Does Political and Economic Freedom Matter for Inbound Tourism? A Cross-National Panel Data Estimation

The paper examines the impact of political and economic freedom on inbound tourism for over 110 countries during 1995-2012. Panel country fixed-effects techniques are utilized to examine the relationship after controlling for other factors that contribute to inbound tourism. The results show that civil liberties and economic freedom (among several other freedom measures) are positively and significantly associated with inbound tourism. Examination of the moderation effect reveals that civil liberties (economic freedom) tend to play a more influential role on inbound tourism when the level of economic freedom (civil liberties) is relatively low

Local Public Goods and Jim Crow

Labor market discrimination and racial segregation can be viewed as part of a more general tendency for residents of a community to limit the community's size or its factor-ownership composition. Statutory segregation is motivated not only by racial prejudice, but also by a desire to maximize factor incomes and the average net benefit obtained from local-public-goods consumption. Race is one of many possible devices that might be used to distinguish community members from non-members. Predictions for racial discrimination and segregation derived from this local-public-goods approach are tested with data from the Jim Crow era.

Estimating the price elasticity of demand for Cannabis: A geographical and crowdsourced approach

Recent legalizations of cannabis at the state level in the United States have given rise to renewed interest in the price elasticity of demand for cannabis and implications for likely state excise and sales tax revenues. We use crowdsourced data on prices, qualities, and consumption of cannabis across regional markets in the United States to estimate the price elasticity of demand for cannabis. We use distances from growing areas to the major markets as a proxy for cost variations. We obtain an estimate of the price elasticity of demand for cannabis of -0.418, which suggests that legalizing and taxing recreational cannabis use would be lucrative for government treasuries

Estimating the Price Elasticity of Demand for Cannabis: A Geographical and Crowdsourced Approach // La estimación de la elasticidad en los precios de la demanda de cannabis: un enfoque geográfico y basado en la colaboración abierta distribuida

Recent legalizations of cannabis at the state level in the United States have given rise to renewed interest in the price elasticity of demand for cannabis and implications for likely state excise and sales tax revenues.  We use crowdsourced data on prices, qualities, and consumption of cannabis across regional markets in the United States to estimate the price elasticity of demand for cannabis. We use distances from growing areas to the major markets as a proxy for cost variations.  We obtain an estimate of the price elasticity of demand for cannabis of -0.418, which suggests that legalizing and taxing recreational cannabis use would be lucrative for government treasuries.------------------------------------Las recientes legalizaciones del cannabis a nivel estatal en los Estados Unidos han dado lugar a un renovado interés en la elasticidad en los precios de la demanda de cannabis y sus implicaciones en los ingresos por impuestos estatales y sobre ingresos por ventas. Utilizamos datos en colaboración abierta sobre precios, calidades y consumo de cannabis en los mercados regionales de los Estados Unidos para estimar la elasticidad en los precios de la demanda de cannabis. Utilizamos distancias desde las zonas de cultivo hasta los principales mercados como sustituto de las variaciones de los costos. Se obtiene una estimación de la elasticidad en los precios de la demanda de cannabis de -0,418, lo que sugiere que la legalización y el gravamen del cannabis para uso recreativo sería lucrativo para los erarios públicos.Artículo revisado por pare

The Obama effect

Election, Stock Market, D72, D84, G01, G12,

eBay auctions for Third Eye Blind concert tickets

The band Third Eye Blind recently completed a tour, selling tickets exclusively on eBay. Many tickets were bundled with either VIP passes or autographed posters. These data are used to measure variations in price across different markets, as well as the premiums paid for different ticket types. Auctioning the tickets allows the seller to practice Third Degree Price Discrimination and bundling, without having to determine prices in each market and for each different bundle. We find: tickets bundled with VIP passes command a substantial positive premium; tickets bundled with autographed posters command a small negative premium; different prices emerge in different geographic markets; and auction prices are positively related to the fixed price at which tickets could be purchased by way of Buy-it-Now. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007Auctions , Cultural economics, D44, Z10,

Predicting Stock Market Movements in the United States: The Role of Presidential Approval Ratings

In this paper we analyze whether presidential approval ratings can predict the S&P 500 returns over the monthly period of July 1941 to April 2018, using a dynamic conditional correlation multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (DCC-MGARCH) model. Our results show that standard linear Granger causality test fail to detect any evidence of predictability. However, the linear model is found to be misspecified due to structural breaks and nonlinearity, and hence, the result of no causality from presidential approval ratings to stock returns cannot be considered reliable. When we use the DCC-MGARCH model, which is robust to such misspecifications, in 69% of the sample period, approval ratings in fact do strongly predict the S&P 500 stock return. Moreover, using the DCC-MGARCH model we find that presidential approval rating is also a strong predictor of the realized volatility of S&P 500. Overall, our results highlight that presidential approval ratings is helpful in predicting stock return and volatility, when one accounts for nonlinearity and regime changes through a robust time-varying model.http://wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/irfihj2022Economic