely partial ownership agreements between manufacturers and retailers when retailers privately know their costs and engage in price competition with differentiated goods the partial misalignment between the profit objectives within a partially integrated manufacturer retailer hierarchy implies a higher retail price than under full integration this information vertical effect translates into a competition horizontal effect the partially integrated hierarchy s commitment to a higher price induces the competitor to increase its price which strategically relaxes competition our analysis provides implications for vertical merger policy and theoretical support for the recently documented empirical evidence on partial vertical acquisitions

nash equilibrium search for the best alternative in a recent paper weitzman econometrica 47 1979 641 654 described a policy of optimal search for the best alternative the present paper is concerned with the development and characterization of a policy of nash equilibrium search for the best alternative specifically it is shown that under certain monotonicity assumptions and under the assumption that firms have incomplete information regarding the results of rivals search behavior a nash equilibrium search policy exists and has the same form as weitzman s optimal search policy

an econometric study of tourist arrivals in aruba and its implications abstract the principal purpose of this study is to analyze econometric estimates in order to explain tourist arrivals to aruba from the united states the netherlands and venezuela the study specified a dynamic econometric model for modeling short term as well as the long term responses it estimated both linear and log linear functions and it applied the box cox statistical method to determine the appropriate functional form the inclusion of venezuela as a developing country permitted the comparison of the behavior of tourism demand in relatively rich and poor countries the results indicated the extent to which cross country behavior of demand differs with respect to changes in effective prices and exchange rates this study can assist in the formulation of future macroeconomic policies as well as market and pricing strategies in a small or microstate economy

commitment through renegotiation proof contracts with third parties the paper analyzes contracts as means of strategic commitment that is commitment against outside parties to the agreement it considers the example of an incumbent firm which enters a contractual relationship with its workers in order to deter entry it assumes away the possibility for the parties to precommit not to make pareto improving renegotiations of the agreement once entry has taken place under symmetric information the contract is thus found to be useless for entry deterrence if the incumbent firm or workers possess some private information excessive post entry production levels can however be sustained ex post since output reductions may not be incentive compatible while information asymmetries are usually welfare decreasing when the goal is optimal risk sharing they can thus be welfare improving for the contracting parties when commitment against outsiders is the goal of the contract the role of the renegotiation process as a constraint on sustainable agreements is stressed in the paper and the general relevance of strategic contractual commitment is discussed

the long run impact of exchange rate regimes on international tourism flows abstract notwithstanding the systematic inclusion of an exchange rate variable of some form in studies examining international tourism flows hardly any research has been carried out to test for a possible exchange rate regime effect drawing from recent advances in exchange rate regime classifications this paper begins to fill this gap by investigating the impact of exchange rate regimes on international tourism flows the study employs a system generalized methods of moments sys gmm estimation for tourist arrivals on a panel of 27 organization for economic co operation and development oecd and non oecd countries for the period 1980 2011 the results identify multiple exchange rate regime effects and support the importance of maintaining a relatively stable exchange rate to attract international tourist arrivals

forecasting turkey s tourism revenues by armax model abstract an appropriate armax model is applied to forecast international tourism revenues for turkey for the post 2001 economic crisis international tourist arrivals were seasonally dependable on earlier arrivals at lagged periods one two and four this implies high levels of repeat visiting through this model the future international tourists arrivals are forecast for the 2002 2007 period to determine possible revenues for that same period international tourism revenues can be explained by the current arrivals a first order autoregressive and a stochastic moving average filter at lag 3 for the 1963 2001 sample period future values of revenues are forecasted based on this model the estimated models and their forecasts may be important for the economy of turkey which is currently recovering from the recent economic crisis once us dollars expenditure per tourist is forecasted the gap between forecasts and needs can be defined more rationally to overcome economic crises in short discrepancy analysis may aid marketing promotion to increase arrivals and tourist expenditures

vertical separation with private contracts we consider a manufacturer s incentive to sell through an independent retailer rather than directly to final consumers when contracts with retailers cannot be observed by competitors if retailers conjecture that identical competing manufacturers always offer identical contracts symmetric beliefs manufacturers choose vertical separation in equilibrium even with private contracts vertically separated manufacturers reduce competition and increase profits by inducing less aggressive behaviour by retailers in the final market manufacturers profits may be higher with private than with public contracts our results hold both with price and with quantity competition and do not hinge on retailers beliefs being perfectly symmetric we also discuss various justifications for symmetric beliefs including incomplete information

potential competition in the deregulated airlines using a new and unique data set this paper applies a systems approach to the study of potential competition prices and entry relations in airline city pair markets consistent with limit pricing models future entry is directly influenced by current prices current prices thus appear to provide an important signal to potential entrants about the probability of profitable entry while results indicate the existence of barriers to entry these barriers appear to have no independent effects on price beyond there effect on actual competition through increases in concentration copyright 1990 by mit press

determinants of demand for international tourist flows to turkey abstract this article describes the development and findings of a set of models used to identify the most important of the following selected variables influencing international tourist flows to turkey per capita income relative prices relative exchange rate promotional expenditure the turkish government has invested a substantial amount in promoting foreign tourism and special events eg political unrest the demand for travel was measured both by the number of tourists and by the total tourist expenditure data were obtained from secondary sources and analysis was by least squares multiple regression income price and exchange rate were found to be important factors but the impact of promotional expenditure was minimal

uncertain search a model of search among technologies of uncertain values in the standard search problem there is an infinite pool of items whose distribution of values is known a decision maker draws an item from the pool observes its value and decides whether to keep it or to draw another item he can keep only one item and he seeks the item with the largest value in the standard uncertainty resolution problem there is only one item and the value of that item remains uncertain even after it is drawn the decision maker sequentially collects observations on the value of the item and decides whether to keep the item discard the item or take another observation uncertain search marries the sequential drawing from a pool of items from the search literature with the unknown value of a drawn item from the uncertainty resolution literature presented in the context of technology adoption it considers drawing from a pool of new technologies whose values remain unknown even after being drawn the decision maker sequentially purchases information in order to bayesianly update

eating your own lunch protection through preemption recent discussions of management practices among successful high technology companies suggest that one key strategy for success is to eat your own lunch before someone else does the implication is that in intensely competitive or hypercompetitive markets firms with a leading position should aggressively cannibalize their own current advantages with next generation advantages before competitors step in to steal the market given the pace of technological and other types of change such strategy often requires creating next generation advantages while the current advantages are still profitable that is trading current profits for future market leadership we capture the tradeoff between a market leader s willingness to reap profits with its current set of advantages and its desire to maintain market leadership by investing in the next generation using a competitive model that determines the equilibrium launch time of a next generation advantage we find that in absence of lower launch costs for an

tourism and economic development a survey this article surveys the literature on tourism and economic development identifying the contribution that tourism can make to development including foreign currency income and employment and the costs that it entails single equation and system of equations models for estimating tourism demand are provided indicating developing countries potential to benefit from increasing expenditure on tourism but their susceptibility to deterioration in price competitiveness the main sectors of tourism supply transportation tour operators travel agents and accommodation are examined and the importance of cross country integration between firms is highlighted the article argues that many of the problems associated with the use of environmental resources for tourism stem from market failure and it considers methods for increasing sustainably the returns from them

strategic incentives when supplying to rivals with an application to vertical firm structure abstract we consider a vertically integrated input monopolist supplying to a differentiated downstream rival with linear input pricing at the margin the firm unambiguously wants the rival to expand unlike standard oligopoly with no supply relationship for either cournot or bertrand competition with a two part tariff for the input the same result holds if downstream choices are strategic complements but is reversed for cournot with strategic substitutes we analyze vertical delegation as one mechanism for inducing expansion or contraction by the rival customer

reducing incremental costs associated with the delegation of incentive contracting decisions an analysis of planning and control decisions in a manufacturing setting in the presence of moral hazard abstract we compare and contrast two specific regimes involving the centralization and delegation of the incentive contracting decision in manufacturing organizations in the centralization regime a single individual simultaneously makes the allocation of demand to production facilities and determines the incentive compensation scheme for the managers at the facilities under the delegation regime the demand allocation is decided upon initially by a superior and the incentive contracting decision is subsequently made by a subordinate who is neither of the two managers in charge of the production facilities using the principal agent paradigm which assumes that the managerial efforts are unobservable we demonstrate that the centralization regime performs no worse than the delegation regime for situations where strategic or other requirements necessitate firms to opt for the delegation of the incentive contracting decision we propose a heuristic that significantly increases the likelihood of mimicking the allocation and contracting decisions made under the centralized regime

brand origin recognition accuracy its antecedents and consumers cognitive limitations an ever growing literature has reported consumer bias toward national origins of products and has explored factors that moderate such bias researchers have assumed if only tacitly that consumers are knowledgeable of brand origins and that this knowledge is a significant influence that drives judgments of product quality brand attitudes and choice behavior in the marketplace using categorization theory and attribute diagnosticity as the theoretical foundation our research reveals that consumers actually have only modest knowledge of the national origins of brands and that american consumers proficiency at recognizing foreign brand origins is predicted by variables such as socioeconomic status past international travel foreign language skills and gender in the second of two studies we determined that brand origin recognition is based largely on consumers associations of brand names with languages that suggest country origins these studies ultimately lead us to conclude that past research has inflated the influence that country of origin information has on consumers product judgments and behavior and its importance in managerial and public policy decisions

the strategic choice of managerial incentives do firms with separate owners and managers maximize profits we address this question for an oligopoly where managers compete in quantities or prices as in the cournot or bertrand models and owners choose their managers incentives we find that there is a strategic aspect in the problem of selecting incentives and that profit maximizing behavior does not result in particular in the oligopoly we study the behavior of firms competing in quantity price more closely resembles perfectly competitive collusive behavior than cournot bertrand behavior

equilibrium vertical foreclosure the authors formulate a complete but analytically simple equilibrium model of vertical mergers to evaluate the logic of standard vertical foreclosure claims and the criticisms made of those claims the model includes incentives of the integrated firm and unintegrated input suppliers to exclude rivals and the potential holdout problem in this fully specified model vertical foreclosure can emerge in equilibrium copyright 1990 by american economic association

strategic aspects of vertical delegation abstract this paper offers an overview of the strategic aspects of situations where either institutionally or contractually a firm delegates some of its decisions to another firm a subsidiary an internal division etc delegation may have several kinds of strategic benefits in the short term it may improve the competitive position of the firm or induce a more lenient behavior from its competitors in the long run it may be used to deter the entry of potential competitors to foreclose market access or to induce actual competitors to exit the paper analyzes the trade off between these possible benefits and the agency costs of delegation and emphasizes the key issues of credibility and commitment

vertical mergers and market foreclosure ythe model in this paper illustrates three effects of vertical mergers when both stages are oligopolistic and vertically integrated and unintegrated producers coexist first the merging firm increases its final good output second the resulting backward shift in the residual demand curve facing unintegrated final good producers ylowers their demand for the intermediate good third the merged firm withdraws from the intermediate good market the increased concentration pushes the intermediate good price upward which effect dominates depends on market structure under some conditions a vertical merger causes the price of the final good to increase

the balance of trade and exchange rates theory and contemporary evidence from tourism abstract the purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of exchange rate depreciations and appreciations on the tourism trade balance specifically we employed linear and nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag ardl cointegration techniques to analyze the extent to which currency depreciations and appreciations affect the united states u s bilateral tourism trade with canada mexico and the united kingdom u k the results showed that the depreciation of the u s dollar subsequently improves the u s trade balance with all three trading partners however while the appreciation of the u s dollar deteriorates the u s bilateral tourism trade balance with canada and the u k it does not ultimately affect the u s bilateral tourism trade with mexico in the long term these results provide evidence contradicting the j curve theory supporting the postulations of the ml condition theoretical and policy implications are discussed within the realms of j curve theory marshall lerner ml condition international trade and tourism

a system of equations model of uk tourism demand in neighbouring countries this paper uses a system of equations model to examine tourism demand during periods of destination country transition and integration into the wider international community the almost ideal demand system model is applied to the uk demand for tourism in the neighbouring destinations france spain and portugal spain and portugal are interesting cases as during the period under consideration they experienced a process of transition from economies with characteristics typical of developing countries only entering the world bank s industrialized countries classification in the 1980s the paper examines the evolution of tourism demand during these countries transition from developing to developed status consideration of france as a neighbouring destination also allows the behaviour of tourism demand to be compared between relatively rich and poor countries the results show the extent to which the cross country behaviour of demand becomes more or less similar over time with respect to changes in ex

knowledge development in tourism tourism demand research abstract could tourism demand research be criticized as data hammering with little or no concern for theory development and testing this paper addresses this question by analyzing published studies on tourism demand for their contribution to knowledge building in the field results reveal that tourism demand research remains in its infancy

vertical integration as a source of hold up while vertical integration is traditionally seen as a solution to the hold up problem this article highlights instead that it can generate hold up problems for rivals we consider a successive duopoly where downstream firms invest and then secure support from an upstream supplier we first show that vertical integration generates ex ante incentives to create hold up problems an integrated supplier is willing to pre commit itself to appropriating or dissipating part of its customer s profits to expose the independent rival to being held up by the other supplier and discourage in this way the rival s investment we then show that even in the absence of any pre commitment vertical integration also creates hold up problems ex post when degrading the quality of the support provided to one downstream firm benefits its rival we also provide illustrations in terms of standard industrial organization models and of antitrust cases and discuss the robustness of the insights

forecasting international conference attendance abstract there are many tourism modelling forecasting studies but most of these are concerned with holiday tourism or total tourism ie not disaggregated by visit purpose conference tourism is virtually ignored in this paper an econometric model which explains tourism demand for an international conference is developed the model is specified in logistic form and is estimated using maximum likelihood techniques various alternative forms of the model are considered for the forecasting model selected good empirical results are obtained in terms of model fit and in contrast with previous non conference tourism forecasting findings the forecasts generated by the econometric model are more accurate than random walk forecasts

information acquisition and the adoption of new technology the profitability of a new technology is rarely known with certainty at its announcement date consequently prior to making an adoption decision it behooves the firm considering the adoption of this innovation to reduce the level of uncertainty associated with its profitability the firm accomplishes this by sequentially gathering information updating its prior estimate of profitability in a bayesian manner quantifying the uncertainty regarding the innovation permits application of dynamic programming techniques criteria are derived which tell the firm when to stop collecting information and make the adoption decision it will be shown that it is optimal for the firm to continue to collect information until its estimate of profitability crosses one of two thresholds upon crossing the upper threshold the firm adopts the technology whereas the firm rejects the technology if the lower threshold is crossed the model predicts that even the manager who behaves optimally will occasionally adopt unprofitable technologies and reject profitable ones

incomplete contracts vertical integration and supply assurance this paper extends the analysis of transactions cost models of vertical integration to multilateral settings its main focus is on supply assurance concerns which arise when several downstream firms are competing for inputs in limited supply integration reduces supply assurance concerns for an integrating firm but it may increase them for others therefore to explain the scope of any firm one must consider the overall network of production and distribution relations three fundamental questions are addressed 1 what are the effects of different integration structures 2 what are the determinants of the socially efficient integration structures 3 in what way do equilibrium integration structures differ from socially efficient structures

when to adopt a service innovation nash equilibria in a competitive diffusion framework abstract we study the optimal timing of adoption of a service innovation that a new entrant firm brings to a market populated by two incumbent firms our analysis is based on a model of competitive diffusion dynamics that extends the monopolistic bass model to include customer churn processes as well as a potential market expansion driven by the innovation we obtain expressions for the time trajectories of the customer bases i e the numbers of customers that use old and new service processes for the competing firms as well as sharper closed form characterizations for the setting with a stable market and homogeneous imitation process in modeling competitive dynamics we consider settings where incumbents anticipate a potential failure of the innovation we use the trajectories for the customer bases to model an optimal adoption response problem faced by one of the incumbent firms when the adoption time for the other incumbent can be anticipated or is pre announced and analyze this problem in the absence of market expansion or intra generational customer churn using the optimal response results we provide the nash equilibrium analysis of the adoption decisions by competing incumbent firms and derive sufficient conditions for the now now now never and never never adoption equilibria we use the trading volume data from the foreign exchange markets to estimate the parameters of the competitive diffusion dynamics for our model and to conduct a numerical investigation of the impact of the uncertainty associated with the success of the innovation on the incumbents nash equilibrium adoption times

the forecasting of international expo tourism using quantitative and qualitative techniques this study predicts the number of visitors to an international tourism expo to be held in korea in 2012 an unprecedented event for the host city forecasting demand for such a mega event has received only limited attention in the literature unlike most studies forecasting international tourism demand forecasting expo demand involves using both quantitative forecasting models and qualitative technique because of data limitations combining quantitative techniques with willingness to visit wtv surveys predicts the expo demand at 8 9 million visitors in comparison using the delphi method experts predict expo demand at 6 8 million visitors for this study the delphi method provides more conservative estimates than estimates from combining quantitative techniques with wtv policy implications presented are directed toward expo planners and practitioners in terms of demand and supply side application of these results in the decision making process and future challenges surrounding demand forecasting

modelling us tourism demand for european destinations abstract an almost ideal demand system model is used to examine us demand for tourism in european destinations the model provides policy makers with useful information concerning the sensitivity of tourism demand to changes in relative prices exchange rates and expenditure the results show that price competitiveness is important for us demand for france italy and spain but is relatively unimportant for the uk france and italy are regarded as substitutes by us tourists as are spain and italy as us expenditure rises the market shares of spain and the uk decline while france and italy benefit the demand modelling and forecasting indicate that in the absence of a tourism price index the choice between alternative price indices does not have a significant effect on the results

on the diffusion of new technology a game theoretic approach this paper is an attempt at a rigorous albeit not exceedingly general analysis of the diffusion of new technology in particular consider an industry composed of two firms each using the current best practice technology the firms are assumed to be operating at nash equilibrium output levels generating a market price given demand and profit allocations when a cost reducing innovation is announced each firm must determine when if ever to adopt it based in part upon the discounted cost of implementing the new technology and in part upon the behavior of the rival firm if either firm adopts before the other it can expect to make substantial profits at the expense of the other firm on the other hand the discounted sum of purchase price and adjustment costs may decline with the lengthening of the adjustment period as various quasi fixed factors become more easily variable therefore although waiting costs the firm more in terms of foregone profits it may save money on the cost of purchasing the new technology thus the firm must weigh the costs and benefits of delaying adoption as well as take account of its rival s strategic behavior

the influence of perceived uncertainty on entrepreneurial action in emerging renewable energy technology biomass gasification projects in the netherlands emerging renewable energy technologies cannot break through without the involvement of entrepreneurs who dare to take action amidst uncertainty the uncertainties that the entrepreneurs involved perceive will greatly affect their innovation decisions and can prevent them from engaging in innovation projects aimed at developing and implementing emerging renewable energy technologies this article analyzes how perceived uncertainties and motivation influence an entrepreneur s decision to act using empirical data on biomass gasification projects in the netherlands our empirical results show that technological political and resource uncertainty are the most dominant sources of perceived uncertainty influencing entrepreneurial decision making by performing a dynamic analysis we furthermore demonstrate that perceived uncertainties and motivation are not stable but evolve over time we identify critical factors in the project s internal and external environment which influence these changes in perceived uncertainties and motivation and describe how various interactions between the different variables in the conceptual model internal and external factors perceived uncertainty motivation and previous actions of the entrepreneurs positively or negatively influence the decision of entrepreneurs to continue entrepreneurial action we discuss how policymakers can use these insights for stimulating the development and diffusion of emerging renewable energy technologies

international tourism demand models inclusion of marketing variables abstract national tourist organizations often spend considerable sums in foreign countries on promoting the particular country as a tourist destination only seldom however is marketing activity incorporated as an explanatory variable in models of the demand for international tourism in such cases it should be possible to assess the impact of promotional expenditure in terms of the tourist visits and tourist expenditure generated where marketing is used to explain international tourism demand caution must be exercised in interpreting the empirical results poor results cannot be used to reach sensible conclusions and when good results are obtained the full implications of the estimated coefficients need to be explored

impact of bayesian learning and externalities on strategic investment we investigate the interplay between learning effects and externalities in the problem of competitive investments with uncertain returns we examine a game theoretic duopoly investment model in which i a firm can learn about the profitability of the investment by observing the performance of the first mover and ii externalities exist between the investments of two firms we find a region of a war of attrition between the two firms in which the interplay between externalities and learning gives rise to counterintuitive effects on investment strategies and payoffs in particular we find that contrary to the conventional war of attrition where an increase in benefits for the follower generally delays the first move an increase in the rate of learning which tends to benefit the follower can hasten the first investment this paper was accepted by james smith decision analysis

estimation of tourism demand by multivariable regression analysis evidence from kenya abstract between 1963 and 1982 tourism was one of the top three domestic exports of kenya knowledge of the variables which significantly influence kenyan tourism demand could help tourism policy makers in planning growth strategies the results of this study indicate that multivariable regression analysis has limited usefulness in identifying the significant factors which influence tourists decisions data problems and resulting multicollinearity cause unsuitable results in one case while model specification appears to be a problem in another the author concludes that quantitative studies should be supplemented by qualitative analysis in order for kenyan policymakers to make optimal decisions

friction in related party trade when a rival is also a customer there are many circumstances in which manufacturers provide inputs to wholesale customers only to subsequently compete with these wholesale customers in the retail realm such dual distribution arrangements commonly suffer from excessive encroachment in that the manufacturer s ex post retail aggression is harmful ex ante because it undercuts potential wholesale profits this paper demonstrates that with dual distribution a manufacturer can benefit from decentralized control and the use of transfer prices above marginal cost although these arrangements often create coordination concerns a moderate presence of such concerns permits the manufacturer to credibly convey to its wholesale customer that it will not excessively encroach on its retail territory this in turn permits the manufacturer to reap greater wholesale profits we also note that this force can point to a silver lining in arm s length parity requirements on transfer pricing in that they can solidify commitments to a particular retail posture

experience as a barrier to contestability in airline markets contrary to one of the predictions of the contestability hypothesis price in deregulated u s passenger airline markets is related to actual competition from diversifying former intrastates and newly established carriers more important former intrastates have a larger impact on price than do newly established firms a result consistent with these markets being imperfectly competitive because of an industry experience barrier to entry unlike actual competition a measure of potential competition has no effect in constraining price copyright 1989 by mit press

tourism as a factor in development cooperation abstract where there is little or no industrial or agricultural base and no exploitable resource tourism may make a significant contribution to the economy of a developing country the eec provides aid to developing countries in three areas the southern mediterranean asia and latin america and africa the caribbean and the pacific the commission has produced guidelines for drawing up proposals and a typical example is presented in this article the eec also supplies high quality expertise to help define policy options and strategic plans and carry out agreed programmes long term success is more likely for specialized high income projects

competing vertical structures precommitment and renegotiation we consider a model where two agents privately informed about their own characteristics play a normal form game on behalf of two uninformed principals we analyze the existence of precommitment effects through public announcements of contracts in a model where agency contracts designed ex ante can always be secretly renegotiated at the ex ante and interim stages we show that the existence of precommitment effects depends both on the strategic complementarity of the agents actions and on the direct effect of the opponents actions on each principal s welfare in our model the possibility of renegotiation is crucial for the existence of precommitment effects the results are introduced through an example of cournot and bertrand competition between firms viewed as vertical structures

domestic tourism demand of urban and rural residents in china does relative income matter abstract the aim of this research is to investigate the domestic tourism demand of urban and rural residents in china based on the data from the national household tourism survey we specify chinese domestic tourism demand as a function of absolute income relative income domestic tourism price and substitute price as a major contribution of this study relative income is measured using the distance between individual income and average income over a city province based on the estimation results from multilevel models this paper highlights the effect of relative income on domestic tourism demand in some sub regions of china furthermore regional differences between residents in different sub regions and different patterns of determinants between urban and rural residents are identified and discussed

vertical integration or separation of the sales function as implied by competitive forces abstract in the present paper we link the decisions concerning the sales strategies that are made by competing firms we demonstrate that when the demand schedules facing competing firms are moderately correlated asymmetric equilibria may arise where only one firm decides to establish its own sales force while its competitor sells its product through an independent sales agency when demand schedules are highly correlated however only symmetric equilibria can arise since firms derive greater benefits from imitating rather than contradicting their rivals choices we demonstrate that vertical separation of its sales function is more likely than vertical integration when firms produce products that are highly substitutable