A dynamic hazard-based system of equations of vehicle ownership with endogenous long-term decision factors incorporating group decision making

The transportation system affects all aspects of our daily lives including relatively long-term decisions on work and home location choice and automobile ownership decisions. The interdependency existing among these three decisions jointly influences household mobility and overall travel patterns. Therefore, a dynamic modeling framework that can account for the effects of interdependencies between vehicle transaction behavior and residential and job location choices is highly desirable. These decisions are made in the household level while individuals’ decisions influence the overall outcome; therefore, it is also important to incorporate a group decision making process within such modeling frameworks.This study introduces a dynamic model for vehicle ownership, residential mobility, and employment relocation timing decisions. These decisions are modeled at the individual level and then sequentially aggregated to the household level if it is required. A hazard-based system of equations is formulated and applied in which work location and residential location changes are included as endogenous variables in the vehicle transaction model while other important factors such as land-use and built environment variables, household dynamics, and individuals’ socio-demographics are also considered.     

Conditional Properties of Hedge Funds: Evidence from Daily Returns*

Using daily returns on a set of hedge fund indices, we study (i) the properties of the indices' conditional density functions and (ii) the presence of asymmetries in conditional correlations between hedge fund indices and other investments and between hedge fund indices themselves. We use the SNP approach to obtain estimates of conditional densities of hedge fund returns and then proceed to examine their properties. In general, a nonparametric GARCH(1,1) model appears to provide the best fit for all strategies. We find that the conditional third and fourth moments are significantly affected by changes in the current volatility of returns on hedge fund indices. We examine changes in the conditional probability of tail events and report significant changes in the probability of extreme events when the conditioning information changes. These results have important implications for models of hedge fund risk that rely on probability of tail events. We formally test for the presence of asymmetries in conditional correlations to determine if there is contagion between hedge funds and other investments and between various hedge fund indices in extreme down markets versus extreme up markets. We generally do not find strong evidence in support of asymmetric correlations.     

“Big Man” politics in the social economy: a case study of microfinance in Kingston,Jamaica

Microfinance and its “reinvention as bankers-for-the-poor” to create financial inclusion has not been effective everywhere. The literature seems to suggest that the social economy and microfinance help marginalized business people; yet no one considers that political bias interferes with the social economy, making it hard for it to be just. The promise of micro-credit was to achieve a double bottom line: first, the financial sustainability of the lending institution itself, and second, the social benefit of providing loans to low-income business people. Yet, alternative pitches of a social economy to “help people” fail to analyze the embedded power dynamics within the social economy. In this case study in downtown Kingston, Jamaica, 233 small-business people who depend on development finance because of social exclusion now find that these targeted programs are intertwined in partisan, sometimes dangerous, politics. As a result, oppressed people opt out of micro-banking programs to resist “Big Man” politics – the politicians or gangsters attempting to control them. In this study of 307 interviews, I analyze the informal politics of Dons and politicians who misuse micro-credit for their own ends. I find that the coupling of class biases and clientelist practices in the social economy discourages eligible business people from taking micro-loans, and argue that the microfinance industry needs to pay close attention to this issue if it is to continue to help marginalized business people.     

Money Pools in the Americas: The African Diaspora’s Legacy in the Social Economy

Money pools are ancient African traditions that speak to the functionality of getting things done by a historically oppressed group of people. The analysis for this study is based on 583 interviews in five Caribbean countries: Haiti, Grenada, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana. African traditions of collectives reveal that Black people have long had money pools that focused on helping people thrive in commerce, including during the hard times of slavery and colonization. This research argues that throughout the Caribbean indigenous banking systems—with localized names such as susu, partner, meeting-turn, box-hand and sol—are long-standing ancient traditions that historically and currently are taking a bold stand against exclusionary financial systems. African-Caribbean people have an important legacy on the social economy through money pools. The ways in which persons of African descent organize in the social economy is vital to unravelling the market fundamentalist view that there is only a singular way to do business in society.     

Impact of airport green atmospherics on mental health value,image, and loyalty among visitors and workers

Nature‐based solutions (NBS) are becoming increasingly crucial as NBS brings diverse health‐related benefits to travelers and workers in the tourism business sector. This research explored the influence of green atmospherics as NBS on airport occupants' mental health value, image, and loyalty generation processes. A quantitative approach with a field survey method was employed. A structural equation modeling and metric invariance test were used as data analysis technique. Our empirical result revealed that green atmospherics as NBS significantly improve the occupants' mental health value and image of the airport, and these variables contribute to their loyalty enhancement for the airport. The effect of green spaces and natural surroundings on loyalty was maximized through mental health value and image. In addition, the linkages from natural surroundings to mental health value and image were stronger in the visitor group whereas the mental health value—loyalty relation was stronger in the worker group.     

A hybrid clustering and classification approach for predicting crash injury severity on rural roads

As a threat for transportation system, traffic crashes have a wide range of social consequences for governments. Traffic crashes are increasing in developing countries and Iran as a developing country is not immune from this risk. There are several researches in the literature to predict traffic crash severity based on artificial neural networks (ANNs), support vector machines and decision trees. This paper attempts to investigate the crash injury severity of rural roads by using a hybrid clustering and classification approach to compare the performance of classification algorithms before and after applying the clustering. In this paper, a novel rule-based genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed to predict crash injury severity, which is evaluated by performance criteria in comparison with classification algorithms like ANN. The results obtained from analysis of 13,673 crashes (5600 property damage, 778 fatal crashes, 4690 slight injuries and 2605 severe injuries) on rural roads in Tehran Province of Iran during 2011–2013 revealed that the proposed GA method outperforms other classification algorithms based on classification metrics like precision (86%), recall (88%) and accuracy (87%). Moreover, the proposed GA method has the highest level of interpretation, is easy to understand and provides feedback to analysts.     

Space matters: the importance of amenity in planning metropolitan growth

Most Australian capital cities require many 100,000s of additional dwellings to accommodate demographic change and population pressures in the next two or three decades. Urban growth will come in the form of infill, consolidation and urban expansion. Plans to redevelop environmental amenities such as parks and open green spaces are regularly being put forward to local councils and State governments. Maintaining parks and reserves represents one of the largest costs to local councils. To aid in the evaluation of some of the different propositions, we report the results of a spatial hedonic pricing model with fixed effects for Adelaide, South Australia. The results indicate that the private benefits of a close proximity to golf courses, green space sporting facilities, or the coast, are in the order $0.54, $1.58, and $4.99 per metre closer (when evaluated at the median respectively). The historic Adelaide Parklands add $1.55 to a property’s value for each additional metre closer. We demonstrate how the estimated model could be used to calculate how local private benefits capitalized in property values change with changes in the configuration of a park.     

The Survey of Heterogeneity on Organic Products Consumers’ Preferences Using Mixed Logit and Latent Class Models

Abstract

Today, the importance of consumption of organic products has become more evident to the consumer due to the great benefits of these products. The aim of this study is to investigate the factors affecting the preferences of organic tea consumers in Tehran by considering the heterogeneity of consumer’s preferences. For this purpose, mixed logit and latent class model were used. The required information were collected through field surveys by completing a questionnaire from 405 respondents from Tehran citizens in 2016. Results from estimating mixed logit and latent class models confirm the heterogeneity of preferences between consumers. Different levels of income, education, age, history of poisoning and awareness of organic products were identified as heterogeneous factors. The results of the estimation models showed the maximum willingness-to-pay is related to the attribute of the disease and long-term effects. According to the findings of the study, it is suggested to help increase people's awareness of the characteristics of organic products and the use of targeted-oriented strategies to encourage consumers to consume organic products.     

Economic and sociopolitical determinants of exchange controls

The objective of this study is to explore the feasibility of identifying factors that could presage the imposition of exchange controls. Two sets of variables are argued to contain pertinent information regarding the imposition of controls. One set is composed of 14 economic ratios related to the balance of payments and exchange rate; the other set is made up of 17 proxy measures of sociopolitical instability. The empirical analysis of exchange controls imposed by 13 governments during 1973–1983 shows that these variables have potential for predicting the imposition of exchange controls.