Emilia Tomczyk

Measuring price dynamics: evidence from the Warsaw housing market

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to present estimation results of hedonic price models as well as housing price indices for the Warsaw secondary market.Design/methodology/approach – Three direct methods of constructing a hedonic price index and four indices that allow for quality adjustment are presented. The paper also discusses theoretical issues related to the estimation and interpretation of hedonic models.Findings – It is shown that the imputation and the time dummy variable indices are subject to less variation than the characteristic price index. It is also shown that in comparison to the mean and the median, hedonic indices are less variable, which can be interpreted as partial control for quality changes in dwellings sold.Practical implications – As this research project represents one of the first attempts of hedonic modelling applied to the Polish housing market, its results may be employed by appraisers to gain insight into behaviour of the Warsaw housing market. Practical implications focus...

Rationality of expectations: comparison of neoclassical and evolutionary approaches

Paper compares two major schools of economic thought – neoclassical and evolutionary – from the perspective of keystone assumption: rationality of economic agents. It discusses role of rationality assumption in neoclassical and evolutionary theories; importance of expectations; and perspectives for analyzing them within the framework of evolutionary game theory – namely, through replicator dynamics.

Nowcasting New Car Registrations with Google Search Data and Car Manufacturers' Website Traffic

The purpose of this paper is an attempt to nowcast (here: to predict in a short time horizon) new car registrations in Poland based on data of Google search queries and website traffic of car manufacturers. The study covers 47 monthly observations for six automotive makes. The strongest explanatory power is exhibited by the autoregressive component (number of registrations lagged one month), followed by the number of search queries. The website traffic of car manufacturers significantly influences the number of registrations in two out of six cases.

Comparison of Survey Expectations Series with Non-Response and Various Weighting Schemes

Expectations concerning key economic variables certainly influence decisions undertaken by economic agents. Since assumption of rationality forms the basis of neoclassical economic theory, question of whether expectations of industrial enterprises are indeed formed rationally deserves careful attention. In this paper, we analyze two basic properties of expectations rational in sense introduced by J. F. Muth – that is, unbiasedness and orthogonality – taking into account issue of non-response and weighting schemes. We find that rationality of expectations of Polish industrial firms is not sensitive to these factors. Independently from non-response and weighting issues, expectations concerning relative changes in production remain unbiased but not efficient with respect to freely available information.