The Role of Cybermediaries in the Hotel Market

The advent of the Internet changed the way buyers and sellers interact. Although access to information seems unlimited, non-expert agents find it difficult to identify the information they can confidently use. A third-party expert or a cybermediary (an intermediary in the cyberspace) can help sort out the information for the contracting partners. In this paper, we study the case of the online hotel market and the role of the cyber travel agent (CTA). We claim that CTAs encourage hoteliers to exert effort in service quality and provide empirical evidence that these hotels are compensated with a price premium.Cybermediaries, Internet, travel agents, reputation, hotel market, Agricultural Finance, Institutional and Behavioral Economics,

QUALITY, QUANTITY AND TIME ISSUES IN DEMAND FOR VACATIONS

Demand and Price Analysis,

Is agriculture an important componenet of rural tourism?

In many regions rural tourism is accepted usually as a natural part of the socio-economic fabric juxtaposed with agriculture. It is clear that rural tourism is based on rural amenities, however, it is not clear how it relates to agriculture. Is agricultural activity an important and even a necessary component of rural tourism or does rural tourism provide the farmer with an auxiliary funding to continue farming? Do active farms with rural tourism enjoy economies to scope and run both businesses more efficiently than farms with only a single activity? These issues have not been approached rigorously. The objective of this paper is to investigate whether rural tourism enterprises combined with active farming differ from those without agricultural activity and how the agricultural activity affects the enterprise. The analysis is based on a face-to-face survey of 200 operators of B&B enterprises in Israel. The owners were asked about the characteristics of the B&B, labor and capital input, revenues and number of bed nights. In those cases when they were running an active farm they were asked in what manner the tourists are exposed to the agricultural amenities (i.e., is the tourist offered an activity related to the farm, how is he exposed to the agricultural landscape, etc.). About 40% had an active farm, which allowed us to compare between the two types of rural tourism businesses - with and without agricultural activity. Based on the analysis of the aforementioned data, a production function of the B&B businesses is estimated. Production is measured alternatively, by revenue or by number of bed nights, while the explanatory variables are the business characteristics, capital and labor inputs, and the agriculture characteristics for the relevant business. This analysis enables us to assess the importance of agricultural activity in the production of rural tourism services. Its results have implications on issues such as externalities between agriculture and rural tourism, between farms located at the same settlement, and the impact of governmental subsidies to agriculture may have on the development of tourism.

The Economic Impact of Global Climate Change on Mediterranean Rangeland Ecosystems: A Space-for-Time Approach

Global Climate Change (GCC) can bring about changes in ecosystems and consequently in their services value. Here we show that the urban population in Israel values the green landscape of rangelands in the mesic Mediterranean climate region and is willing to pay for preserving it in light of the expected increasing aridity conditions in this region. Their valuation of the landscape is higher than that of the grazing services these rangelands provide for livestock growers. These results stem form a Time-for-Space approach with which we were able to measure changes in biomass production and rainfall at four experimental sites along an aridity gradient.global climate change, ecosystem, choice modeling, landscape, biomass, Environmental Economics and Policy,

Climate change, irrigation, and Israeli agriculture : will warming be harmful ?

The authors use a Ricardian model to test the relationship between annual net revenues and climate across Israeli farms. They find that it is important to include the amount of irrigation water available to each farm in order to measure the response of farms to climate. With irrigation water omitted, the model predicts that climate change is strictly beneficial. But with water included, the model predicts that only modest climate changes are beneficial, while drastic climate change in the long run will be harmful. Using the Atmospheric Oceanic Global Circulation Models scenarios, the authors show that farm net revenue is expected to increase by 16 percent in 2020, while in 2100 farm net revenue is expected to drop by 60-390 percent varying between the different scenarios. Although Israel has a relatively warm climate, a mild increase in temperature is beneficial due to the ability to supply international markets with farm products early in the season. The findings lead to the conclusion that securing water rights to the farmers and international trade agreements can be important policy measures to help farmers adapt to climate change.Climate Change,Water Supply and Sanitation Governance and Institutions,Water Supply and Systems,Water and Industry,Common Property Resource Development

A Structural Land-Use Analysis of Agricultural Adaptation to Climate Change: A Proactive Approach

This article proposes a proactive approach for analyzing agricultural adaptation to climate change based on a structural land-use model wherein farmers maximize profit by allocating their land between crop-technology bundles. The profitability of the bundles is a function of four technological attributes via which climate variables‟ effect is channeled: yield potential; input requirements; yields' sensitivity to input use; and farm-level management costs. Proactive adaptation measures are derived by identifying the technological attributes via which climate variables reduce overall agricultural profitability, despite adaptation by land reallocation among bundles. By applying the model to Israel, we find that long-term losses stem from yield potential reductions driven by forecasted increases in temperature, implying that adaptation efforts should target more heat-tolerant crop varieties and technologies.adaptation, agricultural land use, climate change, crop-technology bundles, Land Economics/Use,

An Optimal Size for Rural Tourism Villages with Agglomeration and Club-Good Effects

Helping to sustain a viable rural sector, rural tourism enjoys public support in many countries. We claim that due to club-good and agglomeration externalities in the rural accommodation market, public support should be integrated in a broader local development policy that regulates the number of accommodation units in a locality. To demonstrate this we extended an equilibrium model that accounts for product differentiation and oligopolistic competition to address club-good and agglomeration effects and applied it to data collected in north Israel. We show that under the prevailing regulation, the number of units is by far higher than the social optimum.Community/Rural/Urban Development, International Development, Political Economy,

RURAL TOURISM: DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC INTERVENTION AND LESSONS FROM THE ISRAELI EXPERIENCE

Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Distributional Welfare Impacts of Public Spending: The Case of Urban versus National Parks

This study examines the optimal allocation of funds between national and urban parks. Since travel costs to national parks are significantly higher than to urban parks, poor households tend to visit the latter more frequently, whereas rich households favor the former. Therefore, allocating public funds to improving the quality of national parks at the expense of urban parks disproportionately benefits high income households. By developing a theoretical model and implementing it using Israeli data, findings indicate all households, except for the richest decile, prefer that the park authority divert a larger proportion of its budget from national to urban parks.budget allocation, income distribution, national parks, urban parks, Public Economics,