Estimation and validation of hybrid choice models to identify the role of perception in the choice to cycle

Cycling is one of the most sustainable and ecofriendly modes of travel and a good form of exercise. Many government and public health authorities recommend cycling to stay fit as well as to reduce air and noise pollution, CO₂ emissions, traffic congestion, and other negative consequences of car use. In light of these benefits, a major challenge for researchers today is how to promote cycling. However, in countries where cycling is not common, apart from the need for proper cycling facilities, one major issue concerns people’s perception of cycling for sport or recreational activities rather than as a mode of transport. The aim of this paper is to explore the role of perception in the likelihood of the bike being used for utilitarian purposes. We focus on the perception of: the bicycle as a means of transport; bikeability (in terms of usefulness and safety) and of bike infrastructure. Hybrid Choice Models (HCMs) have been used to estimate the effect of people’s perception on the propensity to bike. The HCM also accounts for the serial correlation between error terms in the discrete and latent perceptions, to allow for agent-common unknown factors. Furthermore, we also validate the model results using a hold-out sample and discuss some policy measures aimed at changing travel behavior. The results suggest that, besides individual characteristics, latent aspects related to the perception of the context and of the bicycle as a means of transport strongly affect the propensity to cycle.     

Informative Externalities and Pricing in Regulated Multiproduct Industries

This paper addresses the issue of how to organise a two-product industry with interdependent demands when the regulator cannot observe the demand level of the goods produced. Two industry structures are compared: a multiproduct monopoly, in which an informed firm produces both goods, and a differentiated duopoly, where two firms control one good each but the level of demand is known by one firm only. Focusing on the informative costs of regulation, the paper shows that, if goods are substitutes, the regulator may achieve a better performance through integration of production. With complements, instead, decentralisation tends to be preferred.     

Connections and performance in bankers’ turnover

In this paper we study the impact of the connections of the top executives (Presidents, CEOs and General Managers) of Italian banks on their turnover and on bank performance. We measure managers’ connections by the kilometer distance between the province of the bank's headquarter and the manager's province of birth. We show that top managers tend to be local in the sense that the distribution of this distance is heavily skewed towards zero. On the basis of this evidence we investigate whether connections affect the duration of the appointment at the bank, and whether connections entrench managers at the expense of the bank's performance. We find that connections generally decrease the probability of bank manager’s turnover, and that the positive effect of performance on tenure is strongly attenuated once connections are taken into account. Furthermore we find that for any bank type performance does not increase with connections. On the contrary, we show that having connected managers hurts performance in Mutual, Cooperative and Rural banks. Overall these findings suggest that connections are collusion devices to share and maintain rents at the expenses of bank performance.     

Public debt indexation and denomination with an independent central bank

This paper examines the interaction between public debt management and the design of monetary institutions. The analysis shows that delegation of monetary policy to an independent central bank is more effective in containing inflationary expectations than the use of foreign currency or inflation-indexed debt. If delegation of monetary policy is viable, the optimal policy is to issue nominal debt. This increases the sensitivity of taxes and output to unexpected inflation, thus minimizing the inflation needed to offset supply shocks. Evidence on central bank independence, debt composition and output variability suggests that the normative argument has some positive content.     

Big data in smart tourism: challenges,issues and opportunities

In the era of digital transformation, Big Data have assumed a crucial role in changing the global travel and providing significant challenges and opportunities for established companies, as well as new entrants into the tourism industry. All these companies can get valuable information on Big Data for predicting tourist demand, enabling better decision-making, managing knowledge flows and interaction with customers, and providing the best service in a more efficient and effective way. This can result in improved productivity, increased customer satisfaction, personalized marketing campaigns, and more efficient operations. However, open research issues about the role of Big Data in the tourism industry can be still recognized. With these premises, this Editorial aims to present the articles included in the special issue of Current Issues in Tourism titled ‘Big data in smart tourism: challenges, issues and opportunities’, which has called for research contributing to the recent debates on the implications and challenges of the adoption of Big Data to improve the competitiveness of tourism destinations and companies. Main topics considered by the accepted articles include a literature review proposing a novel theoretical investigative frameworks, metrics and critical dimensions, and empirical investigations of the use of Big Data in different tourism contexts.     

The on-the-run liquidity phenomenon

We test the implications of a model of multi-asset speculative trading in which liquidity differentials between on-the-run and off-the-run U.S. Treasury bonds ensue from endowment shocks in the presence of two realistic market frictions—information heterogeneity and imperfect competition among informed traders—and a public signal. Our evidence suggests that (i) off/on-the-run liquidity differentials are economically and statistically significant, even after controlling for several of the bonds’ intrinsic characteristics (such as duration, convexity, repo rates, or term premiums), and (ii) off/on-the-run liquidity differentials are smaller immediately following bond auction dates, and larger when the uncertainty surrounding the ensuing auction allocations is high, when the dispersion of beliefs across informed traders is high, and when macroeconomic announcements are noisy, consistent with our model.     

Informed and Strategic Order Flow in the Bond Markets

We study the role played by private and public information inthe process of price formation in the U.S. Treasury bond market.To guide our analysis, we develop a parsimonious model of speculativetrading in the presence of two realistic market frictions—informationheterogeneity and imperfect competition among informed traders—anda public signal. We test its equilibrium implications by analyzingthe response of two-year, five-year, and ten-year U.S. bondyields to order flow and real-time U.S. macroeconomic news.We find strong evidence of informational effects in the U.S.Treasury bond market: unanticipated order flow has a significantand permanent impact on daily bond yield changes during bothannouncement and nonannouncement days. Our analysis furthershows that, consistent with our stylized model, the contemporaneouscorrelation between order flow and yield changes is higher whenthe dispersion of beliefs among market participants is highand public announcements are noisy.     

Queues, not just mediocrity: Inefficiency in decentralized markets with vertical differentiation

We analyze a dynamic, decentralized market with endogenous entry, where in each period the active sellers supply one unit of an indivisible service at varying degrees of quality. The customers that have entered the market are randomly matched with the active sellers and prices are set by (complete information) pair-wise bargaining. In its unique steady state, the market leads to an excess diversity of quality and customers may have to suffer costly delays. Notably, efficiency is not regained as per period delay costs disappear. We also show that setting minimal quality standards, such as licensing rules by a professional college, will improve welfare (and even Consumer Surplus), relative to the free market, whenever the inefficiency is caused by a large enough excess supply.