product and price competition in a duopoly this paper examines the role of consumer preferences costs and price competition in determining the competitive product strategy of a firm in the model studied here there are two identical firms competing on product quality and price they face consumers who prefer a higher quality product to a lower quality product but differ in how much they are willing to pay for quality the consumers can also choose a substitute if they don t like the product price offerings of the two firms for the firms a higher quality product costs more to produce than a lower quality product the paper shows that the equilibrium strategy for each firm should be to differentiate its product from its competitor with the firm choosing the higher quality choosing the higher margin as well this differentiation however is not efficient that is it is possible to choose two other products and offer them at prices that cover their marginal cost and still satisfy consumers needs better in the aggregate a monopolist by contrast would differentiate his product line efficiently this suggests that cannibalization has different effects on product strategy than competition the paper also shows that if one firm enters the market first then it can defend itself from later entrants and gain a first mover advantage by preempting the most desirable product position

financial factors and investment in belgium france germany and the united kingdom a comparison using company panel data we construct company panel data sets for manufacturing firms in belgium france germany and the united kingdom covering the period 1978 1989 these data sets are used to estimate empirical investment equations and to investigate the role played by financial factors in each country a robust finding is that cash flow and profits terms appear to be both statistically and quantitatively more significant in the united kingdom than in the three continental european countries this is consistent with the suggestion that financial constraints on investment may be relatively severe in the more market oriented u k financial system

demographic change tourism expenditure and life cycle behaviour abstract the paper explores how demographic changes in human populations may impact on tourism decision making of households over their life cycle by means of hurdle models the study focuses respectively on the decision to travel domestically or abroad and investigates if statistically significant differences exist as to the impact of age and cohort on the decision to travel and tourism expenditure using a vast dataset on italian household expenditures over the period 1997 2007 the empirical results show that demographic aspects do have a strong effect on the tourism behaviour of families and that cohort and age effects act differently on the decision of households to make a trip and on how much they spend on tourism age has a negative effect on the desire to travel but a positive effect on tourism expenditure on the other hand older cohorts are inclined to travel but they have a low propensity to spend on tourism relevant differences in income elasticity along the life cycle of households have also been found finally age and cohort aspects have a different effect on the decision as to whether to travel nationally or internationally

endogenous sequential entry in a spatial model in this paper we simulate a sequential entry of firms in a differentiated industry a la hotelling firms select a product location once for all they are aware of the unique price equilibrium that will take place after entry has occurred and take into account the behaviour of subsequent entrants it is found that early entrants will systematically locate around the centre but in such a way as not to induce later competitors to locate in between them location choices are also investigated as an instrument for entry deterrence which is feasible because of a fixed cost we identify several ranges of fixed cost for which entry is innocently deterred corresponding to a natural monopoly duopoly triopoly entry deterrence is then typically used to stretch the range of fixed cost for which a given number of firms can be sustained deterrence strategies are consistently such that firms locate at more regular intervals

tourists spending and adherence to shopping plans the case of the christmas market in merano italy abstract the present paper investigates the determinants of tourists expenditure by categorizing tourists based on their mental budgets individuals can be divided into three categories based on the difference between their mental budget and actual expenditure underspenders on budget spenders and overspenders estimation of the empirical model is performed based on data collected through a survey of visitors to the christmas market in merano italy during advent in 2011 the estimation is performed with the heckman estimator ordered probit selection rule and linear regression we find that the spending patterns of visitors belonging to the three identified categories differ significantly analyzing visitors expenditure based on the proposed categorization allows us to identify category specific factors and develop management strategies for each category the managerial and theoretical implications of the results are discussed

the long run demand for skilled and unskilled labor in colombian manufacturing plants this note estimates the long run demand for skilled and unskilled labor using panel data for colombian manufacturing plants unobserved heterogeneity and measurement error problems that commonly arise in microdata production estimates are examined output measurement errors cause ols estimators to underestimate the output and wage response of employment demand time difference estimators exaggerate the measurement error biases instrumental variable estimates of the output elasticities are 0 89 and 0 76 and own wage elasticities are 0 42 and 0 65 for skilled and unskilled labor respectively the output elasticity is larger for skilled labor whereas the wage elasticity is larger for unskilled labor in virtually every industry

strategic multi store opening under financial constraint abstract this paper analyzes strategic store openings in a situation in which firms can open multiple stores depending on the financial constraints of the firm specifically given any upper limit of the number of store openings that two potentially symmetric firms can open they sequentially determine the number of store openings including their locations to maximize their profits as a result of our analysis in a microeconomic framework we show that the equilibrium strategy can be wholly classified into only two following opposite strategies according to the level of their financial constraints involved when firms can afford to invest significant amounts of money in the market the leader chooses segmentation strategy in which a part of the market can be monopolized by opening a chain of multiple stores and deterring the follower s entry in contrast when the leader has a severe financial constraint so that it can only monopolize less than half of the market the leader chooses minimum differentiation strategy where firms open each of their stores at exactly the same point as the rival s under this strategy the leader necessarily captures just half of the market furthermore we show that regardless of potential symmetry between firms both first and second mover advantages in terms of profit can occur in the equilibrium

analysis of attendees expenditure patterns to recurring annual events examining the joint effects of repeat attendance and travel distance abstract this study examines the changes in expenditure patterns of attendees to recurring annual events with specific emphasis on the effects of repeat attendance and travel distance this study utilizes a unique dataset accumulated from six consecutive years at a recurring annual event hosted in miami united states by using the almost ideal demand system aids we estimate price elasticities and cross price elasticities among tourist expenditure categories while jointly examining the effects from the trip characteristics of repeat attendance and travel distance from the econometric analysis we find expenditure own price and cross price elasticities that conform to the literature and confirm the strong inter relationship among the respective categories of the overall travel budget in addition our results confirm a significant difference in expenditure patterns between first time and repeat attendees as well as between long haul and short haul travelers

compositional change aggregation and dynamic factor demand estimates on a panel of manufacturing firms most empirical research on investment and dynamic factor demand has used aggregated data the large number of authors who have cited this as a source of problems strongly suggests possible benefits from analyzing individual firm data this paper presents an analysis of a panel dataset of us manufacturing firms several models based on cost minimization and a three factor cobb douglas technology are developed the differences concern whether the technology varies across two digit sic industries the presence of fixed adjustment lags and the determinants of adjustment costs identification relies on the rational expectations hypothesis and estimation on non linear 3sls the estimates indicate that versions with the adjustment lag perform better than others conditional elasticities reveal that factor demand responds rapidly to anticipated changes in output and factor prices a finding consistent with other recent work it appears that the factor demand of large firms is more price sensitive and less sensitive to output than small firms consistent with recent work on credit market imperfections comparison of the results based on the pooled and the industry varying technologies indicate that the use of aggregate data is indeed a source of problems

changes in the u s wage structure 1963 1987 application of quantile regression the 1980 s witnessed rapid changes in the structure of wages in the united states in this study recently developed techniques for quantile regression are applied to every march current population survey since 1964 and changes in the return to schooling and experience at different points of the wage distribution are examined the quantile regression technique parsimoniously describes the entire conditional wage distribution this conditional distribution is used to examine changes in within group wage inequality as measured by the difference between conditional quantiles two linear models are considered a simple one group model and a 16 group model the results suggest that the returns to schooling and experience differ across quantiles of the wage distribution but their patterns of change are similar significant differences in wage inequality are also found across the various skill groups the paper also presents a new imputation method for cps data

does tourism effectively stimulate malaysia s economic growth abstract this study attempts to further verify the validity of the tourism led growth hypothesis in malaysia using a multivariate model derived from the solow growth theory it employs annual data from 1975 to 2011 we find that economic growth tourism and other determinants are cointegrated specifically tourism has a positive impact on malaysia s economic growth both in the short run and in the long run the granger causality test indicates that tourism granger causes economic growth all this provides the empirical support for the tourism led growth hypothesis in malaysia in light of this any policy initiative that promotes tourism could contribute to malaysia s economic growth

sequential product positioning under differential costs this paper examines the product positioning decisions of firms that enter a market sequentially and that have potentially different cost structures it shows that if the first mover knows the second mover to have a lower production cost it positions away from the most attractive location in the market further the larger the second mover s cost advantage the farther away the first mover positions from the most attractive location the paper also models uncertainty in the first mover s mind about the later entrant s cost structure and shows that an increase in this uncertainty in the sense of mean preserving spread also makes the first mover position farther from the most attractive location in the market overall this paper suggests that unless the first entrant in a market is certain that the later entrant will not have a superior cost structure it may be better off leaving the best position in the market vacant and having a niche or fringe product

effects of budgetary constraints on international tourism expenditures abstract this paper implements a logistic transition regression model to examine the relationships between gdp per capita and international tourism expenditures across countries in 2001 2010 by types of savings regimes while studies have focused on the effect of income on international tourism expenditures none consider the nonlinear smooth transition status of savings and its impacts on discretionary spending and hence expenditure on tourism the impact of income on tourism expenditures can vary under different savings regimes the results show that in a low savings regime the effect of an increase in the gdp per capita on international tourism expenditures is more pronounced in a high savings regime there is strong motivation for precautionary savings and tourism is considered a luxury therefore such spending is crowded out by an increase in savings as gdp per capita increases although international tourism expenditures also increase with gdp per capita they do so at a slower rate these findings establish an accurate understanding of the effects of savings on international tourism expenditures

the impact of geopolitical risks on travel and leisure stocks abstract the impact of geopolitical risks on tourism has not received scholarly attention in the existing literature previous studies focus on the effects of terrorism which is a subset of geopolitical risks our paper fills this gap and contributes to the literature by analyzing the vulnerability of four regional travel and leisure t l industry stock indices to geopolitical risks employing traditional and quantile regression techniques our results suggest a greater sensitivity of t l stock returns to geopolitical risks at times the industry performs poor except for asia pacific index that is the most resilient to geopolitical events we find that the negative effects of geopolitical risks are mostly driven by the threat of adverse geopolitical events only during period of falling t l stock prices however the realization of adverse geopolitical events significantly influences t l stocks at all times the results provide potential insights and implications for investors and tourism stakeholders

tourism demand modelling and forecasting a review of recent research abstract this paper reviews the published studies on tourism demand modelling and forecasting since 2000 one of the key findings of this review is that the methods used in analysing and forecasting the demand for tourism have been more diverse than those identified by other review articles in addition to the most popular time series and econometric models a number of new techniques have emerged in the literature however as far as the forecasting accuracy is concerned the study shows that there is no single model that consistently outperforms other models in all situations furthermore this study identifies some new research directions which include improving the forecasting accuracy through forecast combination integrating both qualitative and quantitative forecasting approaches tourism cycles and seasonality analysis events impact assessment and risk forecasting

deconstructing the pioneer s advantage examining vintage effects and consumer valuations of quality and variety several studies have demonstrated an order of entry effect on market share suggesting that pioneers outperform later entrants however other research has pointed out the limitations of these studies and found evidence that many pioneers fail or have low market share given this background the purpose of this research is to understand the conditions under which pioneers are more likely and also less likely to have an advantage we propose a game theoretic model that includes important sources of pioneer advantages as well as disadvantages specifically we incorporate a pioneer advantage due to preemption in markets with heterogeneous tastes in addition we incorporate a potential pioneer disadvantage due to technology vintage effects where later entrants utilizing improved technology can have lower costs and higher quality the model allows us to evaluate the extent of vintage effects necessary to overcome a pioneer s advantage key relationships are found between the magnitude of the pioneer advantage or disadvantage and consumer valuations of product attributes e g variety and quality we empirically validate the model with vintage effect data in 36 product categories and measures of consumer valuations of product variety and quality for 12 of these 36 categories the results show that pioneers do better in product categories wherevariety is more important and worse in categories where productquality is more important pioneers in categories with high vintage effects are shown to have lower market shares and higher failure rates similar results appear when analyzing persistence of market leadership over time further validating our model s major implications we also present two case studies that illustrate key elements of the model

labor adjustment costs in a destination country the case of mexico abstract rodrik rodrik d 1997 has globalization gone too far institute for international economics washington dc argues that firms use the threat of moving to low cost generally developing markets to make employment more flexible at home although a large literature documents significant adjustment costs in developed countries we know little about their size and importance in developing countries that receive capital we employ monthly mexican data from the gatt nafta period to estimate adjustment costs in mexico we consider adjustment costs for production and non production workers and allow for asymmetry while patterns of adjustment costs are similar as in developed countries adjustment costs in mexico are generally an order of magnitude smaller

tourism development and economic growth a closer look at panels abstract this paper applies the new heterogeneous panel cointegration technique to re investigate the long run comovements and causal relationships between tourism development and economic growth for oecd and nonoecd countries including those in asia latin america and sub sahara africa for the 1990 2002 period on the global scale after allowing for the heterogeneous country effect a cointegrated relationship between gdp and tourism development is substantiated it is also determined that tourism development has a greater impact on gdp in nonoecd countries than in oecd countries and when the variable is tourism receipts the greatest impact is in sub sahara african countries additionally the real effective exchange rate has significant effects on economic growth finally in the long run the panel causality test shows unidirectional causality relationships from tourism development to economic growth in oecd countries bidirectional relationships in nonoecd countries but only weak relationships in asia our empirical findings have major policy implications

asymmetric equilibria in spatial competition abstract the main purpose of this paper is to study the impact of consumer concentration around the market center on the equilibrium locations of location price games in the case of symmetric triangular density it is shown that no symmetric equilibrium exists however we demonstrate the existence of asymmetric equilibria in pure strategies these equilibria are also characterized our secondary purpose is to study the sequential entry of two firms when the location space is not restricted to the market space this leads us to uncover a substantial first mover advantage which has been neglected in the literature

note competitive price and positioning strategies brand positioning and brand pricing are important strategic decisions for marketing managers such decisions are interrelated and depend upon competitive brand positions and prices however any unilateral decisions may encourage repositioning and price adjustment by competitors thus leading to either new market equilibria or a price positioning war this paper examines such price and positioning decisions in a competitive environment by extending the defender consumer model to more complex equilibria we assume that the brands are already in the market and that positions are sticky in the sense that brands cannot leapfrog one another among the insights for such incumbent brands are if prices are symmetric and held constant firms seek to reposition toward the center of the market but price advantages by central firms can mediate that central tendency such that an equilibrium exists with positive profits if brand positions are held constant the nash equilibria for prices exist and are unique and category profits the sum of brand profits are maximized for maximum brand differentiation for two and three brand markets the subgame perfect nash equilibrium where positioning decisions are made with foresight on the price equilibria causes firms to unilaterally seek maximum brand differentiation but for four or more brands greater foresight and or cooperation appears necessary to reach the point of maximum brand differentiation these results apply where the defender consumer model is an exact description of consumer response and where the competitive reaction assumptions hold in any empirical situation such forces might be softened resulting in differentiated but not maximally differentiated brands

comparing productivity growth an exploration of french and u s industrial and firm data this paper compares and analyzes the growth of productivity in the manufacturing industries and firms in france and the u s based on newly assembled comparable data sets in both countries three explanations of the recent productivity slowdown are reviewed shortfall in physical investment rise in materials prices and a decline in the intensity or fecundity of r d investment and found not to bear on the differences in productivity growth between and within the two countries either at the industry or the firm levels this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

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

the electoral politics of extreme policies a government may adopt extreme policies policies lying outside the interval between the ideal points of the political parties for electoral purposes it can benefit when a change in policy is costly and when the opposing party cannot commit to maintaining the status quo

the own wage elasticity of labor demand a meta regression analysis firms labor demand responses to wage changes are of key interest in empirical research and policy analysis however despite extensive research estimates of labor demand elasticities remain subject to considerable heterogeneity in this paper we conduct a comprehensive meta regression analysis to re assess the empirical literature on labor demand elasticities building on 942 elasticity estimates from 105 different studies we identify sources of variation in the absolute value of this elasticity heterogeneity due to the theoretical and empirical specification of the labor demand model different datasets used or sectors and countries considered explains more than 80 of the variation in the estimates we further find substantial evidence for the presence of publication selection bias as estimates of the own wage elasticity of labor demand are upwardly inflated

oil prices tourism income and economic growth a structural var approach for european mediterranean countries abstract in this study a structural var model is employed to investigate the relationship among oil price shocks tourism variables and economic indicators in four european mediterranean countries in contrast with the current tourism literature we distinguish between three oil price shocks namely supply side aggregate demand and oil specific demand shocks overall our results indicate that oil specific demand shocks contemporaneously affect inflation and the tourism sector equity index whereas these shocks do not seem to have any lagged effects by contrast aggregate demand oil price shocks exercise a lagged effect either directly or indirectly to tourism generated income and economic growth the paper does not provide any evidence that supply side shocks trigger any responses from the remaining variables results are important for tourism agents and policy makers should they need to create hedging strategies against future oil price movements or plan for economic policy developments

domestic tourism expenditures the non linear effects of length of stay and travel party size the independent variables length of stay and travel party size are recurrent determinants of expenditures in micro level tourism studies in most of this research it has been tacitly assumed that these variables have linear effects on tourism spending this study situated in a norwegian setting questions this approach by explicitly scrutinizing the possible non linearities in the relationships between tourism expenditures on the one hand and length of stay and travel party size on the other the empirical results suggest a positive but diminishing relationship between length of stay and tourism expenditures and a convex i e u relationship between travel party size and tourism expenditures the study also considers how a number of other key independent variables affect tourism expenditures finally some managerial and scholarly implications are discussed

product positioning and competition the role of location in the fast food industry this paper examines optimal product positioning strategies of asymmetric firms in the context of retail outlet locations in the fast food industry the relationships between profits and product differentiation reveal that both mcdonald s and burger king are better off avoiding close competition if the market area is large enough however in small market areas mcdonald s would prefer to be located together with burger king rather than have the two outlets be only a slight distance apart in contrast burger king s profits always increase with greater differentiation offsetting these incentives is the desirability of locating centrally to appeal to the most customers the equilibrium depends on the market s size in small markets mcdonald s locates near the center of the market and burger king locates to the side of the market in larger markets mcdonald s and burger king choose locations on opposite sides of the market although mcdonald s locates closer to the optimal central location than burger king i also show that the role of price competition on product positioning is fundamentally different under asymmetric competition than under symmetric competition price competition unambiguously induces symmetric firms toward differentiation in contrast with asymmetric firms price competition shifts burger king s incentives toward locating closer to mcdonald s even while price competition increases mcdonald s desire for differentiation as a result equilibrium locations with asymmetric firms are approximately the same regardless of whether prices adjust with location

an analysis of consumption behaviour of foreign tourists in ireland the objective of this article is to analyse the consumption behaviour of foreign tourists in ireland based on the almost ideal demand system five demand systems are estimated four representing the major source markets of tourists to ireland namely from britain north america mainland europe and rest of the world and one aggregate model based on a pooled sample each system included six commodity aggregates representing the major consumables of tourists estimated models were statistically significant and the derived elasticities are theoretically consistent and empirically plausible while there are some variations in the consumption patterns of tourists from different source markets reflecting differences in consumer preferences and consumption habits in general tourist demand for the various irish tourism goods and services is found to be price inelastic this finding is consistent with a priori expectations as tourists are obliged to consume whatever is available at the destination they visit

economics of tourist s consumption behaviour some evidence from australia abstract this study analyses the consumption behaviour of international tourists from australia s four major source markets new zealand uk usa and japan a preliminary analysis of their consumption expenditures reveals intriguing similarities as well as diversities in consumption patterns these are sought to understand in terms of the utility maximising framework in which observed differences in prices and incomes play a key role based on the neoclassical economic theory of consumer behaviour models incorporating five major components of tourist consumption accommodation food transport shopping and entertainment are estimated overall the level of tourist consumption is found to be highly sensitive to incomes but less sensitive to prices the low price sensitivity suggests tourists perceive the commodities as necessities and may also reflect their captivity at the destination masking the underlying true price sensitivities an important dimension underlying these findings is the possible lack of information about the destination leading to sub optimal consumption choices

the changing distribution of male wages in the uk this paper uses microeconomic data from the u k family expenditure surveys fes and the general household surveys ghs to describe and explain changes in the distribution of male wages since the late 1970s wage inequality has risen very fast in the u k and this rise is characterized both by increasing education and age differentials we show that a large part of the changes in the u k can be summarized quite simply as increases in eduction differentials and a decline of growth of entry level wages which persist subsequently this fact we interpret as cohort effects we also show that like in the u s an important aspect of rising wage inequality is increased within group wage dispersion finally we use the ghs to evaluate the role of alternative education measures

the dynamics of changes in the female wage distribution in the usa a quantile regression approach this paper examines the female wage structure focusing on changes at different points in the wage distribution newly developed quantile regression methods are used in analysing data from the march current population survey the results show that while the most significant changes for the less skilled women took place at the bottom of the wage distribution for the more skilled groups changes occurred at both ends of the distribution consequently wage inequality decreased for the high school graduates and increased for the younger college graduates furthermore the more highly skilled women experienced the steepest gain in wages regardless of their position in the distribution 1998 john wiley sons ltd

a note on price and quality competition between asymmetric firms abstract this paper analyzes the impact of asymmetry between firms on the outcome of price and quality competition from a microeconomic viewpoint consumers purchase a product based on not only its price but also its quality level therefore two firms compete in determining their prices and quality levels to maximize their profits the asymmetry arises from the difference in consumers loyalty to each firm that asymmetry then determines a character of differentiation between firms our purpose is to show how asymmetry influences competition under varying consumers price and quality sensitivity in doing so we extend earlier work in the area of price and quality competition we show that in both the moderately quality sensitive and price sensitive markets higher consumers sensitivity as well as lower consumers loyalty to any firm leads to intense competition resulting in a decrease of both firms equilibrium profits on the other hand in highly quality sensitive market asymmetry compels the smaller firm to change its competitive strategy in general this is more beneficial to the larger firm as the smaller firm s profit tends to decline in the worst case the smaller firm is driven out of business under equilibrium

a comparison study of travel expenditure and consumption choices between first time and repeat visitors abstract this study examines the differences in expenditures and consumers product consumption choices between first time and repeat visitors we applied the data collected from the 2009 annual survey report on visitor expenditure and trends in taiwan to estimate visitors demand of five major travel products accommodation food transportation entertainment and shopping the almost ideal demand system analysis results suggested the consumption of most products followed the law of demand the resulting income elasticity also indicated these products were normal goods in addition we found that previous travel experience does not generate significant differences in preference and consumption patterns

strategic it investments the impact of switching cost and declining it cost the declining cost of information technology it over time provides the later entrant in information intensive industries a cost advantage on the other hand the earlier entrant has the potential to build and retain its market share if consumers incur a cost in switching to the later entrant we investigate the impact of a decline in the it cost and the switching cost on it investment strategies of firms we find that a declining it cost always hurts the early entrant s profit the early entrant may assume an aggressive investment strategy or a defensive investment strategy in response to a decline in the it cost depending on whether the switching cost relative to the extent of decline in the it cost is high or low respectively a decline in it cost also hurts the later entrant s profit if the switching cost is high a surprising result is that when the decline in the it cost is higher than a critical value a higher switching cost increases consumer surplus when firms control the switching cost the early entrant increases its investment in quality and switching cost and maintains its quality and its market share leadership irrespective of the extent of decline in the it cost

the perils of behavior based personalization behavior based personalization has gained popularity in recent years whereby businesses offer personalized products based on consumers purchase histories this paper highlights two perils of behavior based personalization in competitive markets first although purchase histories reveal consumer preferences competitive exploitation of such information damages differentiation similar to the classic finding that behavior based price discrimination intensifies price competition with endogenous product design there is yet a second peril it emerges when forward looking firms try to avoid the first peril by suppressing the information value of purchase histories ideally if a market leader serves all consumers on day 1 purchase histories contain no information about consumer preferences however knowing that their rivals are willing to accommodate a market leader firms are more likely to offer a mainstream design at day 1 which jeopardizes differentiation based on this understanding i investigate how the perils of behavior based personalization change under alternative market conditions such as firms better knowledge about their own customers consumer loyalty and inertia consumer self selection and the need for classic designs

micro economic determinants of tourist expenditure a quantile regression approach abstract we assess the effect of the main determinants of tourist expenditure by applying both linear and quantile regression models to individual micro data collected by a survey addressed to non resident tourists who spent their holidays in sardinia during the period april october 2012 we find that in addition to income and foreign nationality tourist expenditure is crucially driven by trip related party size stay length accommodation sea and sun typology and transport modality and psychographic characteristics repeated visits and holiday motivations moreover our results indicate that the effects vary with respect to the expenditure component and the level of spending thus confirming the high complexity of the tourism product higher positive effects were found for heavy spenders in the case of foreign nationality previous visits and notoriety motivated holidays while party size and the number of visited sites contribute to reducing the level of expenditure for light spending tourists

investment behaviour of dutch industrial firms a panel data study abstract this study describes a putty clay model of investment for a monopolistic firm in which factor price movements also affect expected output the specifications are tested on a set of panel data for individual dutch industrial firms factor prices are significant and expected output effects of factor prices dominate substitution effects in investment demand corrections are made for attrition and for measurement errors correction for attrition does not make an important difference but correction for measurement errors does

competitive positioning in markets with nonuniform preferences we investigate the nature of competitive equilibrium for brands competing in a multi attribute product space when consumer preferences for product attributes follow nonuniform distributions we establish subgame perfect equilibria in a two stage game where firms choose positions in the first stage and prices in the second stage two types of entry scenarios are investigated in the first the number of brands is given exogenously and all of them choose positions simultaneously in the second scenario firms enter in sequence and the early entrants can choose strategies to deter the entry of later entrants we find the equilibria for two three and four brands for consumer preferences that follow a beta distribution nonuniform distributions result in equilibrium configurations that are substantially different from those obtained for uniform consumer distributions in the two brands case for sufficiently concentrated distributions we find asymmetric position equilibria with one firm at the corner of the market and one firm at an interior position in the case of three brands for sufficiently concentrated preferences we find symmetric equilibria that do not yield maximal differentiation we also establish an equilibrium for the case of four competing brands in addition we characterize entry deterring positioning strategies and examine how they vary with the distribution of consumer preferences

product positioning under price competition this paper presents a consumer based methodology for new product pricing and positioning in the face of price competition the price competition is modelled as a nash equilibrium for which two complementary approaches are employed an analytical approach of duopoly provides qualitative insights into the competitive behavior and a numerical approach of general oligopoly provides quantitative solutions under a wide variety of market scenarios the optimal product positioning is formulated as a stackelberg nash leader followers equilibrium which can be solved numerically using recent advances in the field of variational inequalities a small example concerning analgesics is used to illustrate this methodology

labor and investment demand at the firm level a comparison of french german and u s manufacturing 1970 79 we investigate how labor and investment demand at the firm level gross as well as net and replacement investment separately differs in french german and u s manufacturing and has changed since the 1974 75 crisis we use three consistent panel data samples of large firms for 1970 79 and rely on simple models of the accelerator profits type we find that the accelarator effects and the profits effects did not vary much between 1970 73 and 1976 79 and were quite comparable in the three countries the former being of a more permanent nature and the latter more transitory to a large extent these effects account for the important changes and differences in labor and investment demand between the two subperiods and across the three countries

forecasting international city tourism demand for paris accuracy of uni and multivariate models employing monthly data abstract the purpose of this study is to compare the predictive accuracy of various uni and multivariate models in forecasting international city tourism demand for paris from its five most important foreign source markets germany italy japan uk and us in order to achieve this seven different forecast models are applied ec adlm classical and bayesian var tvp arma and ets as well as the naive 1 model serving as a benchmark the accuracy of the forecast models is evaluated in terms of the rmse and the mae the results indicate that for the us and uk source markets univariate models of arma 1 1 and ets are more accurate but that multivariate models are better predictors for the german and italian source markets in particular bayesian var for the japanese source market the results vary according to the forecast horizon overall the naive 1 benchmark is significantly outperformed across nearly all source markets and forecast horizons

vacation length choice a dynamic mixed multinomial logit model abstract this paper uses panel data to develop and estimate a dynamic model of choice of the length of stay of a vacation controlling for unobserved heterogeneity and state dependency length of stay options vary from short 1 3 nights medium 4 9 nights to long vacations 10 nights or more and the decision not to go on vacation in a particular year independent variables include family lifecycle stage income month and lags of the dependent variable results indicate that long holidays are most strongly affected by trips made previously in the same year than medium and short vacations in contrast there is an increased need for a vacation when any medium or long trips were not yet made in the current year month specific variables confirm that respondents have preferences for making leisure trips during the main holidays and warm seasons the observed differences given the various lifecycle stages reflect imposed constraints given age and or household composition that are typical of each particular group

pricing patterns as outcomes of product positions prior empirical work shows that different markets are characterized by different pricing patterns such as bertrand nash pricing or stackelberg leader follower pricing the author considers a duopolistic market where ex ante identical firms sequentially position their products prior to competing on prices in a single or multiperiod setting and show that the unique equilibrium outcome involves 1 firms choosing stackelberg pricing over bertrand nash pricing and 2 the positioning first mover acting as the price leader an attractive property of this model is that the ex post larger firm acts as the price leader which is consistent with prior empirical evidence copyright 1999 by university of chicago press

perceptual position and competitive brand strategy in a two dimensional two brand market brand positioning and competitive reaction are important determinants of optimal brand strategy analyses of brand strategy have focused on optimal pricing and positioning issues using either empirical models of perceptions and preferences game theory to examine competition or both however the important issues of advertising and distribution strategy have not been fully addressed this paper analyzes competition and strategy between two brands that compete in a two dimensional market with advertising and distribution spending in addition to prices and product positions in particular for a unimodal taste distribution of ideal points we show how optimal competitive nash equilibrium marketing mix levels and profits depend on the positions of both brands brands can reposition to increase profit and under what conditions these strategies imply minimum versus maximum differentiation positioning equilibria and how the intensity of advertising and distribution competition affect equilibrium brand positions

stock market and investment the signaling role of the market the author examines the role of the stock market as a signal to managers in undertaking capital expenditures he concludes that while both managerial and market perceptions are integral managerial perception is of greater importance the evidence suggeststhat as a statistic the q ratio is not sufficient to explain firms capital expenditure decisions thus the standard q model of investment should be modified to provide a more meaningful description of a firm s capital spending decisions overall the results suggest that stock market activity has only limited implications for the economy s resource allocation process evidence for the q theory of investment confirms previous findings in the literature that the model s poor empirical perfomance was partly the result of using aggregate data for the whole economy also since market perception plays only a limited role in determining capital expenditures shareholder myopia is unlikely to result in managerial myopia the implications for developing countries are while the stock market may not be central to a firm s capital spending decisions it is not a sideshow either the market plays an important signaling role for managers this is a powerful rationale for financial reform and capital development in developing countries the results also suggest that complaints that stock market activity leads to misallocation of resources may be exaggerated

caviar conditional autoregressive value at risk by regression quantiles value at risk var has become the standard measure of market risk employed by financial institutions for both internal and regulatory purposes var is defined as the value that a portfolio will lose with a given probability over a certain time horizon usually one or ten days despite its conceptual simplicity its measurement is a very challenging statistical problem and none of the methodologies developed so far give satisfactory solutions interpreting the var as the quantile of future portfolio values conditional on current information we propose a new approach to quantile estimation which does not require any of the extreme assumptions invoked by existing methodologies such as normality or i i d returns the conditional autoregressive value at risk or caviar model moves the focus of attention from the distribution of returns directly to the behavior of the quantile we specify the evolution of the quantile over time using a special type of autoregressive process and use the regression quantile framework introduced by koenker and bassett to determine the unknown parameters since the objective function is not differentiable we use a differential evolutionary genetic algorithm for the numerical optimization utilizing the criterion that each period the probability of exceeding the var must be independent of all the past information we introduce a new test of model adequacy the dynamic quantile test applications to simulated and real data provide empirical support to this methodology and illustrate the ability of these algorithms to adapt to new risk environments