convention industry and destination clusters evidence from italy abstract the study investigates aspects of the convention industry not well explored in the literature using a framework of cluster theory a quantitative method is used to assess the italian convention industry and its relationships with local infrastructure and tourism product supply the development of the different phases of the life cycle of convention destinations in italy is outlined and locational factors which influence them are investigated managerial and political strategies which would enhance the competitiveness of the italian convention industry in the global market are proposed furthermore the study evaluates the use of the cluster theory in investigating the hospitality industry contributing to the debate on local tourism development

tall buildings and land values height and construction cost elasticities in chicago 1870 2010 cities around the world are experiencing unprecedented vertical growth yet the economics of skyscrapers remain empirically understudied this paper analyzes the determinants of the urban height profile by combining a micro geographic data set on tall buildings with a unique panel of land prices covering 140 years we provide novel estimates of the land price elasticity of height the height elasticity of construction cost and the elasticity of substitution between land and capital for tall build ings in line with improvements in construction technology the land price elasticity of height increased substantially over time rationalizing a trend to ever taller buildings the land price elasticity of height is larger for commercial than for residential buildings suggesting that the typical segregation of land uses within cities is not exclusively shaped by the demand side but also by the supply side

spatial monopoly non zero profits and entry deterrence the case of cement at least since kaldor 1935 a number of economists have argued that indivisibilities and accompanying economies of scale in spatially extended economies can negate the zero profit result generally associated with free entry the essential argument is that if there are industries in which transportation costs are non negligible and size economies call for firms that are large relative to local demand even the most intense competition need not result in a zero profit equilibrium recently eaton and lipsey 1978 have provided the analytical underpinnings for kaldor s largely intuitive argument and demonstrate that pure profits can remain even with free entry of new firms and price competition eaton and lipsey 1978 p 467 suggest that their result depends critically on the existence of the following conditions 1 the average total cost curve is declining over some initial range 2 customers are geographically spread out and intermingled with firms 3 transport is costly and 4 once the firm enters the market it has location specific sunk costs 2 this paper offers an empirical investigation of the non zero profit argument as applied to the u s cement industry on a priori grounds the cement industry appears to meet the necessary conditions for existence of positive site associated profits the existence or at least the belief that the a priori conditions are satisfied has provided a basis for using the industry as a representative case scherer 1980 pp 252 258 for instance offers a textbook example of entry deterrence through plant location strategy that combines elements of space and the standard deterrence argument 3 scherer then notes that in an interview study of plant size and location decisions in 12 industries across six nations the author observed by far the strongest emphasis on geographic space packing as an entry deterring strategy in the cement industry p 257 scherer s example of entry deterrence via strategic plant proliferation is an extension of the kaldor non zero profit argument however the non zero profit argument has at least one major drawback profits in the cement industry have not been significantly above normal for any sustained period the first section of this paper considers the evidence of the cement industry s approximation to the eaton and lipsey conditions and its historical profitability given the contradictory results between apparent satisfaction of the a priori conditions and the lack of supernormal profits a reformulation of the basic model is presented an explanation offered here for the absence of supernormal profits is derivable from the property rights paradigm the usual procedure in analyzing the reaction to new entrants in a spatially extended model has been to assign either initial locations to a set of firms or provide for a prearranged pattern of sequential entry both procedures implicitly assign property rights to locational rents and ignore the vital element that there will be competition to be the first plant in a given location 4 with demand for the product growing competition to be first at a given location will insure that the timing of construction of the

the uk association conference attendance decision making process this paper reports on research carried out into the consumer behaviour displayed by uk association conference delegates when deciding to attend a conference examination of the available literature suggested that there has been little investigation of the delegate s perspective on attending a conference as most research into business events has traditionally been centred on the supply side particularly convention destination image and association site selection the paper found six underlying dimensions of the uk association conference delegate decision making process personal professional development networking opportunities cost location time and convenience and health and wellbeing additionally regression analysis showed that two of the dimensions networking opportunities and cost were significant predictors of intention to attend the conference again in the future

an econometric analysis of charitable giving with interdependent preferences in practice we are in a situation where one s own contribution is expected to influence the contributions of others a will expect that b and c may also be induced by his gifts to the same or similar objectives vickrey 1962 p 40 the estimates provide no support for the view that the total amount that an individual contributes is a function of the amount that is given by others although these results are clearly not definitive evidence against the notion of such interdependence among individuals we believe that the burden of proof now rests with those who support a theory of interdependent giving feldstein and clotfelter 1976 p 19 i introduction it is widely believed that one person s charitable contributions can be significantly influenced by the contributions of others the national survey of philanthropy for instance indicates that a sizable fraction of the population believes that people pay attention to what others give when determining their own contribution 1 fundraisers also feel that large leadership contributions by wealthy individuals can be influential in encouraging more and larger contributions by others bakal 1979 moreover interdependence among givers is central to social scientists outside of economics who study altruistic or charitable behavior psychologists for instance have learned that those who have recently witnessed an altruistic act are more likely to be altruistic and that people will be more altruistic the more others contribute 2 sociologists studying reference groups have shown that choices individuals make often depend on the choices of others who are similar in age education social status and other characteristics and that such reference groups appear to be important in determining altruistic and charitable activity 3 economic theorists have also made interdependent preferences the focus of their theoretical models of giving in some of the earliest writing on philanthropy vickrey 1962 gives an extensive discussion of the role of neighborhood effects on contributions formal models of altruism beginning with becker 1974 also assume any one contributor s choice depends on the contributions of all others largely because of the public goods aspect of charity 4 other models have generalized becker s approach to include impurely altruistic motives for giving such as a desire for acclaim status or simply a warm glow from giving where the impure altruism also depends on the contributions of others andreoni 1989 1990 outside of the literature on charity there is a long history beginning with duesenberry 1949 of economic models that assume the consumption choices of one agent are directly affected by the choices and characteristics of other agents 5 yitzhaki 1982 stark 1990 and stark and yitzhaki 1988 have shown the importance of relative deprivation in understanding economic phenomena and in related reasoning frank 1984 1985a b has shown that there is a theoretical and empirical basis for assuming that individuals care about how their consumption ranks relative to some group of peers in addition manski 1993a has shown the importance of role models and reference groups in the study of dynamic choice despite this emphasis on interdependent preferences elsewhere the empirical literature on charitable giving has been unsuccessful at finding any empirical relevance of interdependence feldstein and clotfelter 1976 are the only economists who have attempted to include variables to capture the interdependence of preferences their effort was unsuccessful as a result a large literature has developed in which equations for charitable contributions have been estimated without accounting for interdependence this method has led to a consensus that the tax price of charitable contributions and donor s income are both important in determining gifts

the costs of agglomeration house and land prices in french cities we develop a new methodology to estimate the elasticity of urban costs with respect to city population using french house and land price data after handling a number of estimation concerns we find that the elasticity of urban costs increases with city population with an estimate of about 0 03 for an urban area with 100 000 inhabitants to 0 08 for an urban area of the size of paris our approach also yields a number of intermediate outputs of independent interest such as the share of housing in expenditure the elasticity of unit house and land prices with respect to city population and within city distance gradients for house and land prices

the role of transportation costs in the economics of commodity markets transportation costs still play an important role in the economics of commodity markets in this paper i present a theoretical framework aimed at describing spatial arbitrage under uncertainty i analyze the effect of changing transport costs on different yet related variables volume of trade volatility of prices and levels of spatial price differentials as a tribute to enke and samuelson the model is referred to as the stochastic enke samuelson model it provides predictions for variables such as price volatilities or correlations which cannot be defined in the deterministic framework of the standard spatial price equilibrium model the statistical tests display a convergent array of evidence in favor of the model

demand elasticities of tourism in singapore abstract in 1983 the un economic and social commission for asia and the pacific set up a study to investigate the relationship between prices of tourist goods and tourist inflow in singapore the analysis was carried out on a world level using amalgamated data for 15 nations also individually for each of the five major tourist generating countries determinants of demand considered were income exchange rates shopping and hotel prices and local disturbances tourism demand is found to be highly income elastic whereas effects of prices and exchange rate movements vary between countries two out of three disturbance factors significantly reduced demand

building the city from slums to a modern metropolis we model the building of a city estimate parameters of the model and calculate welfare losses from institutional frictions encountered in changing land use we distinguish formal and slum construction technologies in contrast to slums formal structures can be built tall are durable and non malleable as the city grows areas are initially developed informally then formally and then redeveloped periodically slums are modelled as a technology choice however institutional frictions in land markets may hinder their conversion to formal usage that requires secure property rights using unique data on nairobi for 2003 and 2015 we develop a novel set of facts that support assumptions of the model estimate all parameters of the model and calculate welfare losses of conversion frictions we track the dynamic evolution of the city and compare it with model predictions in the core city formal sector about a third of buildings were torn down over 12 years and replaced by buildings on average three times higher for slums in older areas near the centre even after buying out slumlords overcoming institutional frictions would yield gains amounting to about 18 000 per slum household 30 times typical annual slum rent payments

female agricultural workers wages male female wage differentials and agricultural growth in a developing country india the data on indian agricultural wages for the period 1966 88 reveal a clearly rising trend in female agricultural wage workers earnings in terms of both nominal and real wages because of the green revolution agriculture in india also witnessed during this period phenomenal yield increases of major crops in several agricultural regions growth in agricultural output has been attributed largely to the adoption of biochemical technological innovations and expansion of irrigational facilities the descriptive data on agricultural wages also reveal a few noticeable rural labor market phenomena particularly pertaining to female agricultural wage workers first the estimated all india agricultural average daily real wage rates for male and female wage workers show that female workers wages continue to be lower than male workers wages fig 1 a trend that holds across the 16 states studied second substantial cross state differences continue to exist in the daily wage rates of female agricultural wage workers ranging from as low as rs 1 72 in tamilnadu to rs 4 77 in punjab third although the overall male female earnings gap has declined over time fig 2 quite large differentials continue to exist across the major agricultural regions of the country fourth and rather surprisingly some of the regions with relatively high levels of yield and agricultural development are also characterized by a combination of relatively lower female agricultural workers wages and higher male female wage differentials than are the poorer states with comparatively low agricultural yields for example female agricultural wage workers earn on the average only 64 of male workers wages in tamilnadu 67 in maharashtra 75 in haryana and 78 in punjab whereas in relatively

the economics of density evidence from the berlin wall this paper develops a quantitative model of internal city structure that features agglomeration and dispersion forces and an arbitrary number of heterogeneous city blocks the model remains tractable and amenable to empirical analysis because of stochastic shocks to commuting decisions which yield a gravity equation for commuting flows to structurally estimate agglomeration and dispersion forces we use data on thousands of city blocks in berlin for 1936 1986 and 2006 and exogenous variation from the city s division and reunification we estimate substantial and highly localized production and residential externalities we show that the model with the estimated agglomeration parameters can account both qualitatively and quantitatively for the observed changes in city structure we show how our quantitative framework can be used to undertake counterfactuals for changes in the organization of economic activity within cities in response for example to changes in the transport network

spatial growth and redevelopment with perfect foresight and durable housing abstract in this paper i present a theoretical model of the spatial growth of an urban area with durable housing i combine several assumptions that typically complicate the analysis i housing developers have perfect foresight ii the initial development and many waves of redevelopment are considered in each developer s plan and iii the closed city assumption is made so that the time path of population is exogenous and that of consumer utility is endogenous i still obtain explicit solutions for the spatial pattern of urban growth and for the timing of the initial residential development and each successive redevelopment at each distance from the urban center i compare perfect foresight growth to growth with static expectations and i examine the comparative statics of both

concentration price and critical concentration ratios a potentially important parameter that has not yet been convincingly estimated is the critical concentration ratio this paper attempts to estimate it in three types of market the estimation of a critical concentration ratio if one exists seems of potentially great importance because of its implication for antitrust policy if a critical concentration ratio were found and if concentration had no effect below that level it would seem to follow that a horizontal merger in a market where concentration was below the critical level and where the merger could not increase concentration to the critical level could not substantially lessen competition or tend to create monopoly

competition in interrelated markets an empirical study abstract this paper studies competition in small concentrated and interrelated markets our data set consists of price information from 486 driving schools in 235 local markets in sweden which gives a large sample to test hypotheses on how market structure influences competition the results show that the price in a market is lower if prices in nearby markets are low and the distances to them are short as suggested in models of spatial competition moreover we find that prices in closely located markets are interdependent it is also shown that prices are increasing in firm concentration within a market as most theories of oligopoly predict

market definition in antitrust analysis a regression based approach alleged violations of either sherman 2 s antimonopoly strictures or clayton 7 s proscriptions against anticompetitive mergers necessarily involve a particular product and must occur in a particular place that is the plaintiff in either a 2 or 7 suit must define a relevant market within which the violation alleged has occurred even in the most mundane antitrust analysis however market definition is rarely readily accomplished and unaccompanied by a series of caveats and the possibility of the opposing parties in an antitrust suit failing to contest each other s proffered definition is virtually nil 2 because economists from

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

tourism forecasting and the policymaker criteria of usefulness abstract this article is a sequel to one by the author in the september 1982 issue of tourism management in which the question of what futures research could contribute to tourism policy was raised here the subject is explored further and a comparison of various forecasting techniques is used to investigate how far forecasting is and could be useful in supporting tourism policies

pricing and market concentration in oligopoly markets this paper investigates the relationship between prices and market concentration in the auto rental industry we assemble an original database that includes the number of auto rental operators and other exogenous demand and cost conditions at every commercial airport in the country the data are interesting because we observe a large variation in market structure ranging from more than 100 monopoly and duopoly markets to several competitive airports with more than eight firms in addition we collect daily rental prices in each market that are regressed against the number of operating firms and other control factors due to potential biases in treating market participants as exogenously assigned we employ a two stage estimation procedure in which an equilibrium model of endogenous market structure provides correction terms for the second stage price regression results show that ignoring the endogeneity of market structure severely underestimates the impact of additional competitors on prices with the

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

on the determinants of slum formation we construct a simple model of a city with heterogeneous agents and housing choice to explain the determinants of slums home to about one third of the urban population in developing countries the model supports the main empirical evidence regarding slum formation and is able quantitatively to assess the role of each determinant of slum growth we show that urban poverty inequality and rural urban migration explain much of the variation in slum growth in brazil from 1980 to 2000 ex ante evaluation of the impacts of policy interventions shows that removing barriers to formalisation has a strong impact on slum reduction

slum real estate the low quality high price puzzle in nairobi s slum rental market and its implications for theory and practice summary this study of 1755 households in nairobi s slums challenges the conventional belief that slums offer low quality low cost shelter to a population that cannot afford better standards in nairobi slums provide low quality but high cost shelter although slum residents pay millions of dollars in rents annually and better quality units command higher rents very little is being re invested to upgrade quality to resolve the challenge that the nairobi puzzle poses for theory and practice we develop a new analytical framework for understanding quality of living conditions improving conditions in nairobi s slums requires we argue two simultaneous interventions alteration of the tenure mix to enhance owner occupancy and infrastructure investment

exogeneity tests of market boundaries applied to petroleum products us antitrust law makes market definition and the calculation of marketshare statistics an integral part of the determination of the anticompetitive impact of a merger because markets frequently overlap however market definition is rarely an easy task a statistical test that can be used as an aid in defining markets is proposed here time series techniques are used to test if price in one region is exogenous to the process that determines price in another the rejection of exogeneity can be an indication that the two regions are economically linked and thus may belong to a common geographic market the test is applied to petroleumproduct prices from various regions of the united states time series techniques have long been appreciated by macroeconomists the uses to which they have been put range from testing for the exogeneity of variables used in the construction of macroeconomic models sims 1972 for example to discovering empirical regularities in macroeconomic data without imposing a priori structure on the observations ashenfelter and card 1982 for example in contrast these techniques have not been so

convention tourism modelling abstract this paper introduces an approach for identifying the determinants of convention attendance at alternative cities this approach permits planners to evaluate the relative importance of accessibility and attractiveness variables as determinants of convention attendance for each site four major convention sites in the usa are analysed to illustrate the procedure in this example accessibility was found to be far more important than attractiveness

testing a spatial interacting markets hypothesis two models for competitive spatial pricing between retail outlets in a single urban area are presented the models are distinguished in terms of first their relationships to underlying supply and demand conditions in the market and second the spatial forms of inter site competition described properties of the models are identified the statistical theory appropriate to these models is reviewed and the models then fitted to data for retail gasoline prices during periods of falling and then rising average price levels

spatial patterns of residential development abstract a simple dynamic model of residential development with durable housing where all households are identical and all developers have perfect foresight is studied it is shown that unlike the case of static models it is quite possible that house size decreases and thus population density increases with distance from the city center and that the house rent curve has positive gradient in certain area

integration and causality in international freight markets modeling with error correction and directed acyclic graphs 1 introductionin january 1985 the baltic exchange developed the then known baltic freight index bfi which in may 1985 would become the underlying asset of the baltic international freight futures exchange biffex contract a contract designed to hedge uncertainty associated with volatile freight rates on the basis of their exposure to the risk of adverse freight rate fluctuations ship owners and cargo owners charterers could buy or sell biffex contracts to protect their freight rate revenue or control their freight rate cost respectively in addition to its once use for futures trading the bfi is also considered to be the leading indicator of the condition in the dry bulk shipping markets on a daily basis it provides accurate information about the level of freight rates across a variety of shipping routes worldwide this information is extremely valuable for shipping market agents and is an invaluable tool in their decision making process this is so because in an industry such as shipping where trades are being concluded across the globe there is not a central reporting place to record and monitor the level of activity in the markets the principal objective of this article is to assess the degree of interconnectivity between the major shipping routes that constitute the bfi across different time horizons reflecting the typical trading patterns in this market to this end we employ directed acyclic graphs dags spirtes glymour and scheines 1993 which enable us to assess this issue in a dynamic manner based on an error correction model ecm of freight rates we also develop a framework for estimating forecast error decompositions by employing dags from a practical standpoint the information provided by innovation accounting techniques coupled with dag analysis provides an intuitive method for assessing the information flows from the shipping markets and allows us to make an assessment on whether the underlying freight index on which the futures contract is traded is correctly composed the current article therefore makes significant contributions to the literature from several angles to date research has not estimated the relationships in a truly dynamic manner and has as such failed to discuss the implications for derivatives and physical trading in addition the application of innovation accounting in this study is different from most other studies in the sense that we use the causal ordering of variables as indicated by the estimated dags for the orthogonalization of the contemporaneous innovation covariance as suggested by swanson and granger 1997 this step is crucial in providing sound inference in innovation accounting techniques finally investigation of this issue has important implications for the purposes of futures trading as the biffex contract was eventually delisted in april 2002 in this article we identify whether the index is correctly composed and whether there are any obvious patterns or redundancies within the index that may have led to the demise of the futures contract indeed our analysis provides a mechanism for deciding upon the correct index and has obvious yet profound implications for other research in the area of index construction the rest of the article is as follows section 2 offers a brief discussion of freight indices section 3 outlines the methodologies employed in the article including an introduction to dags and section 4 describes the underlying properties of the data series section 5 presents the empirical results and section 6 concludes 2 freight indices and freight futuresgiven uncertainty surrounding freight rates the benefits of providing a futures market in freight rates has been recognized by market practitioners for a long time however the freight futures market was eventually established only in 1985 the reason is that the underlying asset of the market the service of seaborne transportation is not a physical commodity that can be delivered at the expiry of the futures contract

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

the number of firms and production capacity in relation to market size many oligopoly theories predict a positive correlation between market size and the equilibrium number of firms and some also imply that competition is more intense in larger markets we test these predictions on a sample of driving schools in 250 swedish regional markets by estimating the relation between the number of firms production capacity and market size the number of firms increases less than proportionally with market size market size per capacity unit is smaller in large markets since firms produce a fairly homogenous good we argue that this is evidence that profits per capita is decreasing in market size

cities in bad shape urban geometry in india the spatial layout of cities is an important feature of urban form highlighted by urban planners but overlooked by economists this paper investigates the causal economic implications of city shape in india i measure cities geometric properties over time using satellite imagery and historical maps i develop an instrument for urban shape based on geographic obstacles encountered by expanding cities compact city shape is associated with faster population growth and households display positive willingness to pay for more compact layouts transit accessibility is an important channel land use regulations can contribute to deteriorating city shape

competitive storage and commodity price dynamics by buying cheap and selling dear risk neutral commodity speculators can smooth commodity prices and induce serial dependence in price even when none would exist under a simple process of supply and demand commodity prices are variable and strongly positively correlated from one year to the next the variability is often explained by supply factors and the autocorrelation by the activities of speculators we show that this explanation is not consistent with the evidence speculation can substantially increase autocorrelation for prices that are weakly autocorrelated in its absence but not to the high levels that are observed in the data

market structure and market performance in e commerce we investigate the effect of market structure on market performance in the market for consumer electronics we exploit product life cycle information to build an instrumental variable for the number of firms in a market a variable which hitherto had to be treated as exogenous in comparable studies on seller behavior in e commerce we combine data from austria s largest online site for price comparisons with retail data on wholesale prices provided by a major hardware producer for consumer electronics we observe input prices of firms and all their moves in the entry and the pricing game using this information for 70 digital cameras we generate instrumenting is particularly important for estimating the effect of competition on the markup of the price leader

the effect of barge and ocean freight price volatility in international grain markets this paper looks at the potential role of time varying volatility of mississippi river barge and ocean freight prices on commodity prices in illinois at the us gulf and in rotterdam using a vector error correction garch in mean model the model is used to infer the extent to which transportation price risk affects price dynamics in international grain markets results from a simulation exercise indicate that both barge and ocean price volatility influence grain prices but barge price volatility tends to have a greater impact on grain prices and marketing margins than that arising from ocean price volatility consistent with most studies that evaluate the role of risk in marketing channels results here suggest that a reduction in barge rate risk would reduce marketing margins between illinois and the us gulf and between the us gulf and rotterdam the existence of an ocean freight futures contract coupled with the lack of a futures contract for barge rates may be partially responsible for the finding that barge rates have a significant influence on grain prices and contribute most to wide marketing margins found throughout the international grain marketing system

spatial aspects of retail market structure beef pricing revisited abstract spatial retail markets with multiplant firms and conjectural variations are analyzed in this paper in this context the interplay between commuting characteristics and concentration is discussed leading to an empirical test for the effect of those variables on retail beef prices commuting characteristics are found to have a significant effect on prices this suggests that a significant concentration price relationship might emerge if retail markets were defined in the narrow way that the spatial retail model suggests that they should be