Walter Miklius

Estimation of Demand for Transportation of Agricultural Commodities

A logit model is used to estimate the elasticities and cross elasticities for freight transport services. The model is applied to a sample of cherry and apple shipments. The performance of the model in explaining choice of transportation method is highly satisfactory. Estimated coefficients, with one exception, have expected signs and are statistically significant.

The demand for higher education facing an individual institution

The purpose of this paper is to provide an estimate of the elasticity and cros-selasticities of demand for higher education facing an individual institution. The utility which a high school graduate derives from each educational option open to him is assumed to be a stochastic function of the attributes of that option. For certain types of utility functions the maximization of utility results in the logit probability model. This model is used to analyze the choices made by a sample of high school graduates in Hawaii. Estimates of the price elasticity and the cross-price elasticities of demand for enrollment at the University of Hawaii are obtained. It is found that the demand is quite inelastic with respect to both tuition and total cost of education. These estimates imply that changes in tuition will not affect enrollment appreciably.

The distributional effects of public higher education: A comment

This paper argues that the evidence presented in the currently available studies does not allow any conclusions to be drawn regarding the distributional effects of public higher education. The source of the problem lies in the use of one year as a sampling frame. It is shown that valid inferences may not be drawn from such a sample. The evaluation of the distributional effects of public higher education must be based on lifetime income and tax streams.

Accuracy of Electric Power Consumption Forecasts Generated by Alternative Methods: The Case of Hawaii

Abstract A number of alternative methods can be used to generate forecasts of electricity consumption. However, it is seldom possible to compare the accuracy of forecasts generated by different statistical methods. Hawaii provided a unique opportunity for such a comparison because of the availability of the Hawaii Energy Demand Forecasting Model (HEDFM). HEDFM is an econometric-based simulation system designed to provide detailed annual consumption forecasts for various fuel types from 1978 to the year 2005 for the State of Hawaii. This article evaluates the accuracy of electricity consumption forecasts using various commonly employed methods and compares them with forecasts from HEDFM. Traditional forecasting methods based on average historical growth rates or the historical relationships between electricity consumption and key economic and demographic variables such as de facto population and per capita income did not perform well. Quadratic exponential smoothing outperformed all other methods. HEDFM, a...

Minimum-cost palatable diet: A pilot study

This paper presents an alternative approach to improve the palatability of the minimum-cost diet problem through restricting the integer programming solutions to those bundles of foods that represent reasonably popular meal recipes. It is assumed that if a recipe is popular it must be palatable. The approach differs from previous studies in that it optimizes meal recipes rather than food items. A reasonable set of meals is derived from an exploratory application of this approach to a limited set of 217 popular local recipes in Hawaii. The cost of this set of ‘palatable’ minimum-cost diet is estimated to be US

AIRPORT TAXI SERVICE REGULATION : AN ANALYSIS OF AN EXCLUSIVE CONTRACT

80·03 for a family of four for a week. By using the same set of food items necessary for the 217 recipes, the cost of the ‘less palatable’ minimum-cost diet (as in Stigler, G. J. (1945). J. Farm Econ., 27, 303–314) is found to be US

Freight Charge Variations in Truck Transport Markets: Price Discrimination or Competitive Pricing?

20·39. The difference of US

Estimated value of improvements in transport services

59·64 can be considered as the added cost to improve the palatability of the diet.

EVALUATION OF ALTERNATIVE ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE PROVISION OF AIRPORT TAXI SERVICE

Taxi service at a number of major airports is supplied by one taxi company under an exclusive contract with the airport operating authority. Conventional wisdom suggests that airport taxi service produced under exclusive contract is socially inefficient. This was found to be true at the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport. In this paper we analyze the exclusive airport taxi service at Honolulu International Airport as a case study. At Honolulu International Airport, the terms of the exclusive airport taxi service contract are far less restrictive than those at Dallas/Fort Worth. Our analysis indicates that exclusive airport service can provide high quality service, reasonable prices and revenues to finance airport service. We conclude that is not the exclusivity, but rather the terms of the contract and the circumstances specific to each market that determines which system is best for a particular place.

Demand for nutrition vs. demand for tastes

It is well known that truck freight rates for different commodities over a given route vary and that rates per unit distance for the same commodity over different routes vary. In previous studies this variation has been attributed to noncompetitive behavior. In this paper a hypothesis that observed variations in truck rates are consistent with competitive behavior is tested using conjoint analysis. Trade-offs between costs or rates and other attributes of transport service are estimated from experiments using panels of truck brokers and carriers. The results are consistent with competitive behavior in the trucking industry.