Consumption, Housing Rents and Housing Price: A Test Of A Real Estate Pricing Model Using Hong Kong Data

The present study investigates whether Hong Kong's volatile real estate market is consistent with a non–linear consumption–based–asset–pricing model. It finds that the asset–pricing model is not rejected for some types of properties. However, the differentials between the returns to residential properties and risk–free rate are too large to be explained by the model.     

Understanding Equity in the Recreation User Fee Context

Equity is a major public concern related to recreation fees on public lands. The purpose of this study was to test a three-dimensional model of equity and to examine the perceptions of equity across demographic segments. Data were collected by a telephone survey with residents (N = 366) of two western states. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the three-dimensional equity model in a recreation fee context. People tended to support democratic equity more than compensatory equity. Greater support was shown for discounted fees for the elderly and persons with disabilities than for discounts for ethnic minorities, low income people, or large families, suggesting the possibility of two sub-dimensions of the compensatory equity construct. Overall, the results do not support that disadvantaged groups seek discounted fees.     

When leisure turns to fear: fear,mobility, and ethno-sectarianism in Belfast

There has been a considerable amount of academic discussion of the type of constraints that influence the non-use of leisure facilities. These analyses have taken into consideration such factors as gender, social class, age and mobility. At least some of these include the fear of entering certain spaces as an additional constraint. This paper reveals that in Belfast, fear, which may be based either on personal experience or on imaginary scenarios that result from rumour and innuendo, is a major factor that deters people from using accessible leisure facilities. The paper contains extensive qualitative material that underlines this point. The authors argue that, despite an ongoing peace process, the sectarianization of place has a massive impact on the use of leisure facilities and recommend that fear should be more often taken into account when constraints on leisure participation are discussed.     

Northern Ireland: the politics of leisure in a divided society

The public provision of leisure services and the impact which this has on the community has become a political issue. Nowhere is this more the case than in Northern Ireland where economic and social problems, together with the Troubles, led to a massive increase in central government's sponsorship of public leisure provision in the 1970s. This was a political gesture made more political in the manner through which district councils and local government officials discharged their devolved responsibilities and the way in which local communities appropriated leisure facilities. The resultant pattern of leisure provision reflects existing community boundaries and, as such, reinforces rather than ameliorates sectarian divisions.     

A Response to 'Ecotourism on Trial: The Case of Billfish Angling as Ecotourism'

This paper estimates the quantity of pollutant produced by the Hong Kong hotel industry through diesel oil consumption. A survey of 20 hotels was carried out to collect three years' energy consumption data. Regression analysis indicated that gross floor area was a major and statistically accepted factor in explaining diesel oil consumption. Diesel oil consumption had reduced from the early 1990s and stabilised by the late 1990s. The sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon dioxide and particulate pollution created by the hotel industry's diesel oil usage from 1990 to 1999 is estimated. The findings indicate that existing green measures and devices are passive and depend on the assimilation of the atmosphere. Environmental costs have stabilised at about HK$54,000 per annum. More proactive approaches to reduce usage and environmental impacts are proposed.     

The Economics of Morality and Environmental Policy: Comment on the Paper by Frey

Journal of Consumer Policy -     

Analyzing Real Estate Data Problems Using the Gibbs Sampler

Real estate data are often characterized by data irregularities: missing data, censoring or truncation, measurement error, etc. Practitioners often discard missing- or censored-data cases and ignore measurement error. We argue here that an attractive remedy for these irregularity problems is simulation-based model fitting using the Gibbs sampler. The style of the paper is primarily pedagogic, employing a simple illustration to convey the essential ideas, unobscured by implementation complications. Focusing on the missing-data problem, we show dramatic improvement in inference by retaining rather than deleting cases of partially observed data. We also detail Gibbs-sampler usage for other data problems.