Economics in game theory for hotel unemployment

This study uses the game theory to find a Nash equilibrium of price elasticities of hotel demand in the United States before and during the COVID-19 pandemic to interpret the decrease in hotel unemployment rate. The sample selected is the Oahu, Hawaii market due to its higher room rate and higher unemployment rate compared to those in the mainland US. Findings indicate that to increase hotel revenue and decrease unemployment rate, the price elasticity of hotel demand in the mainland US would be higher than the one in Oahu, Hawaii. While the government has built more value into hotels by financially supporting unemployed hotel employees, established hotel brands have maintained their excellent service for their guests during the pandemic. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Anatolia: An International Journal of Tourism & Hospitality Research is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Local Housing Market Sentiments and Returns: Evidence from China

This paper examines the impacts of local housing sentiments on the housing price dynamics of China. With a massive second-hand transaction dataset, we construct monthly local housing sentiment indices for 18 major cities in China from January 2016 to October 2020. We create three sentiment proxies representing the local housing market liquidity and speculative behaviors from the transaction dataset and then use partial least squares (PLS) to extract a recursive look-ahead-bias-free local housing sentiment index for each city considered. The local housing sentiments are shown to have robust predictive powers for future housing returns with a salient short-run underreaction and long-run overreaction pattern. Further analysis shows that local housing sentiment impacts are asymmetric, and housing returns in cities with relatively inelastic housing supply are more sensitive to local housing sentiments. We also document a significant feedback effect between housing returns and market sentiments, indicating the existence of a pricing-sentiment spiral which could potentially enhance the ongoing market fever of Chinese housing markets. The main estimation results are robust to alternative sentiment extraction methods and alternative sentiment proxies, and consistent for the sample period before COVID-19.

Impact of COVID-19 (2020-2022) on Cotton and Garments Market of Bangladesh: A Small Country Case

Bangladesh imports roughly 98% of cotton from abroad to produce fabric or yarn (USDA 2020. Cotton and Products Update. Bangladesh. Also available at https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadReportByFileName?fileName=Cotton%20and%20Products%20Update_Dhaka_Bangladesh_11-30-2020). The production of textiles in Bangladesh depends on the price of raw material, the demand for garment products in the importing countries, smooth supply chain management, and the domestic supply of cheap garment laborers. The global pandemic of COVID-19 disrupted the supply chain of almost all physical goods and services, including textiles. It caused the price of textiles to fall due to a drop in worldwide demand, and increased the marginal cost of textile production due to supply chain interruptions. This paper shows how the decline in the demand for garments, coupled with an increase in cost, shrinks the producer welfare of textile manufacturing and garment exports of the small producing country, Bangladesh. © 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston 2022.

Can unconditional cash assistance improve household welfare? QUAIDS model for food commodities in Indonesia

Expenditure patterns can be taken into consideration in determining the type of government assistance. Without adequate information on household expenditure patterns, cash transfers may not be effective in improving welfare. This study aims to examine the expenditure patterns of households receiving cash assistance in Indonesia. The expenditure pattern is estimated using the Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (QUAIDS). Four groups of expenditure types for food were examined: rice, staple food, beverages, tobacco and alcoholic beverages. The result showed that the largest predicted expenditure is for the purchase of staple food. Income elasticity for staple food is relatively highest than all other types of food. On the other hand, the price elasticity of tobacco and alcoholic beverages is relatively inelastic (lowest) compared to other food products. These results indicate that the provision of cash transfers for poor households has the potential to increase household welfare through increasing staple food consumption.

The daily price and income elasticity of natural gas demand in Europe

Data from 15 European countries is analysed to provide novel estimates of daily own-price, cross-price and income elasticities of natural-gas-demand from 2016 to 2020. The results show that: first, there is a strong-seasonal component in the October–February period during which residential-demand has a higher share on total demand, and gas price is not a determinant factor for most of the countries. This seasonal profile makes price-based tools more effective modifying end-consumer behaviours from March to August when estimated own-price elasticities present larger values in absolute terms. Second, there are estimated positive own-price elasticities from October to February in Bulgaria, Luxemburg, Poland, the UK, and Portugal. The first four countries present natural gas prices below the EU-28 average during the analysed period and it is argued that positive elasticities may reflect a disconnection between the price traded on the organized markets and the real price perceived by end-customers. For Portugal, who is currently carrying out a very aggressive policy to become coal-free by the end of 2021, natural gas and coal are mainly consumed in power sector to provide flexibility and back up renewable generation. The limited alternatives to provide these services may explain why coal and natural gas are found to be complementary. Finally, it is found that lockdowns due to covid-19 highly impacted on natural gas demand, confirming for the first time in the literature a “double heating effect”. Our results help to find when price-based tools by policymakers will influence more effectively natural-gas-demand following economic and environmental goals. © 2022 The Authors

Were Consumers Less Price Sensitive to Life Necessities During the COVID-19 Pandemic? An Empirical Study on Dutch Consumers

This research investigates if consumers were less price sensitive to life necessities during the COVID-19 pandemic via a demand modeling system. Consumers’ price sensitivity was explicitly quantified by the price elasticity of demand. Consumer behavior in nine categories of products considered as life necessities were studied in two non-overlapping time periods: a year before the onset of the COVID pandemic and a year following the initial panic buying caused by the declaration of the COVID pandemic. The changes in price elasticity of demand between the two periods across the nine product categories were determined from the weekly sales data of a Dutch retailer. Using the proposed demand modeling system applied to available data, it was empirically found that the majority of essential food products were price inelastic, while the majority of non-food products were price elastic during the COVID period. Among the nine product categories, four categories were identified to have significantly different elasticities across the two time periods, while eight categories were observed to have practically smaller magnitudes in elasticities. These insights not only prove the usefulness of the proposed demand modeling system, but also provide valuable theoretical and managerial implications for retail business practitioners, particularly in pricing and inventory planning. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Price and income elasticity of natural gas demand in Europe and the effects of lockdowns due to Covid-19

We analyse a panel of 25 European-countries to provide novel estimates of monthly own-price, cross-price, and income elasticities of natural-gas-demand from 2005 to 2020. We find that: first, there is an European Standard Behaviour (ESB) with a strong-seasonal component. Second, we identify three different patterns from the ESB: 1) France, Denmark and Estonia present slightly positive elasticities in the short-run and a lack of sensitivity to own-price variations in the long-run –we argue this phenomenon is due to a higher weight of heating demand-. 2) Latvia presents a lower sensitivity to own-price variations than the ESB -we argue due to the role of natural gas as a unique backup technology in the power sector-. 3) In Portugal, natural gas showed the highest own-price elasticities – we argue that natural gas is used mainly in the power sector with substitutive technologies-. Finally, we find that Covid-19-lockdowns highly impacted natural-gas-demand, confirming the “double-heating-effect”.

Managing Food Imports for Food Security in Qatar

Faced with food supply disruptions due in part to geopolitics and political instability in its traditional food source markets in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Qatar—a wealthy, highly import-dependent open economy—plans to identify a set of alternative markets that can assure it of a stable food supply chain and food security. This study develops a set of preferences and import substitution elasticities for the country’s four most important food categories: meats, dairy, vegetables, and cereals. We used quarterly food import data from 2004 to 2017 and the Restricted Source-Differentiated Almost Ideal Demand System (RSDAIDS) to estimate import-substitution elasticities for meats, dairy, vegetables, and cereals imported by Qatar. Based on our findings, India, Australia, and the Netherlands emerged as Qatar’s most competitive sources of food, followed by Brazil, Jordan, and Argentina. Qatar can assure sustained demand for food imports from the aforementioned countries in order to address its food security.

Interpretable modelling of retail demand and price elasticity for passenger flights using booking data

We propose a model of retail demand for air travel and ticket price elasticity at the daily booking and individual flight level. Daily bookings are modelled as a non-homogeneous Poisson process with respect to the time to departure. The booking intensity is a function of booking and flight level covariates, including non-linear effects modelled semi-parametrically using penalized splines. Customer heterogeneity is incorporated using a finite mixture model, where the latent segments have covariate-dependent probabilities. We fit the model to a unique dataset of over one million daily counts of bookings for 9 602 scheduled flights on a short-haul route over two years. A control variate approach with a strong instrument corrects for a substantial level of price endogeneity. A rich latent segmentation is uncovered, along with strong covariate effects. The calibrated model can be used to quantify demand and price elasticity for different flights booked on different days prior to departure and is a step towards continuous pricing;something that is a major objective of airlines. As our model is interpretable, forecasts can be created under different scenarios. For instance, while our model is calibrated on data collected prior to COVID-19, many of the empirical insights are likely to remain valid as air travel recovers in the post-COVID-19 period. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Statistical Modelling: An International Journal is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Research on Price Elasticity of Mobile Phone Sales on Taobao Based on Logarithmic Function Model

As people become more accustomed to online buying, an increasing number of individuals are purchasing cell phones over the internet. In this paper, the price elasticity of mobile phones from Taobao is estimated using a logarithmic function model, and the link between price elasticity and market share, online sales, and pricing is empirically investigated. This study used data analytic to discover that as the price of a brand with a significant market share drops, the sales volume increases. In addition, this study examines elasticity changes caused by COVID-19 and shows practical implications with proposed business solutions;this study found that The price drop will affect the sales volume, and the sales volume will change with the price change. The findings will give helpful information to internet cell phone vendors. © 2021 IEEE.

Joint Optimization Decision of Online Retailers’ Pricing and Live-Streaming Effort in the Postepidemic Era

The isolation requirements of the coronavirus epidemic and the intuitive display advantages of live-streaming have led to an increasing number of retailers shifting to social live-streaming platforms and e-commerce live-streaming platforms to promote and sell their products in real time. However, the provision of live-streaming services will also incur high live-streaming effort costs. In this paper, we develop two decision models for retailers to sell goods through a single online shop and both online shop and live-streaming room;we also present the optimal decisions of pricing and live-streaming efforts. Furthermore, we identify the profitability conditions for retailers to determine when to provide live-streaming services. In addition, we examine the impact of the provision of live-streaming services on the optimal price and live-streaming effort. We obtain three findings. First, there is a unique optimal decision on the price and live-streaming effort under certain conditions. Second, when the effect coefficient of the live-streaming room reaches a certain threshold, there are enough customers who enter the live-streaming room to watch and buy and it is profitable for retailers to provide live-streaming service. Finally, the optimal price and live-streaming effort increase with the increase in average return loss, the effect coefficient of live-streaming effort, and the extra return rate and decrease with the increase in the proportion of customers who choose to buy in the online shop and the price discount coefficient in the live-streaming room.

How resilient is the open web to the COVID-19 pandemic?

In this paper we refer to the Open Web to the set of services offered freely to Internet users, representing a pillar of modern societies. Despite its importance for society, it is unknown how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the Open Web. In this paper, we address this issue, focusing our analysis on Spain, one of the countries which have been most impacted by the pandemic. On the one hand, we study the impact of the pandemic in the financial backbone of the Open Web, the online advertising business. To this end, we leverage concepts from Supply-Demand economic theory to perform a careful analysis of the elasticity in the supply of ad-spaces to the financial shortage of the online advertising business and its subsequent reduction in ad spaces' price. On the other hand, we analyze the distribution of the Open Web composition across business categories and its evolution during the COVID-19 pandemic. These analyses are conducted between Jan 1st and Dec 31st, 2020, using a reference dataset comprising information from more than 18 billion ad spaces. Our results indicate that the Open Web has experienced a moderate shift in its composition across business categories. However, this change is not produced by the financial shortage of the online advertising business, because as our analysis shows, the Open Web's supply of ad spaces is inelastic (i.e., insensitive) to the sustained low-price of ad spaces during the pandemic. Instead, existing evidence suggests that the reported shift in the Open Web composition is likely due to the change in the users' online behavior (e.g., browsing and mobile apps utilization patterns).

Are anticompetitive behaviours rampant in global retail energy markets? A study of price elasticity, asymmetric price adjustment and rent-seeking.

This study investigated the role of price elasticity in the asymmetric adjustment of global retail energy prices and in the rent-seeking behavior of retail energy firms. Overall, 58 nonlinear ARDL models were estimated for the period 2004:M12 - 2016M8 using data for gasoline, automotive diesel, domestic heating oil, industrial fuel oil and crude oil markets. The results indicate that global retail energy markets are still pervasively fraught with the problems of rockets and feathers effect and the likelihood of retailers manipulating the tax system to hide rent-seeking behaviors. The results also indicate that there is more likelihood of rent-seeking activities in the markets for road fuels whose demand is relatively more price-inelastic than in the markets for non-road fuels whose demand is relatively more price-elastic, thereby suggesting that differences in market structure could offer a possible explanation for rent-seeking and asymmetric price adjustment in global retail energy markets. These results have far-reaching antitrust and consumer welfare implications, which require regulators and policy makers to interminably monitor the global retail energy markets, especially during periods of economic crisis like the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, in order to safeguard the overall social welfare.