Estimating small-area demand of urban tourist for groceries: The case of Greater London

Tourist retail demand within urban areas brings both opportunities and challenges to the local economy. Taking Greater London as the study area, this paper integrates conventional statistics and survey datasets with novel crowdsourcing big data sources to identify and estimate four types of tourist grocery demand at the small-area scale: travellers staying with Airbnb, tourists using traditional commercial accommodation, guests staying with relatives or friends and day trip visitors. Based on this combined tourist retail demand layer we show the spatial variations at the small-area level and as an illustration of the demand uplift, we estimate additional grocery expenditure that is associated with this tourist demand. Thus, the paper indicates the neighbourhoods with significant grocery demand uplift from tourist stays. We argue that the new retail demand layer has tremendous potential to be used as an additional input to retail location modelling tools to support new store revenue estimation and store performance evaluation within the grocery retail sector.     

University population expenditure and its impact on real estate demand: Evidence from South Africa

ABSTRACT

A university campus has an ability to attract consumers from outside the region who spend locally to the benefit of the local economy and in particular the real estate market. This article identifies the real estate benefit to the host city from staff and student spending. The Potchefstroom Campus of the North-West University in South Africa is used as an example and real estate demand modelling is applied to estimate the real estate space demand benefit to the host city. In 2016, the R2.2 billion expenditure by staff and students spilled over into a healthy demand for floor space in the city. A steady increase in on-campus, full-time students and a corresponding increase in staff numbers will continue to benefit the demand for real estate. However, this close relationship between university enrolments and activity in the real estate market could similarly be constrained if spending is under pressure.     

Regime shift,speculation, and stock price

We investigate the impacts of speculation on stock price and return volatility in a framework with regime shifting. We find that greater difference in beliefs about the probability of bad state leads to higher stock prices. The intuition is that in periods of higher dispersion of beliefs, the investors perceive greater speculative opportunities, leading to increased demands and valuations of the stock. When investors agree with each other on the state of dividend growth, they have a stronger incentive to invest in the riskless bond, when becoming more pessimistic about the dividend growth. As a result, the demand and the valuations of stock decrease. Moreover, higher level of heterogeneity in beliefs gives rise to higher volatility of the stock returns, even in the absence of dividend shocks. Furthermore, with homogeneous beliefs, return volatility with respect to investors’ beliefs follows an inverted-U shape.     

Changing food consumption patterns in rural and urban Vietnam: Implications for a future food supply system

Rapid income growth and urbanisation could significantly change the composition of the food basket in many emerging economies. This study estimates a demand system, including 15 major food items in Vietnam, with multiyear household survey data. We find a large variation in the estimated price elasticities (–0.05 to –0.88) and expenditure elasticities (–0.16 to 2.56). Food types, urban status and income groups can explain this variation. We also find that the staple food, rice, is already an inferior good for rich urban households in Vietnam. Moreover, food preferences are evolving away from rice but towards animal proteins (fish, pork, chicken, eggs and milk), fruits and vegetables, irrespective of urban status and income groups. As the Vietnam economy continues to grow with a doubling of gross domestic product (GDP) in the next decade, per capita rice consumption in both urban and rural areas and across different income groups will continue to decline, whereas demand for other high‐value products will rise. Thus, government policy should focus on encouraging demand‐oriented food production. In addition, crop diversification at the farm level needs to improve substantially to meet the rising demand for these food products due to income growth and urbanisation.     

A Model of the Confidence Channel of Fiscal Policy

This article presents a simple macroeconomic model where government spending affects aggregate demand directly and indirectly, through an expectational channel. Prices are fully flexible and the model is static, so intertemporal issues play no role. There are three important elements in the model: (i) fixed adjustment costs for investment, which create an inaction zone; (ii) noisy idiosyncratic information about the aggregate economy; and (iii) imperfect substitution among private goods and goods provided by the government. An increase in government spending raises demand for private goods and may prevent a coordination failure. The optimal level of government expenditure is high when the desired level of investment is low, which we interpret as a time of low economic activity.     

Assessing the role of futures position substitutability in a monthly slaughtered pork factor demand by US processors: a cointegrated VAR model approach

This article combines cointegrated VAR modelling with basic neoclassical production microeconomics in a new way that tests for, and illuminates the empirical nature of, the monthly US pork processing sector’s factor demand for slaughtered pork. Statistical evidence strongly suggests that the US pork processing sector has a Hicksian Cobb–Douglas slaughtered pork demand that arises from applying Shephard’s lemma to the sector’s cost function and that US pork processors treat slaughtered pork and related futures positions as close factor substitutes. In the wake of major and ongoing futures market events and trends, this study establishes and statistically tests a theoretical link between futures price movements and impacts on the underlying slaughtered pork market through monthly formation of US pork processors’ factor demand for slaughtered pork. Evidence suggests that demand agents shift between demands for the two substitutes based on movements in the slaughter/futures price ratio that results in a market-stabilizing cushion against sharp pork price movements such as those observed in the late-1990s. Statistical and diagnostic evidence suggests that our modelled non-experimental data and estimated Hicksian demand that arose from the cointegrated VAR model’s cointegration space met Haavelmo’s setting of passive variables and associated ceteris paribus conditions.     

商业健康险税收优惠政策的效果分析--基于需求价格弹性的测算

本文基于经典商业健康险需求理论的价格弹性模型,分别利用天津市调研数据和中山大学劳动力动态调查数据库测算了按收入分层的商业健康险需求价格弹性及商业健康险的消费结构。并基于上述测算结果,通过数据库对接推算了全国商业健康险的需求价格弹性和税优政策的预期效果。测算结果表明,我国商业健康险的需求价格弹性为-0.22,在当前的税优政策下,个税税改前后,税优健康险的预期年保费规模分别为16.54亿元、6.09亿元,由此带来的年税式支出预计将分别达到2.47亿元、0.69亿元。最后,基于实证分析结果,本文对税优健康险未来的政策调整方向提供了建议。     

轨道交通工程BIM总体咨询服务框架初探

分析BIM总体咨询定义,阐述BIM总体咨询框架,并介绍实施流程,包括需求调研、实施方案设计、标准制定、BIM平台开发与实施、成果审核、软硬件选型、培训、成果总结等,为建设工程提供BIM技术应用投资决策、规划、辅助实施、验收等提供参考。     

Due diligence and the demand for electricity: A cautionary tale

In 1983, the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS) defaulted on tax-free revenue bonds issued to construct two of its five nuclear power plants. In subsequent litigation, the plaintiffs alleged that the bonds had been fraudulently issued because WPPSS and the other defendants should reasonably have known and disclosed that there was substantial uncertainty about the ability to meet the financial obligations created by the bonds. A model using plausible values for demand elasticities, recognized probabilities of events that would increase costs and delay construction and data used by WPPSS to construct demand forecasts for prospective bondholders suggests that such uncertainty was present at the time the bonds were issued. The values for demand elasticities and other parameters of the model were selected after a thorough review of the econometric literature on demand for electricity, beginning with the work of Fisher and Kaysen in 1962.     

基于居民出行特征分析的广州市交通发展对策探讨

居民出行调查是城市交通规划、建设、管理的基础依据,本文通过对比分析广州市1998年万户居民出行调查和1994年居民出行调查的有关数据,总结归纳出广州市城市居民出行的规律、变化特征及其原因,并针对其特点,提出广州市未来交通发展的对策和建议.