How many voters are needed for paradoxes?

Summary. This paper presents a general procedure for finding profiles with the minimum number of voters required for many important paradoxes. Borda's and Condorcet's classic examples are revisited as well as generalizations. Using Saari's procedure line, we obtain an upper bound for the minimum number of voters needed for a profile for which the Condorcet winner is not strictly top ranked for all weighted positional procedures. Also we give a simple upper bound on the minimum number of voters needed for a set of prescribed voting outcomes. In contrast to situations wherein small numbers of voters are needed, we consider paradoxes requiring arbitrarily large numbers of voters as well as large numbers of alternatives. Finally we indicate connections with statistical rank based tests. Received: April 18, 2001; revised version: May 25, 2001     

Public acceptance of and heterogeneity in behavioral beach trip responses to offshore wind farm development in Catalonia (Spain)

A combined travel cost – contingent behaviour survey of residents and tourists in Catalonia is conducted on-site to examine the effects on beach recreational demand of developing an offshore wind farm (OWF) project. The survey considers four potential OWF scenarios with different degrees of visual impact. We allow for heterogeneity in trip preferences among individuals and control for on-site sampling through the use of a random parameters negative binomial (RPNB) model and a Multivariate Poisson log-normal (MPLN) model, respectively. The welfare measures derived from the RPNB model relate to the current beach users only, whereas those from the MPLN model refer to the general population of residents and tourists in Catalonia. The results show the importance of the specific place of location of the OWF project and how the installation of wind turbines would significantly decrease the demand for trips, depending on their degree of visual impacts, leading to a substantial welfare loss. However, the results also show that the project mainly would cause a displacement of trips to other beaches within Catalonia rather than outside Catalonia and that the welfare per trip measures generated by the RPNB and MPLN models substantially differ. Policy implications of these findings are discussed.     

Analyst following and count-data econometrics

This paper reexamines the determinants of the number of analysts following a firm using econometric models based on count distributions. We replicate Bhushan's (1989) analyst-following study to demonstrate the effects of using count-data econometrics, in lieu of OLS, in studying phenomena where the dependent variable ranges among nonnegative integers. In contrast with the original paper, our findings indicate the number of institutional investors is inversely related with analyst following. We also provide econometric evidence to support the preferred use of the negative binomial model in estimating cross-sectional, analyst-following regressions.     

What makes a die-hard entrepreneur? Beyond the ‘employee or entrepreneur’ dichotomy

The article makes three contributions to the economics literature on entrepreneurship. We offer a new measure of entrepreneurship which accounts for variations in persistence in self-employment and as a result avoids the weakness of approaches which categorise an individual as an entrepreneur by observing their occupation at just one point in their career. We outline an econometric methodology to account for this approach and find, via a statistical test of model selection, that it is superior to probit/logit models, which have dominated the literature. While our results indicate that this existing literature is good at explaining an individual’s propensity to try self-employment, we find that entrepreneurial persistence is determined by a different model and unearth some new insights. Early self-employment encourages entrepreneurial persistence. For men, inheritance encourages persistence, and facilitates initial self-employment. Having a self-employed father as a role model makes sons persist longer. However, somewhat surprisingly, early experience of unemployment does not affect the probability of self-employment, while reducing persistence. The popular ‘unemployment push effect’ is thus rejected in our sample.

不同国籍航班对首都国际机场空气质量影响的研究

[目的]研究不同国籍航班旅客对首都国际机场空气质量的影响,为机场的空气质量监测工作提供科学依据。[方法]采用自然沉降法对2个国际航班所使用的廊桥和行李提取区旅客到达后空气中细菌总数、霉菌总数进行监测,并应用t检验进行比较;挑取可疑菌落培养、鉴定,比较2个国际航班细菌微生物的差异。[结果]2个国际航班使用的廊桥和行李提取区在旅客入境后,细菌总数、霉菌总数结果无显著性差异,但检出的细菌种类有所不同。[结论]首都国际机场不同国籍航班入境旅客给环境带来不同影响,口岸卫生部门应对不同国籍航班的空气质量给予关注,更好地控制疫病疫情的传入。     

Joint estimation using revealed and stated preference data: An application using a national forest

We combine contingent behaviour with travel cost data to estimate the change in the recreational use value of a National Forest due to quality and price changes. Instead of the usual improvement scenario, a hypothetical deterioration in the conditions of the forest due to a fire is considered. A dataset containing five observations for each respondent enabled the estimation of three models for which the number of scenarios differed. The results show that visitors are sensitive to price and quality changes and that in the forest fire scenario the intended number of trips would be reduced and that respondents would experience a welfare loss. Signs of inconsistency between preferences expressed by revealed and intended behaviour were found. This research also provides some indications that strategic bias affects answers to price changes.     

An experimental approach to valuing new differentiated products

An experimental store was created to evaluate initial demand for locally produced and guaranteed tender steak products as a more realistic alternative to contingent valuation (CV) and dichotomous-choice experimental methods. Strengths of the approach are incentive compatibility, a realistic consumption set, and a familiar choice environment. Consumers selected among USDA Choice, premium quality, lean, guaranteed tender and locaily produced strip steaks. A double-hurdle count data model indicated initial willingness-to-pay (WTP) for locally produced steak comparable to prior CV results, but demand was highly elastic. Demand for premium quality steak crowded out demand for the guaranteed tender product, contrasting with prior dichotomous-choice experimental results.     

M5 competition uncertainty: Overdispersion,distributional forecasting,GAMLSS, and beyond

The M5 competition uncertainty track aims for probabilistic forecasting of sales of thousands of Walmart retail goods. We show that the M5 competition data face strong overdispersion and sporadic demand, especially zero demand. We discuss modeling issues concerning adequate probabilistic forecasting of such count data processes. Unfortunately, the majority of popular prediction methods used in the M5 competition (e.g. lightgbm and xgboost GBMs) fail to address the data characteristics, due to the considered objective functions. Distributional forecasting provides a suitable modeling approach to overcome those problems. The GAMLSS framework allows for flexible probabilistic forecasting using low-dimensional distributions. We illustrate how the GAMLSS approach can be applied to M5 competition data by modeling the location and scale parameters of various distributions, e.g. the negative binomial distribution. Finally, we discuss software packages for distributional modeling and their drawbacks, like the R package gamlss with its package extensions, and (deep) distributional forecasting libraries such as TensorFlow Probability.     

The Relationship Between Firm Size and Innovation Activity: A Double Decision Approach†

The main purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationship between firm size and innovation activity using Spanish data at firm level corresponding to the manufacturing sector for the period 1990-93. This exercise is different to previous applications because we allow for different size effects in the decision to innovate and the innovation count equation, in the context of a double-hurdle approach. Several tests confirm the hurdle negbin model. We find that firm size is a relevant factor, although size effects are different in both decisions. A robust result from the different specifications estimated is the rejection of the Gilbert and Newbery hypotheses. We find out that the behaviour of firm size is neither linear in the decision nor in thc count equation. We also provide additional, and sometimes different, evidence to previous Spanish studies on R&D.     

Patents,R&;D and lag effects: evidence from flexible methods for count panel data on manufacturing firms

This paper investigates the relationship between patents and research and development expenditures using new longitudinal patent data at the firm level for the U.S. manufacturing sector from 1982 to 1992. The paper also develops a new class of count panel data models based on series expansion of the distribution of individual effects. Estimation results from various distributed lag and dynamic multiplicative panel count data models show that the contemporaneous relationship between patenting and R&D expenditures continues to be strong, accounting for over 60% of the total R&D elasticity. The lag effects are higher than have previously been found for the 1970s data. We would like to thank Chris Bollinger, Bronwyn Hall and Paula Stephan for useful comments on the previous version of the paper. Earlier versions were presented at the 11th International Conference on Panel Data, Texas A&M University, the Midwest Econometrics Group Meeting, and the Annual Conference of the Southern Economic Association.