price premium for high efficiency refrigerators and calculation of price elasticities for close substitutes a methodology using hedonic pricing and demand systems this article uses the hedonic pricing method to estimate the price premium paid for the highest energy efficiency label a in the refrigerators market of the basque autonomous community spain the estimated figure is 8 9 of the final price or about 60 euro which represents one third of the energy savings that a consumer gets during the lifetime of a refrigerator with the highest energy efficiency label this figure is then combined with the linear version of the almost ideal demand system la aids to obtain own and cross price elasticities of demand the information presented here is useful for policy design and analysis the results indicate that the demand for refrigerators with the highest energy efficiency label is highly sensitive to price variations

an almost ideal demand system for housing attributes in recent articles mendelsohn 16 and palmquist 20 use restricted versions of rosen s 22 model of household behavior to consistently estimate demand functions for attributes of a differentiated product rosen s 22 model is of a single market for such a product and he proposes a two step technique to estimate attribute demand functions first a single hedonic price function is estimated for the differentiated product attribute prices are the first derivatives of the fitted hedonic price function with respect to the relevant attributes second demand functions for attributes are estimated using the prices imputed in the first step if the hedonic price function estimated in the first step is linear then there is no price variation for attributes and demand functions cannot be estimated if the hedonic price function is nonlinear then there is price variation but it is endogenous to households since in a single market price and attribute quantity are chosen jointly 2 indeed within market price variation will always be endogenous in either case without sufficient restriction on the model the parameters of the demand functions for attributes cannot be consistently estimated using rosen s 22 method 3 mendelsohn 16 and palmquist 20 assume that there are many markets for the differentiated product and that households with like preferences may be observed in the different markets by this restriction households face price variation across markets that is exogenous whether hedonic price functions are linear or nonlinear if so demand functions can be consistently estimated 4

demand for housing attributes in developing countries a study of pakistan the paper has applied a conventional framework of analysis of implicit markets to determine the characteristics of demand for housing attributes of quantity and quality in the urban areas of a larg

product assortment in a triopolgy producers of super premium ice cream such as haagen dazs offer a smaller assortment of flavors than the producers of lesser quality ice cream examples of this phenomenon can be found in other industries as well in many industries the producers of higher quality products offer a smaller assortment of flavors colors sizes patterns textures fragrances tones styles models designs types or other options this paper explores when and why producers of super premium products should find it profitable to offer a smaller assortment than the producers of nonpremium products we derive a nash equilibrium both on prices and product assortments for a triopoly at the nash equilibrium we show that additional product quality increased consumer price sensitivity and greater assortment costs discourages product assortment we also show that a larger market potential greater competitive costs and sharper competition encourage more assortment by the super premium producer

estimating the demand for the characteristics of housing a hstract estimates of the demand for the characteristics contained in a differentiated product such as housing can be based on hedonic regressions however previous studies have not dealt with several potential problems in such estimation a more appropriate framework for the estimation is provided in this paper also data from a number of cities are used to eliminate the identification problem and the endogeneity of the marginal prices derived from non linear hedonic equations is considered in the estimation the results on own and cross price elasticities expenditure elasticities and the effects of socio economic vafiables accord well with expectations

elasticities in aids models in the literature a variety of approaches have been used to calculate demand elasticities in almost ideal demand system aids models of demand it is common to estimate the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids instead of the aids when the la aids is estimated all of the previously reported approaches to compute elasticities are theoretically incorrect this paper presents correct formulas for la aids elasticities and illustrates the potential errors from using incorrect computing the almost ideal demand system aids of deaton and muellbauer 1980a b has become popular in recent years anderson and blundell blanciforti and green 1983a b blanciforti green and king chalfant eales and unnevehr fujii khaled and mak fulponi heien and willett murray parsons ray a variety of approaches to computing elasticities has been used and some of the approaches may lead to significant errors this paper clarifies the differences between alternative approaches to estimating demand elasticities in aids models

do real estate brokers add value when listing services are unbundled i introduction real estate brokers typically provide sellers with bundles of services most of which are ostensibly aimed at improving the terms at which homes are sold and helping homeowners find buyers more quickly 1 traditionally access to the multiple listing service mls a pooled database of homes for sale that is owned and operated by an association of local real estate brokers has been an important component of that bundle other components of the traditional brokerage bundle that potentially affect the terms and timing of a sale include market information and recommendations pertaining to the appropriate asking price 2 promotional services preparing a home for sale circulating flyers placing advertisements holding open houses and recommending the home to individual buyers the screening of prospective buyers the facilitation and acceleration of matches between buyers and sellers 3 and assistance with negotiations 4 the object of this paper is to measure the effects of real estate brokerage services provided to sellers other than mls listings on the terms and timing of home sales it is not obvious that sellers benefit from those services on the one hand brokers offer potentially useful knowledge and expertise on the other hand because the relationship between the homeowner and the broker resembles a classical principal agent problem the broker may not deploy services in ways that promote the seller s interests while appropriately structured compensation schemes may alleviate the principal agent problem to some degree see e g the recent survey by miceli pancak and sirmans 2007 significant conflicts remain as levitt and syverson 2008 emphasize an agent has strong incentives to sell the house quickly even at a substantially lower price their empirical analysis shows that homes owned by agents sell for nearly 4 more and stay on the market roughly 9 days longer than other comparable houses similarly rutherford springer and yavas 2005 find that real estate agents receive a premium of 3 0 7 0 when selling their own condominiums in comparison to similar client owned condominiums by waiting longer to sell 5 while those studies shed light on the magnitude of agency costs i e the extent to which the deployment of brokerage services departs from the first best they do not tell us how those costs compare to the benefits flowing from a broker s knowledge and expertise consequently they do not answer the question posed at the outset of this paragraph the importance of the question addressed in this paper is most readily apparent within the context of the recent policy debate over service bundling in real estate brokerage as long as valuable mls listings are bundled with brokerage services homeowners may use brokers even if the agency costs exceed the benefits of brokers knowledge and expertise in that case unbundling would benefit homeowners and promote efficiency in practice a small but growing number of brokers now offer to place clients homes in the mls for a fixed fee 6 yet in many jurisdictions established brokers have resisted pressures to unbundle mls listings from other services in some cases they have pressed for minimum service laws that prevent agents from offering mls only options as of 2007 eight states had such laws in place 7 some states have also adopted licensing requirements that impede the entry of non traditional real estate brokers where such laws are not in force some mlss have adopted their own rules and procedures to prevent or at least discourage unbundling 8 though the internet increasingly provides alternatives to mls databases at least in some jurisdictions the u s federal trade commission observed as recently as november 2009 that t he mls is generally acknowledged to be a superior platform for matching home buyers and sellers 9 thus the practice of bundling mls listings with other real estate brokerage services handicaps homeowners who wish to sell their homes either completely independently for sale by owner or fsbo transactions or without the ancillary services of a listing broker

gibrat s law for cities growth regressions and sample size this paper uses un truncated city population data from six countries the united states spain italy france england and japan to illustrate how parametric growth regressions can lead to biased results when testing for gibrat s law in city size distributions the ols results show non monotonic behaviours depending on the sample size moreover it is possible to find a critical sample size from which we reject gibrat s law

towards sustainable consumption economic modelling of mobility and heating for austria abstract the paper focuses on economic modelling and empirical analysis of sustainable structures in private consumption and strives to extend conventional economic consumption models the model analysis of sustainable consumption in the areas heating and transport for austria attempts to depart from traditional measurement of consumption in national accounts and economic consumption models the focus of the analysis is laid on consumer services derived from a combination of stocks e g building stock transport systems and flows mainly energy this approach intends to illustrate that a concentration on flows in consumption models lacks important aspects of sustainable consumption the economic analysis of sustainable consumption patterns aims to highlight the effects related to the substitution of flows by stocks in the consumption areas transport and heating e g improvements in thermal quality of buildings more energy efficient transport systems relevant too in this respect is the role that can be played by technological innovation improvements in energy efficiency of stocks the potential for specific incentives to promote new technologies two essential factors are crucial in the context of sustainable consumption the demand shifts concerning the consumer services desired and the composition of the stock flow mix necessary for the service provision

hedonic prices demands for urban housing amenities and benefit estimates abstract this paper uses a rosen two step hedonic price trait demand approach to estimate demand functions for a vector of urban amenities to ascertain whether this theoretically preferred approach yields benefit estimates which differ from the oft used ridker henning one step hedonic approach we conduct a sensitivity analysis we find that the two step approach does yield different benefit estimates and that the differences are large for some amenities the estimates are sensitive to the functional form of the hedonic equation when the forms are significantly different according to modified box cox results but are not particularly sensitive to specification of the amenity demand equation

estimating the structural equations of implicit markets and household production functions whenever marginal prices are nonconstant as in most hedonic and household production function markets ordinary least squares estimates of the price elasticities of structural equations will be biased a two stage least squares estimation procedure is developed and applied to estimate hedonic and potentially household production function demand functions when price gradients are nonlinear

valuing air quality with hedonic and discrete choice models environmental economists have been using property values in attempts to measure the value residents place on air quality as far back as the 1960s however in the years since then we have learned a great deal about how complex valuing nonmarginal changes in air quality is rosen presented a hedonic model that is still extremely influential today but the estimation strategy he outlined in that paper had some shortcomings many of these identification and endogeneity issues were corrected subsequently in papers such as palmquist 1984 parsons and bartik but none of these papers concentrated on environmental issues a central issue in estimating the demand or marginal willingness to pay functions for characteristics of housing is the identification of those behavioral functions as distinct from

simultaneity in the market for housing characteristics abstract the nature of simultaneity in the markets for housing characteristics is examined simultaneity is found to arise in the implicit markets for individual characteristics because of the presence of nonlinearity in the market hedonic price function for housing however this simultaneity is not the kind discussed by s rosen j political econ 82 34 55 1974 between firm supplies and household demands as a result the rosen suggestion of identifying demand with firm supply shifters is inappropriate among the alternative approaches to identification the most desirable involve use of data over two or more markets in which residence for a given household is exogenous to the choice of housing

the demand for residence site characteristics the analysis of residential site choice is the primary concern in urban economics research on this problem is deficient in that rigorous theoretical models concentrate almost exclusively on access to the central business district cbd in this decision process while empirical models have been specified in a manner that is inconsistent with standard demand theory although these models possess the power of simplicity they are unable to explain the non monotonic location patterns which characterize urban areas without resorting to ad hoc theorizing this article develops and tests a model which is consistent with demand theory and is also capable of explaining non monotonic location patterns the hedonic rent function is seen as an intermediate step in the analysis of location which allows one to construct the complete data matrix necessary for the estimation of a set of demand functions for location specific traits the analytical importance of the functional form of this hedonic function is briefly noted finally the empirical analysis notes the importance of children in determining residential preferences with special attention being directed to the endogeneity of children with respect to the process of residential choice the traditional location model is generally tested by regressing some transformation of the annual rental payments or alternatively property value r on access or lack of access to the city center acc a vector of other locational traits z income i and a race variable mc

price and income elasticities of demand for housing characteristics in the city of barcelona garcia j and raya j m price and income elasticities of demand for housing characteristics in the city of barcelona regional studies this paper estimates price and income elasticities of demand for housing characteristics using the information of properties appraised in the city of barcelona 1998 2001 it employs a two stage approach estimating hedonic price equations for different districts in order to estimate subsequently the corresponding demand equations the results allow an analysis to be made of the complementarity or substitutability relationships among the characteristics analysed and also to catalogue these characteristics as goods by knowing the price cross and income elasticities of housing characteristics policy recommendations can be made about the type of housing units that are the most desirable to be subsidized garcia j et raya j m les elasticites par rapport au prix et au revenu de la demande de caracteristiques particulieres du logement a barcelone regional studies a p

hedonic prices and implicit markets estimating demand and supply functions for differentiated products in choosing the level of quality to purchase the buyer of a differentiated product also chooses a point on the marginal price schedule for that product hence in general the demand functions for product characteristics cannot be consistently estimated by ordinary least squares market equilibrium results in a matching of characteristics of demanders and suppliers this matching restricts the use of buyer and seller characteristics as instruments when estimating demand and supply functions for product characteristics the paper develops these issues a stochastic structure for hedonic equilibrium models is then proposed identification results are presented and estimation procedures are outlined

estimating the demand for protecting freshwater lakes from eutrophication in any discussion of the valuation of public goods particularly environmental amenities contingent valuation travel cost and hedonics are commonly cited as methods for estimating hicksian or marshallian welfare freeman while contingent valuation and travel cost are widely employed we know of very few applications where hedonic demand functions have been estimated palmquist 1984 and parsons estimated second stage hedonic demands for characteristics of housing units both used the approach of estimating separate hedonic price functions for different real estate markets to identify demand parameters for housing characteristics the research reported here is the first to use separate real estate markets to identify demand parameters for an environmental amenity the specific application is water clarity in selected lakes in maine reduced water

willingness to pay and price elasticities of demand for energy efficient appliances combining the hedonic approach and demand systems abstract this article proposes a combined approach for estimating willingness to pay for the attributes represented by energy efficiency labels and providing reliable price elasticities of demand own and cross for close substitutes e g those with low energy efficiency and those with higher energy efficiency this is done by using the results of the hedonic approach together with the quantity based demand system qbds model the elasticity results obtained with the latter are then compared with those simulated using the linear almost ideal demand system la aids the methodology is applied to the dishwasher market in spain it is found that 15 6 of the final price is actually paid for the energy efficiency attribute this accounts for about 80 of the average market price the elasticity results confirm that energy efficient appliances are more price elastic than regular ones