published_or_final_version / Business / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This dissertation investigates consumer valuation of car characteristics with the special focus on two non-physical attributes of an automobile such as safety and comfort. Consumer valuation of automobile attributes is of interest to car manufacturers who supply the characteristics, consumers who purchase them, and policy makers who regulate the automobile. This study uses two approaches to accomplish this goal. The first one is the traditional hedonic method which calculates consumer willingness to pay for measurable components of safety and comfort, whereas the second one combines these components into comfort and safety indexes. It is argued in this study that these individual components, which can make a car safer or more comfortable, are evaluated by consumers in the broader context of safety and comfort before the final choice is made. It is also argued that this aggregation can be justified by a high degree of multicollinearity between various car attributes which has been observed in the previous hedonic studies of the automobile market. Included here is also a comprehensive discussion of econometric problems associated with the characteristics approach. The computational part is based on the new and the most extensive data set used in the hedonic literature of the automobile market. The study concludes by presenting the set of price and income elasticities of demand for the safety and comfort related variables. The results of both methods indicate that many car attributes are Giffen goods, which implies a positive relationship between the marginal willingness to pay and quantity purchased. The main reasons for these findings could be attributed to the impact of the government quality standards affecting automobiles and the shortcomings of the hedonic procedure (treatment of nonlinearities). / Ph. D.

At the request of the United States Government, effective as of April 1, 1981, the Japanese began voluntarily restraining exports of automobiles to the United States to provide the U.S. automobiles industry with a period of time to make the necessary adjustment to become more competitive with imports. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the impact of the VER, particularly the costs to consumers and the benefits to U.S. producers, quota rents captured by the Japanese producer during 1981-84 will also be examined. Between 1981 and 1984 the Voluntary Export Restraint Agreement cost the U.S. economy $8.4 billion. In terms of increases in the cost of purchasing a car, the estimate ranges between $95 in 1981 to as high as $241 in 1984. E During the four years of the VER, the consumer costs : amounted to $8.9 billion. Meanwhile, the U.S. producers of automobile benefited only $403 million as a result of the VER. If this benefit is translated to the number of jobs saved, it amounts to 29,000 jobs. Therefore, the consumer cost of creating each new job was $334,000. As for the impact of VER on the Japanese producers, the result shows that the price effects of the VER has increased over the four years as the restrictive effect of the VER has intensified. During 1981, the VER added $733 to the price of each Japanese automobile, but by 1984, it was adding about $2,000. / Master of Arts

Wireless is getting more important and popular because its convenience and portability make things easier. The goal of this project is to develop a mobile vehicle application called MOBILE USED CAR PRICES AND INFORMATION and this application will provide the prices and information for clients. The client can use their Palm handheld devices to read the prices and information whenever they want to check.