The impact of auctions on residential property prices

This study assesses whether the sale method in residential real estate markets – auction versus private treaty – is a determinant of sale price. Utilising a larger and richer dataset than previous research, we test for a price effect in auction sales in Sydney and Christchurch. When self‐selection biases are corrected for, using two‐stage hedonic regression analysis and a matched sampling procedure, we find no significant difference between prices of properties sold at auction to those sold by private treaty. This conflicts with the conclusions of previous research in the Australian and New Zealand housing markets, which have documented a price premium associated with auction sales.     

Country of origin: A competitive advantage?

Country of origin has been identified in the literature as an important cue that might be used by global marketers to influence consumers' valuation of the brand. Its effect on consumer perceptions, affect and behavioral intentions has been widely documented, based on consumer surveys and laboratory experiments. Despite this empirical evidence, we argue that country of origin is only one extrinsic cue among many extrinsic and intrinsic cues available to the consumer in a real purchase situation. Furthermore, in real life, consumers are likely to engage in some level of information search, which would further dilute the country of origin effect in the marketplace. Based on these arguments, we conclude that country of origin might not necessarily lead to a competitive (dis)advantage in terms of a price premium or discount. For a sample of products, we show that the objective product quality varies significantly by country of origin, and that these differences are consistent with extant research on country of origin effects on consumers' perceptions. After controlling for quality differences across brands, we demonstrate that marketers from different countries charge prices that are justified by differences in product quality. Price premiums or discounts are therefore explained by differences in product quality rather than the image effect produced by the country of origin cue.     

Buying a Home with a Resale Value: Location,Location, Location*

We develop a dynamic multiregion model, where a household's choice of housing location depends on its current wealth and its current type, and involves both consumption and investment considerations. The relative strength of the consumption motive and the investment motive determines the equilibrium pattern of residential sorting. A strong investment (consumption) motive implies sorting according to household type (wealth). The model predicts that large house‐price fluctuations are associated with a low degree of sorting by type. This prediction is consistent with evidence from US metropolitan areas when income, education, and age are used as proxies for household type.     

Checkmating the Consumer: Passive Consumption and the Economic Devaluation of Culture

Early neoclassical economics embodied a gendered symbolic system that devalued consumption and enabled economists to ignore a basic contradiction underlying their treatment of consumption. According to consumer-sovereignty dogma, the consumer determined which firms would survive by actively pursuing maximum individual utility. While this consumer retained the culturally masculine attributes of initiative and agency, consumption itself was devalued because, from a systemic point of view, it is not important which firms survive. At the macro level, consumption was marginalized through Say's law, which holds that excessive acquisition of commodities for consumption is potentially dangerous, because saving and investment drive the economy. The rise of mass consumption and Keynesian macroeconomics threw into question the cultural gendering of consumption – which had acquired feminine attributes like passivity and frivolity – and rendered the neoclassical devaluing of it increasingly untenable. The postwar, neoclassical synthesis and subsequent developments have reinstated the pre-Keynesian gendering of consumption and devaluation of culture.     

An experimental study of decisions in dynamic optimization problems

Summary. We study decisions of subjects who are given an incentive to solve dynamic optimization problems with the structure of a single-agent, one-sector, closed economy macroeconomic model. The decision task involves a sequence of choices of consumption and investment levels. Treatment variables consist of the initial endowment of capital stock, the production technology available to the economy, and the method of creating the structure of an infinite-horizon model. The study includes and contrasts data from both American and Japanese participants. We find that whether over- or underinvestment relative to the optimum occurs depends on the production technology, but not on the initial endowment of capital stock, nor the subject pool used, nor the method of implementing the infinite horizon. Sudden episodes of maximal consumption called binges, which are always suboptimal, are widely observed. Received: December 7, 1998; revised version: March 12, 1999     

论消费需求新趋势及其对企业营销工作的影响

当今社会的消费需求呈现出不少新的特征,在需求层次、价值取向、消费手段等方面都发生了质的变化.这些变化对企业营销工作带来了许多新的问题,企业应积极转变营销观念,寻找新的营销策略.     

湖南省农村消费市场现状及发展对策探析

本文以影响农村消费需求实现因素的重要性为原则,选取了农村居民生活、生产两个方面的需求现状以及农村消费环境现状作为分析的基础,通过分析得出湖南省农村的消费比例和人口比例不成正比,消费结构和消费环境不相适应等问题,并提出了切实可行的对策,以期为湖南省农村消费市场的发展提供现实依据。     

Local elections and consumption insurance

During our sample period from 1987 to 2002, Chinese villages completed the transition from government‐appointed village leaders to elected ones. This article examines if and how much democratic elections of the village leaders affected consumption insurance by Chinese village residents. Exploring a panel dataset of 1,400 households from this period, we find that consumption insurance is around 20 percent more complete with elected village leaders. Furthermore, local elections improve consumption insurance only for the poor and middle‐income farmers, but not for the rich. The results are robust when we allow for pretrending, potential endogeneity of elections, and higher measurement errors for rich residents. We also find that the effects on consumption insurance are stronger when closer to the upcoming election year and when the village committees consist largely of non‐Communist Party members. These findings suggest that the election effects on consumption insurance partly come from increasing accountability to local constituents.     

A room with a view—A valuation of the Mediterranean Sea view

Aesthetic view is one of the ecosystem services of the Mediterranean Sea which can be estimated using price differences in the hotel market. Hotels situated on the Mediterranean Sea charge higher prices for a room with a sea view than for a room without it. The value of this view in 10 major Mediterranean regions was estimated in this paper using a hedonic price method. Data on 2819 hotel rooms in high season and 2406 rooms in the low season were collected from Booking.com and fixed effects regression was used to estimate the model coefficients. Hotel room prices were found to be higher by about 10% for a room with a view than for one with no view specification. No significant difference was found between regions or season. These findings lend support to the fact that the view of the Mediterranean is equally valued in all regions.