Anna Król

The Analysis of Consumers' Preferences with the Application of Multivariate Models : Hedonic Regression and Multidimensional Scaling

On durable goods markets declared behaviours of buyers rarley leads to the actual purchasing decisions. This fact poses a particular challenge for the analysis of the future reactions of consumers to the elements of the marketing nmix. This study attempts to combine the results obtained from multidimensional scaling and hedonic modelling to assess both stated and revealed preferences with respect to the attributes attributes of a specific durable good, nnamely a smartphone. The assessment of consumers’ declared behaviours was obtained by analysing data from an on-line survey study with the application of multidimensional scaling. Simultaneously, the estimated hedonic model provided the information on consumers’ revealed preferences. The combined use of both approaches allowed for broader insight into the issue of consumers’ behaviours, particularly in relation to the existing market offer.

Various Approaches to Measuring Effectiveness of Tertiary Education

This paper aims at assessing selected approaches to measuring the effectiveness of investment in tertiary education and their applicability. It summarizes various results obtained in the research project Methods of Measuring the Return on Investment in Higher Education. The applied methods, include classical methods (ANOVA, Mincerian earnings function, correspondence analysis, hierarchical agglomerative clustering) as well as new ideas (application of the Wilcoxon Matched-Pairs Signed-Rank Test to determine the significance of differences in incomes before and after reaching the tertiary education). The research is based on data coming both from Polish (Social Diagnosis, Study of Human Capital) as well as German databases (Social Economic Panel, SOEP). The obtained results support the hypothesis that tertiary education influences the level of incomes. Moreover, the estimated pseudo rates of return to education provide the basis for the evaluation of the effectiveness of private investment in education.

Application of Hedonic Methods in Modelling Real Estate Prices in Poland

This paper concentrates on empirical and methodological issues of the application of econometric methods to modelling real estate market. The presented hedonic analysis of apartments’ prices in Wroclaw is based on the dataset consisting of over ten thousands offers from the secondary real estate market. The models estimated as the result of the research allow for pricing the apartments, as well as its characteristics.The foundations of hedonic methods are formed by the so-called hedonic hypothesis which states that heterogeneous commodities are characterized by a set of attributes relevant both from the point of view of the customer and the producer. As a consequence, the price of a commodity is determined as an aggregate of values estimated for each significant characteristic of this commodity. The hedonic model allows to price the commodity as well as to identify and estimate the prices of respective attributes, including the prices which are not directly observable on the market. The latter is particularly useful for the real estate market as it enables pricing location-related, neighbourhood-related and structure-related characteristics of housing whose values cannot be obtained otherwise.