Fairness of prices,user fee policy and willingness to pay among visitors to a national forest

Imposing user fees in Nature-Based Tourism (NBT) contexts has been a controversial issue. Based on the notions of justice and fairness, this study extended previous work examining the relationship between attitudes toward user fees and spending support. In a proposed structural model of price fairness, fee spending support, and willingness to pay (WTP), this paper identified the antecedents of WTP user fees, and empirically examined to what extent the data fit the model. Furthermore, the moderating role of place attachment in the model was investigated by using multiple-group structural equation modeling. Subjects (n = 562) were recreational tourists to a forest area in the southeast U.S. Results revealed that spending support partially played a mediating role in the relationship between perceived price fairness and WTP user fees. A multiple-group invariance test also demonstrated that while the degree of place identity moderated the effect of price fairness on spending support, the degree of place dependence did not influence the relationships among the antecedents of WTP.     

Foreign debt supply in an imperfect international capital market: Theory and evidence

We investigate the determinants of foreign borrowing costs in a stochastically growing economy. We find that these increase with the debt-wealth ratio, depending also upon the volatilities of domestic and foreign origin, and the length of debt contract. In addition, the sensitivity of the short-term debt supply to the debt-wealth ratio exceeds that of long-term debt, and the effects of volatility on the borrowing premium, growth of wealth, and its volatility, depend on the relative size of a direct effect and a secondary portfolio-adjustment effect of the initial shock, as well as the length of the debt contract. Panel regressions suggest that the empirical evidence generally support the theoretical predictions.     

Uncovered Interest Parity: Cross‐Sectional Evidence

Uncovered interest parity (UIP) is estimated for short‐term horizons from one month to 12 months using a large number of cross‐sectional bilateral exchange rates. In contrast to conventional time‐series UIP, cross‐sectional UIP is examined with a single‐equation estimation and panel regression model estimation. The exchange rates analyzed here include a broad spectrum of countries: developed, developing, low‐inflation, and high‐inflation countries. Based on the empirical evidence, there does not appear to be a well‐publicized UIP puzzle for cross‐sectional UIP, and the slope estimates remain largely between zero and one throughout the sample periods, with a few exceptions. Evidence of UIP is more clear for low inflation countries than for high inflation countries. As interest rate maturity becomes longer from one month to 12 months, the UIP relationship becomes weaker.     

Markets, Culture and Institutions: The Emergence of Large Business Groups in Taiwan, 1950s–1970s

Business groups are a special type of enterprise system existing in almost every market economy. Member firms do not operate as isolated units in the markets but have institutionalized relationships with each other and work coherently as an entity. Groups play a central role in economies in which they operate. For Taiwan, the largest 100 groups produced one third of the GNP in the past 20 years. Why does this organizational form exist in the first place? This paper reviews three relevant theories, market‐centred theories, culturalist perspective, and the institutional approach, and employs the data of 150 Taiwanese groups for the answer. The market‐centred theories and the institutional arguments are examined statistically and the latter is supported by the data. Following this evidence, the Boolean comparison of group firms with non‐group firms confirms that lacking a coherent core in ownership and management makes firms unable to respond to institutional incentives promptly. Finally, the structure of family ownership network in business groups refutes the cultural perspective which argues that the equal inheritance pattern of family property drives entrepreneurs to establish separate firms rather than single hierarchies. While both markets and culture play a distinct part in the story, it is regulatory institutions that lead to group formation.     

Informational Cascade in the Insurance Market

We develop an informational cascade model based on Bikhchandani, Hirshleifer, and Welch (1992) with applications to the insurance market. We investigate the existence of cascades and the effects of public information on cascades. We apply the results to insurance markets to explain how catastrophic events may lead to demand increases, how loss shocks may lead to insurance cycles, and how the heterogeneity of policyholders affects the choice of limited tort auto insurance in Pennsylvania.     

Soviet Household Saving Function

In this paper, the Soviet household saving function is estimated using reconstructed data from the unpublished archival material: the Soviet family budget survey data. In addition, a shortage indicator is developed to capture both household purchasing power in comparison with the availability of consumer goods in the official market and the spillover of the household demand for consumer goods from the official retail market to the secondary one. A long-run solution of the Soviet household saving function, which includes a shortage indicator as one of the independent variables, is estimated using these data. The reliability of the long-run solution is confirmed by the short-run dynamics of the Soviet household saving function, which satisfy super-exogeneity, parameter constancy, and several diagnostic tests. The highly significant coefficient of the shortage indicator suggests that Soviet household saving behaviour was affected by shortages of consumer goods during 1965–1989. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Culture and consumption expenditure patterns: comparison between Korean and United States households

Abstract The purpose of this study was to identify household consumption expenditure patterns in the US and to determine if these patterns are different from those of Korean households. Data were cluster analysed, and the results revealed four different consumption expenditure patterns for US and Korean households. Logit analysis showed that consumption expenditure patterns of households in both countries are likely to vary depending on socioeconomic factors. Similarities and differences in consumption expenditure patterns between cultures are discussed, and implications are provided.     

Bivariate mixed normal GARCH models and out-of-sample hedge performances

This study compares bivariate mixed normal GARCH models with standard bivariate GARCH models in terms of the percentage variance reduction of the out-of-sample hedged portfolio and also statistical significance tests of performance improvements using Superior Predictive Ability statistics. All competing models are applied to corn and wheat futures and empirical results demonstrate that the standard BEKK-GARCH model significantly outperforms the other competing GARCH models at shorter horizons. However, as the hedge horizon is extended to longer than 10 days, it is evident that the mixed normal BEKK-GARCH model is the best at the usual significance level of 5%.     

A Conjoint/Logit Analysis of Consumers’ Responses to Genetically Modified Tofu in Taiwan

We use data collected from a consumer survey of face‐to‐face interviews to determine consumer demand for genetically modified (GM) tofu attributes in Taiwan. Conjoint analysis using logit models reveals that, on average, brand is the most important attribute in terms of influence on consumers’ preferences, followed by price, with GM content having the least influence. However, the analysis also reveals three distinct market segments for tofu. Apart from the largest segment (which reflects the average lack of concern about GM food), the remaining two segments are split according to their preference or antipathy towards GM tofu. This result suggests that GM labelling is helpful to Taiwanese tofu consumers.