Price and RevPAR determinants of Airbnb listings: Convergent and divergent evidence

This paper explores the performance determinants of Airbnb listings, analyzing three research questions. First, the study investigates the different effects generated by the antecedents on price and revenue; second, it ranks different groups of variables; third, it distinguishes between private rooms and entire homes or apartments. These research questions are addressed by analyzing Airbnb listings in Milan, a business city where the sharing economy is growing fast. In particular, the study will use the monthly data of all Airbnb listings in Milan recorded by AirDNA during the period from November 2014 to June 2019, which consists of 323,184 total observations. Some hedonic price models are calculated, adding the Shapley value approach. Empirical findings show some important differences between price and revenue determinants. Furthermore, listing type and size, along with location and seasonality, are by far the most important factors that explain performance differentials among Airbnb properties.     

Asset indexes and the measurement of poverty,inequality and welfare in Southeast Asia

Using data on household consumer durables from the Asian Barometer Survey, this paper examines the evolution of inequality, poverty and welfare in six countries of South East Asia: Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. We start by deriving the most common order of acquisition of these durables, using first an algorithm proposed by Paroush (1965), and then Item Response Theory. We also compute the frequency distribution of the number of durables owned by households. We then use these results to compute inequality, poverty and achievement or welfare indices adapted to the case of ordinal variables.Our empirical results confirm the existence of an order of acquisition. The results show that inequality was higher in Cambodia, Indonesia and the Philippines and lower in Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia. A similar classification of countries was obtained when computing multidimensional poverty indices.Finally, using the welfare or achievement index recently introduced by Apouey et al. (2019), we found that welfare was generally higher in Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia and lower in Cambodia, Indonesia and the Philippines.     

A Framework for the Simultaneous Measurement of Spatial Variation and Temporal Movement in Prices in a Heterogeneous Country: The Dynamic Household Regional Product Dummy Model

This paper contributes to the growing literature on spatial prices in large heterogeneous countries. While the literatures on spatial variation and temporal movement in prices have grown in parallel, this study marks a departure by providing a unified treatment and proposing a comprehensive framework that allows both approaches. The proposed model is based on twin extensions of the household version of the “country product dummy model” by allowing for a dynamic stochastic specification and interdependence of spatial prices of geographically adjacent regions. Tests of temporal stability and regional independence of the estimated spatial prices are proposed and applied in this paper. The paper shows that the introduction of an autoregressive error process of order one, AR(1), improves the efficiency of the estimates of parameters, urban‐rural and temporal price indices under certain conditions. The Indian application points to a rich potential for using the proposed framework in cross country comparisons such as the International Comparison Program (ICP) exercises.     

Price connectedness between green bond and financial markets

We study price connectedness between the green bond and financial markets using a structural vector autoregressive (VAR) model that captures direct and indirect transmission of financial shocks across markets. Using heteroskedasticity to identify the structural VAR model parameters, our empirical findings reveal that the green bond market is closely linked to the fixed-income and currency markets, receiving sizeable price spillovers from those markets and transmitting negligible reverse effects. We also show that, in contrast, the green bond market is weakly tied to the stock, energy and high-yield corporate bond markets. These findings have implications in terms of portfolio and risk management decisions for environmentally aware investors holding positions in green bonds.     

Impact of the 2014 Suspension Agreement on sugar between the United States and Mexico

In December 2014, the U.S. and Mexico agreed to a suspension agreement that set a $22.25/cwt import price floor on U.S. sugar imports from Mexico. A partial equilibrium trade model was developed to estimate the economic impact the agreement would have had if it had been in effect from 2008 to 2014. In years when the price floor would have been binding, on average, U.S. producers would have gained $138 million and Mexican producers would have lost $218 million. However, total Mexican welfare would have actually increased by $11.5 million. Furthermore, the average price floor that would have maximized total Mexican welfare over that period is $22.76/cwt. Also, under certain supply and demand elasticity conditions, the average price floor that would have maximized joint U.S. and Mexican producer welfare over that period is $21.91/cwt. The latter two estimates are both close to the actual price floor agreed to in the 2014 Suspension Agreement.     

Understanding heterogeneity in price changes and firm responses to a national unhealthy food tax in Mexico

To address the high prevalence of overweight and obesity in Mexico, an eight percent ad valorem excise tax on non-essential energy-dense foods came into effect on 1 January 2014. This paper estimates price changes after the tax implementation among the top four food categories and by leading vs. non-leading firms using purchase information from over 6000 urban households in the 2012–2015 Nielsen Mexico Consumer Panel. We create product-city-month specific prices that correct for potential biases associated with household and retailer characteristics. Using these corrected prices, we conduct before and after quasi-experimental analyses and find that price increases were larger than eight percent for cookies but were less than eight percent for ready-to-eat cereals, salty snacks, and pre-packaged sweet bread. For the latter food group, event-study analyses on the gradual price change over time suggest that price changes might be the result of an increasing price trend rather than the tax implementation. Firm-level analyses mostly show that price increases by the leading firms were larger than the overall increase at the food market level, helping explain variability in post-tax declines in food purchases as reported in other research. We also find that price changes are generally underestimated when we do not correct prices for biases associated with households and retailers. These results improve our understanding of the mechanisms behind heterogeneous changes in purchases after the tax implementation. Additionally, these results can assist policymakers when designing or improving taxes on non-essential energy-dense foods at a time when these policy options are high on the agenda in many places.     

The side effects of quantitative easing: Evidence from the UK bond market

We examine the returns to UK government bonds before, during and between the phases of quantitative easing to identify the side effects for the market itself. We show that the onset of QE led to a sustained reduction in the costs of trading and removed some return regularities. However, controlling for a wide range of market activity, including issuance and QE announcements, we find evidence that investors could have earned excess returns after costs by trading in response to the purchase auction calendar. Drawing on economic theory, we explore the implications of these findings for both the efficiency of the market and the costs of government debt management in both the short and long run.     

Short-term overreaction to specific events: Evidence from an emerging market

This paper investigates the short-term overreaction to specific events and whether stock prices are predictable in the Egyptian stock exchange (EGX). We find evidence of the short-term overreaction in the EGX. Losers (“bad news” portfolios) significantly outperform winners (“good news” portfolios) and investors can earn abnormal return by selling the winners and buying losers. Terrorist attacks have negative and significant abnormal returns for three days post event followed by price reversals on day four post event. Whereas, the tensions in the Middle East region have a negative and significant abnormal returns on event day followed by price reversals on day one post event. Moreover, the formation of a new government has no effect on the average abnormal returns post event in the EGX. The results also show that small firms tend to have greater price reversals compared to large firms. Overall, our results provide evidence of the leakage of information in the EGX.     

On pure-strategy Nash equilibria in price–quantity games

This paper examines the existence and characteristics of pure-strategy Nash equilibria in oligopoly models in which firms simultaneously set prices and quantities. Existence of a pure-strategy equilibrium is proved for a class of price–quantity games. If the demand function is continuous, then the equilibrium outcome is similar to that of a price-only model. With discontinuous demand and limited spillover, there are rationing equilibria in which combined production falls short of market demand. Moreover, there might again be an equilibrium reflecting the outcome of a price game. Competition in price and quantity thus yields Bertrand outcomes under a variety of market conditions.     

The effect of specific discount pattern in terms of price promotions on perceived price attractiveness and purchase intention: An experimental research

This study aims to investigate consumer perceptions and reactions in terms of specific discount patterns (fixed price, 40% discount, discount from 500 TL to 300 TL and 20% + 25% discount) in price promotion. According to the results, specific discount patterns in price promotion have a significant effect on perceived price attractiveness and purchase intention. When the specific discount patterns in price promotion and gender interaction were analyzed in terms of perceived price attractiveness, the scenario of the “discount from TL 500 to TL 300” significantly differentiated from both the control scenario (fixed price) and experimental scenarios for female. For males, no significant difference was found between the control and experimental scenarios. In terms of purchase intention, a significant difference was found between the fixed price scenario and the discount scenario from 500 TL to 300 TL and between the fixed price and 20% + 25% discount scenario. The theoretical managerial implications of the study were discussed, and future research suggestions were presented.