Nowadays, bottled water is a common product, which can be easily found everywhere in developed and underdeveloped countries, and that usually has the main goal of reducing health risk. In Taiwan, tap water if often recognized as non-potable water, so, most of the people buy bottled water or filter their tap water. In France bottled water is popular for its convenience that consumers derive from it. However, bottled water became an important topic of discussion due to its importance and its negative aspects such as plastic waste, and its high price while having a similar composition with tap water. The aim of this study is to decompose the price of bottled water in France and Taiwan while using the hedonic price function in order to estimate the implicit price and the utility maximization that consumers estimate about it. A semi-log model has been used in order to obtain results. The findings show that the two markets have different preferences about bottled water attributes, but also have similarities which led to the conclusion that the that cultural and environmental differences play a large role in the preferences of bottled water attributes.

The aim of this thesis is to compare specific parts of the value systems in Hungary and Taiwan. Although there have been many cultural comparisons between Asia and Europe these are often undertaken with a broad focus such as comparing ¡§east and west.¡¨ The decision to focus the current study on Hungary and Taiwan was made because these two countries have not been included in direct comparisons, meaning that an opportunity to contribute new knowledge is a real possibility. The two countries are different in that while Taiwan is only a third of the size of Hungary, it has nearly two and a half times the population of Hungary. This huge difference in population density contributes to differences in housing values, but the main focus of this study is value differences. This study investigates the Budapest and Kaohsiung housing market using hedonic price functions (HDF) in order to investigate whether hypothesized differences in consumer preferences are reflected in market price data. Suburbanization is a process that is occurring in Hungary, much as it is throughout the rest of Europe despite the fact that Hungary¡¦s earlier history as part of the communist east block makes the nation slightly different from Western Europe. While this process is based on doing what is necessary to find larger living quarters at an affordable price, similar consumer activity is not typical of Taiwan¡¦s housing market. One characteristic of Hungary that differentiates it from Western Europe is that it has one of the highest percentages of single-family housing in Europe. In contrast, this type of dwelling is very uncommon in Taiwan. Differences in data availability for the cities involved make precise comparisons difficult, but these difficulties can be partially redressed through the use of hedonic price estimation.

This thesis analyzes variations in office rents in Ankara. The theoretical background of this study is related to the hedonic methodology, which is extensively applied for explaining price or rental price variations of the real property. Given this theoretical framework, hedonic regression model is utilized for the estimation of hedonic price indices by using the cross sectional data of the office market in Ankara for the year 2002. Hedonic price function is specified in the log linear functional form and is estimated with the Ordinary Least Squares technique for two models. The models include the same variables / however, Model 1 differs from Model 2 in including the location variables. The estimation results obtained from the models suggest that height and construction quality of the building act as proxies for the locational characteristics. Also, it is found from Model 1 that locational characteristics have the greatest effect on the rental prices of the office units. In order to verify this fact, Model 1 is tested against Model 2 and vice versa based on alternative tests for non-nested models. The results of non-nested tests indicate that Model 1 is preferred to Model 2. This result is important in the sense that locational characteristics are found to be significant in explaining the rental price variations. Besides location variables, the other variables related to physical attributes and lease characteristics of the office property are also evaluated from the estimation results of Model 1. From the empirical results, it is finally concluded that locational characteristics explain the spatial rent variations of the office property in Ankara to a large extent.

Water distribution networks are being designed by traditional methods based on rules-of-thumb and personal experience of the designer. However, since there is no unique solution to any network design, namely there are various combinations of pipes, pumps, tanks all of which satisfy the same pressure and velocity restrictions, it is most probable that the design performed by traditional techniques is not the optimum one. This study deals how an optimization technique can be a useful tool for a designer during the design to find a solution. The method used within the study is the partial enumeration technique developed by Gessler. The technique is applied by a commercially available software, i.e. WADISO SA. The study is focused on discrepancies between a network designed by traditional techniques and the same network designed by partial enumeration method. Attention is given to steps of enumeration, which are basically grouping of pipes, candidate pipe size and price function assignments, to demonstrate that the designers can control all the phases of optimization process. In this respect, special attention is given to price functions to show the effect of them on the result. The study also revealed that the cost of fitting materials cannot be included in the price function although it may have significant effect in a system composed of closely located junctions. The results obtained from this study are useful to show that although optimization methods do not provide a definite solution / partial enumeration method can assist designers to select the optimum system combination.

abstract: This dissertation consists of three substantive chapters. The first substantive chapter investigates the premature harvesting problem in fisheries. Traditionally, yield-per-recruit analysis has been used to both assess and address the premature harvesting of fish stocks. However, the fact that fish size often affects the unit price suggests that this approach may be inadequate. In this chapter, I first synthesize the conventional yield-per-recruit analysis, and then extend this conventional approach by incorporating a size-price function for a revenue-per-recruit analysis. An optimal control approach is then used to derive a general bioeconomic solution for the optimal harvesting of a short-lived single cohort. This approach prevents economically premature harvesting and provides an "optimal economic yield". By comparing the yield- and revenue-per-recruit management strategies with the bioeconomic management strategy, I am able to test the economic efficiency of the conventional yield-per-recruit approach. This is illustrated with a numerical study. It shows that a bioeconomic strategy can significantly improve economic welfare compared with the yield-per-recruit strategy, particularly in the face of high natural mortality. Nevertheless, I find that harvesting on a revenue-per-recruit basis improves management policy and can generate a rent that is close to that from bioeconomic analysis, in particular when the natural mortality is relatively low. The second substantive chapter explores the conservation potential of a whale permit market under bounded economic uncertainty. Pro- and anti-whaling stakeholders are concerned about a recently proposed, "cap and trade" system for managing the global harvest of whales. Supporters argue that such an approach represents a novel solution to the current gridlock in international whale management. In addition to ethical objections, opponents worry that uncertainty about demand for whale-based products and the environmental benefits of conservation may make it difficult to predict the outcome of a whale share market. In this study, I use population and economic data for minke whales to examine the potential ecological consequences of the establishment of a whale permit market in Norway under bounded but significant economic uncertainty. A bioeconomic model is developed to evaluate the influence of economic uncertainties associated with pro- and anti- whaling demands on long-run steady state whale population size, harvest, and potential allocation. The results indicate that these economic uncertainties, in particular on the conservation demand side, play an important role in determining the steady state ecological outcome of a whale share market. A key finding is that while a whale share market has the potential to yield a wide range of allocations between conservation and whaling interests - outcomes in which conservationists effectively "buy out" the whaling industry seem most likely. The third substantive chapter examines the sea lice externality between farmed fisheries and wild fisheries. A central issue in the debate over the effect of fish farming on the wild fisheries is the nature of sea lice population dynamics and the wild juvenile mortality rate induced by sea lice infection. This study develops a bioeconomic model that integrates sea lice population dynamics, fish population dynamics, aquaculture and wild capture salmon fisheries in an optimal control framework. It provides a tool to investigate sea lice control policy from the standpoint both of private aquaculture producers and wild fishery managers by considering the sea lice infection externality between farmed and wild fisheries. Numerical results suggest that the state trajectory paths may be quite different under different management regimes, but approach the same steady state. Although the difference in economic benefits is not significant in the particular case considered due to the low value of the wild fishery, I investigate the possibility of levying a tax on aquaculture production for correcting the sea lice externality generated by fish farms. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Biology 2014

Une des particularités du marché des compagnies aériennes est la grande divergence des prix des billets pour les mêmes vol. Cela reflète principalement l'incapacité des entreprises à modifier facilement les volumes de production et/ou à les stocker. Le développement et l'utilisation des modèles de "yield management" (modèles d'attribution des sièges) ont été centrés sur les compagnies aériennes proposant différents types de tarifs pour un même vol. L'objectif de cette thèse est de construire un certain nombre de modèles économiques pour expliquer la dispersion des prix sur le marché du transport aérien à partir de différents points de vue. Dans le chapitre 3, je crée un modèle de prix direct qui explique comment différentes caractéristiques du produit et du consommateur influencent le niveau de prix. Le chapitre 4 est consacré aux différences de niveau de prix du point de vue de la concurrence. Dans un jeu stratégique où les entreprises se font concurrence, ! 'ensemble de stratégies rationalisables pour chaque joueur implique toutes les meilleures réponses aux décisions des autres. Ce chapitre propose un test empirique de l'existence de l'équilibre de Nash unique dans un oligopole de Cournot. Dans le chapitre 5, je traite le marché des passagers aériens comme un marché différenciant les produits et applique un modèle logit multinomial pour calculer les élasticités-prix. Le modèle logit (mettant particulièrement l'accent sur l'hétérogénéité des consommateurs) estime de quelle manière les différentes caractéristiques du produit influencent les parts de marché. / Nowadays one of peculiarities of the liberalized airline market is a huge divergence of ticket prices for the same flights. Mostly it reflects the companies' being unable to easily change the volumes of production or/and store them. The development and use of the yield management models (seat allocation models) have centered on airlines offering a variety of different types of fares for travel on the same flight. The goal of this dissertation is to construct a number of economic models to explain the price dispersion on the airline market from the different points of view. In Part 3, I create a direct price mode! which explains how different product and consumer characteristics influence the price level. It is shown how different attributes like the moment of ticket reservation, ticket class, weekday of the departure and number of coupons define the price and how it corresponds to the consumer characteristics (gender, income, age, etc.). Part 4 is devoted to the differences of the price level from the competition point of view. In a strategic game where firms compete against each other the set of rationalizable strategies for each player entails ail the best responses to the others' decisions. This chapter proposes an empirical test of the existence of the unique Nash equilibrium in a Cournot oligopoly. In Part 5 I treat an airline passenger market as a market with the product differentiation and apply a multinomial logit model to calculate price elasticities. The logit model (with a special focus on the consumers heterogeneity) estimates how the different product characteristics influence the market shares.