Spatial Cournot Competition in a Linear City with Directional Delivery Constraints

This study investigates a sequential game of location and transportation mode choices, as well as the subsequent quantity choice. The results show that spatial Cournot competition with directional delivery constraints yields a richer set of spatial configurations, involving midpoint agglomeration, maximum differentiation and asymmetric dispersion, and a richer set of transportation mode selections, involving delivery in different directions, asymmetric delivery between duopoly firms, and delivery in two directions by each firm, depending on the fixed cost of a transportation instrument. This paper concludes with an investigation of welfare analysis on optimal locations and transportation modes.     

Indigenous Shawi communities and national food security support: Right direction,but not enough

Food insecurity is a major challenge facing Peru’s Indigenous Shawi communities, who receive food support through national level programs. There is limited research, however, on how national food and social programming support is perceived, received and used among Indigenous communities. We address this research gap by characterizing the preferred diet and coping mechanisms among Shawi Indigenous households, and investigating community perspectives on the national food program and national social supports. We used a mixed methods approach, including a quantitative survey among eleven Shawi communities in the Peruvian Amazon (n = 177 households), and semi-structured interviews with key informants (n = 24). We found that national food programs in Peru rarely provide foods that are desired and preferred among the Shawi, particularly familiar and locally-sourced protein sources such as bushmeat and fish. Food and social programming requirements do not integrate consideration of the remoteness of many vulnerable households, and are considered culturally or linguistically inaccessible to many families. In some cases, foods supplied by national programs are not consumed as they are perceived as unfamiliar. Key opportunities to improve food and social programing include: monitoring and revising eligibility requirements for remote and highly vulnerable households; increasing provision of locally-preferred protein food and familiar food types; avoiding use of written Spanish as a sole source of information to support programming; extending food provision outside of school months; developing contingency plans during education sector strikes; considering hiring of staff with working knowledge of local languages for community distributions; using visual or oral communication rather than written communication to increase accessibility of programs; increasing knowledge on the use and nutritional value of external food; and considering exemptions to school and health eligibility requirements during the rainy season and during sector strikes. Nationally-developed programming that does not consider Indigenous and cultural contexts risks inefficiency, limited improvement of health outcomes, and the potential to increase inequities in Indigenous health.     

City size and urban labor productivity in China: New evidence from spatial city-level panel data analysis

The previous literature has generally found that most Chinese cities were undersized in the 1990s. However, little is known about how urban agglomeration in China has evolved since the country began to experience much faster urbanization and deep marketization after 2000. Based on panel data of 281 cities between 2000 and 2013, our spatial panel data regression results show that the scale impact of city size on urban productivity appears to have an inverted U shape, and its effect will grow when the cities’ industrial structure becomes more dominated by the service sector. There are also significant spatial interactions and spatial heterogeneity of urban agglomeration among Chinese cities. Furthermore, we compute the optimal size for each city and find that most Chinese cities are still undersized in recent years. Based on our findings, we argue that the Chinese government should focus on promoting sufficient growth of medium sized cities in its new urbanization strategy.     

Performing colonisation: The manufacture of Black female bodies in tourism research

This paper is an Indigenous contribution to the epistemic decolonisation of tourism research. To understand how western privilege operates within research I highlight the rise of, what I term here, Establishment men and their use of performance theory and universalisms to both mask and enable harms against Black female bodies. I then introduce an innovative Indigenous methodology in storytelling to consider the depth and richness of contributions away from colonising and linear narratives and towards positive touristic encounters. Finally, I then give an overview of the types and use of ethics to prevent future harms to Black female bodies and establish a pathway towards equity in tourism research.     

Influence of environmental stimuli on hotel customer emotional loyalty response: Testing the moderating effect of the big five personality factors

The aim of this research was to test the moderation effects of the Big Five Factors (BFF) of personality on hotel ambience-guests’ consumption emotions–loyalty relationship. This was an attempt to extend the Stimuli–Organism–Response (S–O–R) that has been widely used in consumer studies without integrating personality factors that may exert effects on the relationships. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to hotel guests; 563 responses were used in data analysis. The results of the structural model affirm the effect of hotel ambience on guests’ consumption emotions, with those emotions having significant effects on loyalty. Among the personality factors, extraversion, openness to experience and agreeableness significantly moderated the relationships, with groups scoring high in traits having stronger relationships than those lower in traits. Overall, the study supports the extension of the S-O-R with the inclusion of personality. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Real estate valuation,current account and credit growth patterns,before and after the 2008–9 crisis

We explore the stability of the conditioning variables accounting for the real estate valuation before and after the crisis of 2008–9, in a panel of 36 countries, recognizing the crisis break. We validate the robustness of the association between the real estate valuation and lagged current account patterns, both before and after the crisis. The most economically significant variable in accounting for real estate valuation changes turned out to be the lagged real estate valuation appreciation (real estate inflation minus CPI inflation), followed by lagged declines of the current account/GDP, lagged domestic credit/GDP growth, and lagged equity market valuation appreciation (equity market appreciation minus CPI inflation). A one standard deviation increase in lagged real estate appreciation is associated with a 10% increase in the present real estate appreciation, larger than the impact of a one standard deviation deterioration in the lagged current account/GDP (5%) and of the lagged domestic credit/GDP growth (3%). The results are supportive of both current account and credit growth channels, with the momentum channels playing the most important role. Smaller current account/GDP surpluses or larger deficits may serve as warning signals, especially when coinciding with credit expansion and real estate appreciation during the past several quarters.     

金融市场化、配置效率与地区研发创新

研发创新是决定长期经济增长的关键因素。研究与开发结果的不确定性和收益回报周期长特点,使其高度依赖于外部融资,因而需要金融市场有效发挥要素配置功能。有效率的金融市场是影响研发的重要因素。利用中国分省企业经营环境指数和中国省级宏观数据研究金融市场化对地区自主研发创新的影响,是一个新尝试。研究结果表明,金融市场化通过改善外部融资环境有效地提高了地区研发创新水平,平均而言,正规金融融资便利化程度提高1个标准差,人均专利申请量和人均专利批准量分别提高19.23%和16.39%;民间金融便利化程度提高1个标准差,人均专利申请量和人均专利批准量分别提高25.84%和21.05%。     

The Housing Market in the United Kingdom: Effects of House Price Volatility on Households

This paper describes the economics of the housing market and explains why house prices are likely to be more volatile than prices in other markets. It illustrates the volatility of house prices relative to some other key economic variables in the UK. The paper then considers the implications of variability in house prices for household behaviour, surveying a number of studies for the UK and elsewhere on the effects of house price volatility on consumption spending, indebtedness, labour supply, and entry to and exit from the homeownership market.     

Spatial Spillovers from Foreign Direct Investment: Evidence from the Yangtze River Delta in China

This paper examines the spatial externality from foreign direct investment on domestic firms. Using Chinese firm‐level data for 2004, and after accounting for an endogeneity problem, we find that foreign firms generate a significantly positive spillover effect on the regional productivity of domestic firms in similar counties and industries. Estimating a spatial‐autoregressive model, we further show that such local spillovers could transmit to domestic firms in other counties and industries through interactions among domestic firms. However, these spatial multiplier effects decline with distance, thereby reducing the foreign direct investment spillover effects for domestic firms in distant locations.     

A shaky business: Natural gas extraction,earthquakes and house prices

The production of natural gas is strongly increasing around the world. Long-run negative external effects of extraction are understudied and often ignored in (social) cost-benefit analyses. One important example is that natural gas extraction leads to soil subsidence and subsequent induced earthquakes that may occur only after a couple of decades. We show that induced earthquakes that are noticeable to residents generate substantial non-monetary economic effects, as measured by their effects on house prices, also when house owners are fully compensated for damage to their houses. To address the issue that earthquakes do not occur randomly over space, we use temporal variation in the occurrence of noticeable earthquakes while controlling for the occurrence of earthquakes that cannot be felt by house owners. We find that earthquakes that are noticeable with peak ground velocities of above half a cm/s lead to price decreases of 1.9 percent. The total non-monetary costs of induced earthquakes for Groningen are about €170 million (about €600 per household). These results indicate that the non-monetary costs are in the same order of magnitude as the monetary damage costs.