Characteristics,consumer surplus,and new activities: A proposed ski area

Physical characteristics of activities and personal characteristics of the individual are incorporated into an expenditure function. This function is used to define the compensating and equivalent variation for changes in the costs or physical characteristics of the existing activities, or for a proposed activity as a function of its proposed characteristics and cost. The model is used to estimate the demand for, and the CVs and EVs associated with, the development of a Colorado ski area. These vary across skiers as a function of skiing ability, value of time, location of residence, and skiing budget.     

Oil characteristics and the U. S. demand for foreign crude by region of origin

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Canadian Economics Association Meetings in Winnipeg, Manitoba, May 1986. We are grateful to Paul Bradley, Ragaei El Mallakh, Phil Graves, and John Livernois for their comments, and to Pierre Allan and Edward Azar for helpful suggestions.     

Valuing a Change in a Fishing Site without Collecting Characteristics Data on All Fishing Sites: A Complete but Minimal Model

Resource economists are often asked to value a proposed change at one, and only one, recreational site; the model we develop and estimate is applicable for those cases. The application is valuing the elimination of fish consumption advisories on a large bay on Lake Michigan. The model is minimal but complete: complete in that the choice set is not restricted, minimal in that only two conditional indirect utility functions are estimated. It is utility-theoretic and one does not have to collect characteristic data on all of the other fishing sites in the region. Data include the number of trips each individual currently takes to Green Bay, answers to "would you prefer to fish Green Bay under conditions A or B?" and how often each angler says they would fish Green Bay under different sets of conditions.     

Mutual fund corporate culture and performance

In this paper we test if a mutual fund's own corporate culture predicts fund performance. To do this we use Morningstar's corporate culture ratings for mutual funds and then examine the ability of these corporate culture ratings to predict risk-adjusted performance of domestic equity funds over the period 2005–2010. Using methods that are robust to survivorship bias, we find there is little significant evidence that corporate culture predicts better fund performance. Indeed, we find that no individual component of the Morningstar stewardship rating including board quality, fees, manager incentives and regulatory issues is able to consistently predict fund performance.     

Regulator flexibility and the administrative allocation licensing of 3G spectrum

Globally, most nations assign radio spectrum to provide 3G mobile services during the period 1999–2007. While there is consensus among most economists that auctions are the preferred assignment mechanism, the assignment mode is split, more or less, equally (in terms of the number of licences issued) between administrative allocations and auctions. With auction procedures tending to raise more revenue for governments (Cartelier, 2003) the question that naturally arises is: why are administrative allocations so popular a method to assign spectrum? McMillan (1995) conjectures that administrative allocations provide additional ‘flexibility’. Accordingly, this study examines the performance of 3G assignments in terms of an econometric analysis of a unique sample of national 3G spectrum administrative allocations. These outcomes are modelled as depending on spectrum package attributes, and post-award network deployment requirements.     

Estimating service level impacts from changes in cycle count, buffer stock, or corrective action

Inventory managers, tasked with providing adequate levels of material support, need to be able to gain insights, in a computationally easy manner, to the magnitude of improvements in protection levels against stockouts that can be gleaned from the three mechanisms available to them—more buffer stock, more physical inventories, or more corrective action to eliminate or reduce the causes for the errors arising in the first place. Armed with quantitative conservative estimates of the types of improvements available from any of these three mechanisms or combinations of the mechanisms, and the relative cost of each, the manager is is a better position to select a cost-effective, remedial course of action.     

Ethnodomination in the channels of distribution of third world nations

Ethnodomination refers to the predominance of a particular ethnic group in a channel of distribution. While ethnodomination has been virtually ignored in the marketing literature, it is a fact of life in many third world marketing systems. Overseas Chinese dominate the trade of rice and pineapples in the Philippines, Hindu Sikhs dominate the trade of cloth in Afghanistan, the Otavalo Indians dominate the trade of handwoven textiles in Ecuador, and so on. International marketers need to be aware of ethnodomination for several reasons. First, ethnic marketers can offer costeffective communication and distribution skills for use in cooperative marketing programs. In return, international marketers can ofter them access to marketing management information systems and alternative sources of finance. Also, ethnic marketers are often subject to political and legal harassment which may make them more risky partners. Finally, they may have cultural practices that are quite different from the cultural practices of the rest of their host country.     

Two Nested Constant-Elasticity-of-Substitution Models of Recreational Participation and Site Choice: An "Alternatives" Model and an "Expenditures" Model

Two demand models of recreational participation and site choice are developed: an alternatives model and an expenditures model. Both assume maximization of utility over the year, so allow for diminishing marginal utility. They do not impose the restrictive assumption that where one goes on a trip is independent of where one plans to go on other occasions. Estimation is with a nested constant-elasticity-of-substitution preference ordering: it is relatively easy to estimate because of global regularity, it allows sites to be complements, and it has the potential to be locally flexible. The application is to Atlantic salmon fishing.     

A Simple Method of Incorporating Income Effects into Logit and Nested-Logit Models: Theory and Application

Substantive income effects are incorporated in a logit or nested-logit model by assuming that utility is a piece-wise linear spline function of residual income. Specific income data are not required, only income by category. Expected compensating variation is easily and accurately approximated by the difference between expected maximum utility in the proposed and initial state, multiplied by the inverse of the individual's initial marginal utility of money. This approximation is almost exact because although any policy can, in theory, cause an individual to jump income categories, for most policies this probability will be very small.     

Spectrum Licensing,Policy Instruments and Market Entry

Competition policy attempts to address the potential for market failure by encouraging competition in service markets. Often, in wireless communication service markets, national regulatory authorities seek to encourage entry via the spectrum assignment process. Instruments used include the assignment mode (auction or beauty contest), setting aside licenses and providing bidding (price and quantity) credits for potential entrants, and making more licenses (spectrum blocks) available than there are incumbent firms (excess licenses). The empirical analysis assesses the effectiveness of these policy instruments on encouraging entry. The econometric results show that the probability of entry is enhanced by using auction assignments and excess licenses. Furthermore, quantity, but not price, concessions encourage entry.