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

some evidence on lump sum versus convex costs of changing prices 2 two models in which price stickiness results from price adjustment costs are tested one an s s pricing model assumes lump sum adjustment costs and predicts firms will make relatively large infrequent price changes the other assumes convex adjustment costs and predicts frequent partial price adjustments survey data of firms price behavior reveal patterns consistent with the s s model however many of the patterns are also consistent with partial adjustment rules although the high percentage of firms which fix prices for a quarter or more casts doubt on the plausibility of the partialadjustment hypothesis i introduction in new keynesian economics price stickiness arises not because of wage rigidity so much as because either the gains to individual firms from changing prices are negligible or the costs of doing so deter full and immediate price changes as a result nominal shocks which affect demand for the firm s product as well as real shocks give rise to changes in output the nature and the timing of the effects of demand changes such as those initiated by monetary policy thus depend on how individual firms respond to the signals they receive sticky price models based on costs of price adjustment take at least two different forms one assumes a lump sum cost to changing prices which leads to predictions that firms generally keep prices fixed and make infrequent relatively large price changes the other assumes convex adjustment costs and leads to the prediction that firms make relatively small and frequent partial adjustments toward a target level evidence drawn from a series of surveys conducted by the national federation of independent business will be used to test the predictions from these two types of models while the data do not allow a definitive test between the two models the available evidence supports the model with lump sum costs of changing prices with the important proviso that there be substantial heterogeneity in the relative costs to firms of making price changes so that the frequency and size of changes vary considerably across firms ii s s rules with lump sum costs of price changes how frequently should a firm change its price when a change takes place how large should it be sheshinski and weiss 1977 and barro 1972 provided the first answers to these questions in their models an individual firm incurs a lump sum cost when changing its nominal price and the firm s profits depend on its real price where real price is defined as the firm s nominal price divided by an index of the prices of all other firms in the economy sheshinski and weiss assume that the firm tries to maximize the present value of its real profits their solution amounts to what is known in the optimal inventory literature as an s s rule in which s s units are ordered when stocks run down to s as applied to a pricing rule when prices rise elsewhere in the economy the firm s real price falls to a lower bound s at which point the firm raises its nominal price so that its real price jumps to s they prove that a more rapid general inflation rate calls for a lower s and higher s furthermore subject to a monotonicity condition a higher general inflation rate calls for a shorter time between price changes after showing a number of numerical examples sheshinski and weiss report that numerical experiments with a quadratic profit function give high intervals between price changes 1 2 years even with very low adjustment costs 1977 300 when the profit function is flat in the neighborhood of the profit maximizing real price there is little benefit from changing price a similar argument appears in the menu cost explanation for real effects of nominal disturbances in the absence of private incentives for individual price changes there may be real aggregate effects of nominal disturbances for example see mankiw 1985 akerlof and yellen 1985 kuran 1986 blanchard and kiyotaki 1987

voting on majority rules political economy models usually take as given the rules which govern the political decision making with the simple majority rule being the most popular model in this paper we develop a simple yet powerful positive model where the majority rule governing future elections is itself chosen in an election we observe a large variety of majority rules governing elections in the real world on the one side referenda are usually decided by a simple majority at the other extreme many international organizations require unanimity in votes among the member states in the european union s council of ministers some proposals require only a simple majority some a supermajority of about 71 62 votes out of 87 and some require unanimous consent 1 explicit supermajorities 2 are required in most countries for a change of the constitution but in some u s states also for a tax raise even more important could be what we might call implicit supermajorities in parliamentary systems with a strong committee organization a legislative proposal usually needs the support of both the respective committee and the house in parliamentary systems with two chambers certain legislative proposals need the support of both chambers 3 previous rationalizations of qualified majority rules focus on the problem of condorcet cycles under simple majority rule in n dimensional elections and on commitment problems see our literature review below our model presents a new rationale for rules requiring qualified majorities in elections we analyse an overlapping generations model of voting on reform opportunities which we model as similar to investment projects at first there is a cost and then there are benefits since voters have a finite lifetime old voters will be less keen on reforms

on the efficiency of equilibria in a legislative bargaining model with particularistic and collective goods this study analyzes the efficiency of equilibria in a multilateral bargaining game in which a legislature divides its budget among collective and particularistic goods in order to disentangle the causes of inefficiency we extend the model of volden and wiseman am polit sci rev 101 79 92 2007 by considering quasi linear utility functions and consensus requirements ranging from simple majority to unanimity although unanimous agreements can be reached under weaker consensus requirements we show that pareto inefficiency is associated with non unanimous consent we also study how i the endogenous selection of the legislature s size or ii a sequential choice of collective and particularistic spending eliminates or attenuates the inefficiency problem

stochastic inflation and the optimal policy of price adjustment this paper analyzes the optimal policy of price adjustment for a monopolistic firm in the presence of stochastic inflation it shows that an increase in the expected rate of inflation or in the cost of price adjustment leads to an increase in the initial real price and a decrease in the terminal real price in each period with a fixed nominal price it also shows that the effects of increased riskiness of inflation are ambiguous

menu costs and the neutrality of money a model of endogenous price adjustment under money growth is presented firms follow s s pricing policies and price revisions are imperfectly synchronized in the aggregate price stickiness disappears and money is neutral the connection between firm price adjustment and relative price variability in the presence of monetary growth is also investigated the results contrast with those obtained in models with exogenous fixed timing of price adjustment

uniqueness of stationary equilibria in bargaining one dimensional policies under super majority rules article history we consider negotiations selecting one dimensional policies individuals have instanta neous preferences represented by continuous concave and single peaked utility functions and they are impatient decisions arise from a bargaining game with random proposers and super majority approval ranging from the simple majority up to unanimity we provide sufficient conditions that guarantee the existence of a unique stationary subgame perfect equilibrium and we provide its explicit characterization the uniqueness of the equilibrium permits an analysis of the set of pareto optimal voting rules for symmetric distributions of peaks and uniform recognition probabilities unanimity is the unanimously preferred ma jority rule

transformations of the commodity space behavioral heterogeneity and the aggregation problem aggregation in exchange markets is studied by imposing restrictions on distributions of the households characteristics approximate bounds for market demand price elasticities that depend upon specific measures of behavioral heterogeneity are provided increasing behavioral heterogeneity makes aggregate expenditures more independent of prices this has strong consequences for the prevalence in the aggregate of the weak axiom of revealed preference of gross substitutability and on uniqueness and stability of the walrasian exchange equilibrium these strong macroeconomic regularities are obtained essentially through distributional assumptions as no rationality requirements are imposed on individual demand functions other than homogeneity and walras law journal of economic literature classification numbers d11 d41 d50 el 1992 academic press lnc there are still quite a few unpleasant gaps nowadays between macroanalysis and microanalysis of socioeconomic systems a leading instance drawn from social choice theory is arrow s celebrated impossibility theorem 1 which states that any attempt to aggregate individual preferences into a consistent social ordering or a collective choice procedure satisfying a few appealing requirements is bound to fail the impossibility arises however only if one insists that the procedure should work for every possible environment or in other words for all distributions of individual preferences a possible resolution of the problem is therefore to identify broad classes of distributions of preferences for which aggrega the bulk of the research reported in this paper was essentially done at yale university during the fall semester of 1990 i thank all my colleagues for their support and comments especially martin shubik herbert scarf and truman bewley i also had very useful conversations with jorgen weibull mike jerison andreu mas colell christian gouri6roux camille bronsard guy laroque bruno jullien and bernard caillaud i am much indebted to ai klevorick for his comments on an earlier draft but my greatest debt is to werner hildenbrand whose pioneering insights and stubborn insistance have over the years kept quite a few of us struggling beyond the fads of the moment with the aggregation problem our profession is fortunate indeed to have him around

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

market perceptions and inventory price employment plans ordered probit analyses of national federation of independent business survey data show that individual firms generally conform to the stock adjustment model of inventory investment with the predicted response more likely when inventories are perceived as excessive than when deficient contrary to inferences about slow adjustment speeds from aggregate data inventory adjustments by individual firms do not tend to take more than three months to complete there is no evidence that price is used to achieve desired inventory targets but prices are sticky in that changes set in motion one quarter tend to continue into the next quarter copyright 1989 by mit press

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 governance of exchanges members cooperatives versus outside ownership the paper compares co operative governance structure to outside ownership the distinction between the two lies in who has residual rights of control it is found that a co operative becomes relatively less efficient as the environment becomes more competitive and the interests of members become more skewed these ideas are applied to the governance of exchanges this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

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

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

a near rational model of the business cycle with wage and price inertia this paper presents a model in which insignificantly suboptimal behavior causes aggregate demand shocks to have significant real effects the individual loss to agents with inertial price wage behavior is second order in terms of the parameter describing the shock while the effect on real economic variables is first order thus significant changes in business activity can be generated by anticipated money supply changes provided that some agents are willing to engage in nonmaximizing behavior which results in small losses

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

s s pricing policy when adjustment costs affect demand abstract adjustment costs in a typical s s pricing policy model are respecified so that price stability affects revenues rather than costs the s s pricing result holds even when menu costs are removed

on the infrequent adjustment of price by firms i introduction recent research by blinder 1991 indicates that as many as 75 percent of all firms change price no more than twice a year according to the wall street journal these findings seem to have caused considerable surprise 1 there is however nothing unusual about these results infrequent price adjustment by firms can be readily explained by the existence of very small price adjustment or menu costs and the fact that deviations from optimal price adjustment policies often result in negligible reductions in a firm s average rate of profit this paper brings together in a dynamic setting two ingredients in the literature that have previously been linked only in a static framework the small menu cost argument of mankiw 1985 and the near rational argument of akerlof and yellen 1985 numerical examples are used to answer the familiar objection that price adjustment costs are too small to be important the main conclusions of the paper remain valid for a wide variety of plausible parameter values and do not depend on extreme assumptions concerning the flatness of the firm s profit function the basic insight that under imperfect competition first order deviations from optimal behavior imply second order losses was first made by bowley 1924 25 this idea was further developed by akerlof and yellen 1985 since the firm s profit function is flat at its maximum point failure to adjust price in response to small exogenous shocks implies very small losses even if price adjustment is costless if there are some costs associated with changing price a policy of rigid prices in the face of small nominal shocks may be optimal this would seem to provide a micro explanation for sticky prices these ideas are usually expounded in the framework of a static two period model 2 further the conclusions reached are only valid for small deviations from optimal behavior the present paper extends the argument to a dynamic framework of continual inflation and its conclusions are shown to remain valid for large deviations from optimal pricing policies 3 the paper makes two main points first very small price adjustment costs often lead to surprising long intervals between price changes even when the length of this interval is chosen optimally second the loss of profits suffered by the firm when the interval between price changes is much greater than the optimal value is often negligible large deviations from optimal policies typically imply very small losses this is a much stronger claim than the familiar argument that small deviations from optimality imply second order losses and it does not follow from the envelope theorem if a firm adopts a simple rule of say changing price twice a year regardless of the inflation rate it may earn a level of profit practically indistinguishable from that it would earn if it behaved optimally at least for inflation rates experienced in the western democracies since world war ii the standard objection to the menu cost explanation of infrequent price adjustment is that these costs are much too small to explain observed pricing behavior the examples presented below show that this objection can be discounted seemingly trivial price adjustment costs as small as one millionth of the firm s annual revenue can explain price adjustment frequencies as low as once or twice a year at inflation rates of 20 percent per annum and above part of the explanation concerns the flatness of the firm s profit function over a wide range of plausible values of demand and cost parameters profit functions are sufficiently flat to explain observed frequencies of price adjustment even when the interval between price changes is optimal but there is more too it than this large deviations from optimal price adjustment policies imply surprisingly small losses even for profit functions that would never be described as flat in particular the loss in profit caused by large deviations in the interval between price changes from its optimal value are normally very small

the optimality of partial price adjustment policies this paper studies the optimal price adjustment policies of a monopolistically competitive firm whose profit maximizing price is subject to a serially correlated random disturbance the firm chooses its price by comparing the expected cost of present and future price changes with the expected losses occurring when price deviates from its instantaneous profit maximizing value partial price adjustment often is the best way to minimize the sum of these losses prices tend to be more flexible both in response to large shocks to the firm s profit maximizing price and when much uncertainty exists about the future

choosing how to choose self stable majority rules and constitutions constitutional arrangements affect the decisions made by a society we study how this effect leads to preferences of citizens over constitutions and ultimately how this has a feedback that determines which constitutions can survive in a given society constitutions are stylized here to consist of a voting rule for ordinary business and possibly a different voting rule for making changes to the constitution we define an equilibrium notion for constitutions called self stability whereby under the rules of a self stable constitution the society would not vote to change the constitution we argue that only self stable constitutions will endure we prove that self stable constitutions always exist but that most constitutions even very prominent ones may not be self stable for some societies we show that constitutions where the voting rule used to amend the constitution is the same as the voting rule used for ordinary business are dangerously simplistic and there are many societies for which no such constitution is self stable we conclude with a characterization of the set of self stable constitutions that use majority rule for ordinary business

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

incomplete social contracts there is a long normative social contract tradition that attempts to characterize ex post income inequalities that are agreeable to all behind a veil of ignorance this paper takes a similar normative approach to characterize social decision making procedures it is shown that quite generally some form of majority voting is preferred to unanimity behind a veil of ignorance whenever society faces deadweight costs in making compensating transfers deviations from unanimity or ex post pareto optimality are ex ante efficient to the extent that they economize on costly compensating transfers put another way the optimal decision rule trades off the benefits of minority protection and those from greater flexibility jel h11 g33 g34 d63 p16 p48

anticipated inflation and aggregate employment the case of costly price adjustment even if inflation is perfectly anticipated a firm that finds nominal price adjustments sufficiently costly will reset its price at multi period intervals consequently its average output will change in a direction that depends on properties of its profit function on the basis of this observation which does not involve money illusion the paper shows that anticipated inflation can stimulate aggregate employment through a process that entails changes in the factor demands of individual monopolistic firms and in the intersectoral allocation of consumer expenditure simulations indicate however that the gain in aggregate employment is likely to be modest

redistribution tax under non benevolent governments i analyze redistribution policies of majority governments in one kind of representative voting system i employ these assumptions members gain special benefits in the majority parties act strategically by using redistribution transfers the member s utility function is given in a quasi linear function the government s objective functions are the weighted summation of utilities and i classify governments according to the weight the four main results are a stable majority dose not support myopic government the stable redistribution policy of benevolent government is expressed by a scope of transfers the stable transfer of non benevolent governments depends on private utilities of the majority and opportunity costs of the minority and the altruistic government is not displayed by any other majority because it offers the total welfare of the majority to the minority as a subsidy

behind closed doors revealing the ecb s decision rule abstract this paper aims at discovering the decision rule the governing council of the ecb uses to set interest rates we construct a taylor rule for each member of the council and for the euro area as a whole and aggregate the interest rates they produce using several classes of decision making mechanisms chairman dominance bargaining consensus voting and voting with a chairman we test alternative scenarios in which individual members of the council pursue either a national or a federal objective we then compare the interest rate path predicted by each scenario with the observed euro area s interest rate we find that scenarios in which all members of the governing council are assumed to pursue euro area wide objectives are dominated by scenarios in which decisions are made collectively by a council consisting of members pursuing national objectives the best performing scenario is the one in which individual members of the governing council follow national objectives bargain over the interest rate and their weights are based on their country s share of the zone s gdp

the option to wait in collective decisions we also explore the robustness of our model when second period valuations are correlated across individuals and when each individual s first and second period types are correlated

optimal pricing with costly adjustment evidence from retail grocery prices in many theoretical models it is assumed that there are costs associated with adjusting prices in this paper the existence type and magnitude of such costs are investigated empirically a discrete choice dynamic programming model that nests fixed and variable costs is developed and econometric estimates of the adjustment cost function are obtained the data used to implement the model consist of weekly retail prices and sales of three brands of saltine crackers sold by four chains of grocery stores in a small u s town the study has several distinguishing characteristics first the data are highly disaggregate at the level of brand and store second variables are sampled at weekly intervals third the model nests fixed and variable adjustment costs and can therefore determine their relative importance finally the discrete choice model is both structural and dynamic

the possibility of social choice the subject of social choice includes within its capacious frame various problems with the common feature of relating social judgments and group decisions to the views and interests of the individuals who make up the society or the group some challenges and foundational problems faced by social choice theory as a discipline are discussed social choice theory is a subject in which formal and mathematical techniques have been very extensively used voting based procedures are entirely natural for some kinds of social choice problems such as elections referendums or committee decisions they are however altogether unsuitable for many other problems of social choice impossibility results in social choice theory led by the pioneering work of arrow 1951 have often been interpreted as being thoroughly destructive of the possibility of reasoned and democratic social choice including welfare economics that view is argued against

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

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

committees with supermajority voting yield commitment with flexibility abstract a fundamental problem for government is how to combine commitment to certain policies with the flexibility required to adjust them when needed rogoff 1985 rogoff k 1985 the optimal degree of commitment to an intermediate monetary target q j econ 100 4 1169 1189 showed that a way to strike the right balance is to appoint an optimally conservative policy maker in real life however policy makers also have power over decisions where optimal plans are time consistent so delegating to a conservative person could be undesirable a flexible delegation device can be found in a large committee of randomly appointed members voting over policy after observing a shock when facing dynamic inconsistency under a single crossing property there exists a supermajority rule that implements the population median s optimally conservative policy maker with certainty another single crossing property guarantees that if simple majority voting is used to select the voting rule that will govern policy choice the supermajority preferred by the median is chosen for problems where dynamic inconsistency vanishes the committee will choose to make decisions by simple majority implementing median outcomes an application to monetary policy is developed we show that the optimal supermajority is higher when dynamic inconsistency is more severe when preferences are more homogeneous and when the economy is less volatile

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

the option to wait in collective decisions and optimal majority rules abstract we consider a model in which voters over time receive more information about their preferences concerning an irreversible social decision voters can either implement the project in the first period or they can postpone the decision to the second period we analyze the effects of different majority rules individual first period voting behavior may become less conservative under supermajority rules and it is even possible that a project is implemented in the first period under a supermajority rule that would not be implemented under simple majority rule we characterize the optimal majority rule which is a supermajority rule in contrast to individual investment problems society may be better off if the option to postpone the decision did not exist these results are qualitatively robust to natural generalizations of our model

the value of formalism re examining external costs and decision costs with multiple groups several authors have examined the optimal k majority rule using a variety of criteria we formalize and extend the original argument laid out by buchanan and tullock the calculus of consent logical foundations of constitutional democracy 1962 using a decision theoretic analysis from the perspective of an individual voter unlike previous formalizations voters in our study are members of one or more groups this allows us to examine cases wherein different voters have starkly different interests furthermore voters in our study can err in their judgments of proposals allowing us to model potential irrationalities in the choice of an optimal k majority rule we consider both up or down votes on a single proposal as well as votes over a series of proposals we find that the optimal k majority rule depends on a number of parameters most notably the number of rounds needed to create a proposal that will pass group membership has almost no affect furthermore if two groups are at odds then the external cost function can actually rise over some range of k if voters err systematically in their judgment more inclusive k majority rules such as unanimity rule can fail to pass pareto preferred proposals our results should help advance a classic work in public choice

on 64 majority rule introduction d une definition de consensus social base sur deux restrictions une sur les preferences individuelles et l autre sur la distribution des preferences dans ce cas de consensus une regle de majorite a 64 presente de nombreuses proprietes interessantes par opposition aux regles de super majorite possedant des proprietes paradoxales comme les regles electorales americaines

heterogeneity in price rigidity evidence from a case study using microlevel data we combine two data sets to study price rigidity the first consists of weekly time series of retail wholesale and spot prices for twelve products these time series contain two exogenous cost shocks we find that prices exhibit more rigidity in response to the second shock than the first the second data set consists of all publicly available information about the shocks content analysis of these information reveals that the first shock is larger and more persistent and the market has more information on it than the second we conclude therefore that prices are more flexible in response to cost shocks that are larger that are more persistent and on which market participants have more information

sticky prices in a dynamic oligopoly an investigation of s s thresholds abstract the strategic implications of costly price adjustment are investigated empirically i assume that managers are engaged in a state space game and ask if the dynamic considerations that arise when they condition their choices on the state cause prices to be more or less rigid than when players use more myopic pricing rules the answer to this question depends on a parametric specification of the problem that lends itself to empirical assessment the micro panel data used to investigate this issue consist of weekly prices sales costs and promotional activity for three brands of saltine crackers sold by four chains of grocery stores in a small us town i find that in this market strategic behavior exacerbates price rigidity the thresholds are wider and the time between changes is longer than would be observed in a more myopic setting

on the theory of strategic voting many analyses of plurality rule elections predict the complete coor dination of strategic voting and hence support for only two candidates here i suggest that stable multi candidate support will arise in equilibrium a group of voters must partially coordinate behind one of two challenging candidates in order to dislodge a disliked incumbent in a departure from existing models the popular support for each challenger is uncertain this support must be inferred from the private observation of informative signals such as the social communication of pref erences throughout the electorate or the imperfect observation of opinion polls the uniquely stable voting equilibrium entails only limited strategic voting and hence incomplete coordination this is due to the surprising presence of negative feed back an increase in the degree of strategic voting by others reduces the incentives for an individual to vote strategically the incentive to vote strategically is lower in relatively marginal elections after controlling for the distance from contention of a trailing preferred challenger a calibration of the model applied to the uk general election of 1997 is consistent with the impact of strategic voting and the reported accuracy of voters understanding of the electoral situation it suggests that nearly 50 seats may have been lost by the conservative party due to strategic voting 1 plurality rule elections and strategic voting 1 1 strategic voting and duverger s law plurality rule elections where the winner is the candidate who receives the largest number of votes are vulnerable to strategic voting a voter might well switch away from her preferred candidate and toward a perceived leader in the hope of exerting a greater influence over the outcome of the election this phenomenon has long been the focus of both economic and political scientific study in an influential essay riker 1982b cited droop s 1871 eloquent exposition of the strategic voting problem 1 i oer my grateful thanks to the many friends colleagues seminar participants referees and editors who have oered insightful comments during the long gestation of this paper its antecedents and companion work special thanks go to steve fisher whose empirical analysis of strategic voting raised many of the questions that i seek to answer in this paper and to chris wallace this particular paper brings together much of the analysis previously circulated in the papers a new theory of strategic voting strategic voting under the qualified majority rule and idiosyncrasy information and the impact of strategic voting

optimum pricing policy under stochastic inflation we describe aggregate inflation as a stochastic process in which the rate of change of the price level can be positive or zero where the times spent in each state are of random duration this class of processes includes two state markov chains and renewal processes as special cases it is shown that the optimal pricing policy of a monopolistic firm with non convex costs of price adjustment is s s in its real price i e its nominal price relative to the price level a basic certainty equivalence result is proved i e the firm behaves as if it faces a certain and fixed rate of inflation higher than the actual expected rate the difference between the two rates being a risk premium which depends on the real interest rate and the parameters of the stochastic process one can thus apply previous results from the case of certainty sheshinski and weiss review of economic studies 1977 to obtain comparative static results in particular one finds that an increase in the variance of expected inflation leads firms to choose a pricing policy with larger amplitude in real price the paper also addresses the question of consistency in firms expectations when the price level is determined by the firms actions in this paper we consider pricing policies of individual firms in an inflationary environment each firm expects the general price level to increase and must determine the rate of increase of its own price it is assumed that the firm incurs an adjustment cost when it changes its nominal price consequently firms choose to change prices occasionally rather than continuously

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

small menu costs and large business cycles a macroeconomic model of monopoly i introduction the conflict between modern neoclassical and traditional keynesian theories of the business cycle centers upon the pricing mechanism in neoclassical models prices are fully flexible they represent the continuous optimization of economic agents and the continuous intersection of supply and demand in keynesian models prices are often assumed to be sticky they do not necessarily equilibrate all markets at all times one of the reasons for the resurgence of the equilibrium approach to macroeconomics has been the absence of a theoretical underpinning for this keynesian price stickiness this note shows that sticky prices can be both privately efficient and socially inefficient the business cycle results from the suboptimal adjustment of prices in response to a demand shock to the extent that policy can stabilize aggregate demand it can mitigate the social loss due to this suboptimal adjustment in some keynesian models prices are simply exogenously fixed 2 in others agents must set their prices in advance of the transaction date the act of altering a posted price is certainly costly these costs include such items as printing new catalogs and informing salesmen of the new price yet these menu costs are small and therefore generally perceived as providing only a weak foundation for these fixed price models however this inference is flawed small menu costs can cause large welfare losses the claim that price adjustment costs are small does not rebut the claim that they are central to understanding economic fluctuations

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

why are prices sticky the dynamics of wholesale gasoline prices the menu cost interpretation of sticky prices implies that the probability of a price change should depend on the past history of prices and fundamentals only through the gap between the current price and the frictionless price we find that this prediction is broadly consistent with the behavior of nine philadelphia gasoline wholesalers nevertheless we reject the menu cost model as a literal description of these firms behavior arguing instead that price stickiness arises from strategic considerations of how customers and competitors will react to price changes

non binding linked issues referenda analysis and an application non binding referenda petitions are an instrument of direct democracy that allows citizens to signal preferences to politicians outside the electoral cycle this paper provides a simple theoretical and empirical analysis of a particular form of non binding referenda so called linked issues petitions it analyzes the ability of issue linkage to increase participation levels above those of single issue petitions and applies the analytical insights to a controversial referendum held in austria in 2002 that linked issues of transboundary nuclear risk and eastern enlargement of the european union

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