Bitcoin price and its marginal cost of production: support for a fundamental value

This study back-tests a marginal cost of production model proposed to value the digital currency Bitcoin. Results from both conventional regression and vector autoregression (VAR) models show that the marginal cost of production plays an important role in explaining Bitcoin prices, challenging recent allegations that Bitcoins are essentially worthless. Even with markets pricing Bitcoin in the thousands of dollars each, the valuation model seems robust. The data show that a price bubble that began in the Fall of 2017 resolved itself in early 2018, converging with the marginal cost model. This suggests that while bubbles may appear in the Bitcoin market, prices will tend to this bound and not collapse to zero.     

Bundling attractions for rural tourism development

Tourism is often regarded as a viable solution to economic crisis, especially for remote areas without many development options. While many tourism destinations have strong cultural or heritage assets, not all destinations have primary attractions that can bring visitors to the region. Rather than developing special interest “themes”, rural areas that do not have enough of any one type of tourism resource to act as a primary draw may consider bundling different attraction types to increase visitation. The purpose of this study is to investigate the preferences of visitors to secondary heritage sites and explore the relationship between heritage tourism and alternative, non-heritage activities in rural areas. Findings revealed that motivation to visit small-scale heritage sites consisted of two dimensions: learning and recreation. The two motivational dimensions influenced visitors’ interest in different heritage attractions and likelihood of visiting heritage tourism “scenarios”. As for alternative activities, there was a cluster of “popular” activities that were enjoyed by both learning-oriented and recreation-oriented respondents, but recreation-oriented visitors were more interested in nature-based activities and sport-related activities than learning-oriented visitors. Findings can help rural communities improve secondary attractions and diversify their tourism product by bundling heritage attractions with non-heritage activities.     

Pace of work and piece rates

Using cross-industry survey data, I examine how the determinants of the pace of work affect the probability of using piece rates. Internal determinants raise the likelihood of piece rates, while response to external needs lowers the probability.     

Labour productivity and rice production in Bangladesh: a stochastic frontier approach

During the NCAA basketball tournaments from 2002 to 2005, men's games produced 27% more upsets than women's games. To test whether these unpredictable results were due to gender differences, we conduct logit analysis to explain upsets by gender and other potentially significant variables, including differences in competing teams’: (i) RPI scores, (ii) percentage of freshmen, (iii) percentage of seniors, (iv) top scorer's total points and, (v) top three scorers’ total points. These analyses suggest that gender plays a significant role in explaining predictability.