Urban Zoning for Sustainable Tourism: A Continuum of Accommodation to Enhance City Resilience

While governments around the world are embarking on the path to recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, sustainable tourism planning is crucial, in particular in the hospitality sector, which enhances the resilience of destinations. However, many destination management models overlook the role of urban zoning. Little is known about the impacts of land-use zoning on the hospitality and property industries, especially with the current disruption of short-term peer-to-peer accommodation like Airbnb. Euclidean zoning, also known as effects-based planning, has long been criticised in destination management for its exclusionary nature and lack of flexibility. With exclusionary zoning, property owners may only be able to use their land sub-optimally, and cities will be less efficient in responding to market changes in short-term and long-term accommodation demands, but planning intentions can be better controlled, and the property supply can be more stable. Taking Hong Kong as a noteworthy case, this study puts forward a conceptual framework that enables comparison of a novel zoning approach with the traditional zoning approach. This novel zoning approach encompasses both the short- and long-term rental sectors as a continuum of accommodation, ranging from hotels and serviced apartments to Airbnb and rental housing units under a unified regulatory and planning regime to enhance the switching options value. This novel zoning system can gear up the tourism sector with the rapid growth of the sharing economy and aligns with sustainable tourism to ensure long-term socioeconomic benefits to related stakeholders. We extract the data of Airbnb listings to construct the first Airbnb ADR Index (ADRI) by Repeat-sales method, and the results support our Switching Option Hypothesis.

Stock Return Volatility, Firm Real Option Value, And Mergers And Acquisitions Premiums

Considerable effort has been devoted to indicate the critical determinants of acquisition premiums. However, the determinants of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) premiums are not yet fully understood. This research paper empirically examines the effect of stock return volatility on mergers and acquisitions premiums through real options value of bidder and target firms. With a sample of 2,559 completed M&A deals in the US during 1986-2016, we find that bidder firms tend to pay more premiums for the targets that have more future real option value and higher risk. To be more specific, when targets have more real options measured as high Research and Development (R&D) to market value, high sales growth rate, and low leverage ratio, the relationship between target return volatility and acquisition premiums is stronger. This study contributes not only to the literature regarding the determinants of mergers and acquisitions premiums but also to the literature of real options value. Keywords: Mergers and acquisition premiums, acquisition premiums, stock return volatility, real options, growth options

Stock Return Volatility, Firm Real Option Value, And Mergers And Acquisitions Premiums

Considerable effort has been devoted to indicate the critical determinants of acquisition premiums. However, the determinants of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) premiums are not yet fully understood. This research paper empirically examines the effect of stock return volatility on mergers and acquisitions premiums through real options value of bidder and target firms. With a sample of 2,559 completed M&A deals in the US during 1986-2016, we find that bidder firms tend to pay more premiums for the targets that have more future real option value and higher risk. To be more specific, when targets have more real options measured as high Research and Development (R&D) to market value, high sales growth rate, and low leverage ratio, the relationship between target return volatility and acquisition premiums is stronger. This study contributes not only to the literature regarding the determinants of mergers and acquisitions premiums but also to the literature of real options value. Keywords: Mergers and acquisition premiums, acquisition premiums, stock return volatility, real options, growth options

Mid-frontal Theta during Conflict in a Value-based Decision Task

Mid-frontal theta is a sensitive marker for cognitive conflict. However, most research focuses on cognitive control paradigms (e.g., the Flanker task). Here, we ask if mid-frontal theta is also sensitive to response conflicts within value-based decision-making. We recorded electroencephalography activity during a value-based binary decision task. In this task, participants collect rewards in a virtual two-dimensional world. In each trial, we present two reward options that are either quick to collect but are smaller in value, or take longer to collect but are larger in value. The subjective value of each option is driven by the options' value and how quickly they can be reached. We used this task to investigate three types of potential conflicts: choice ambiguity, choice repetitions, and temporal delay. We investigated choice repetition by biasing participants toward one option for two trials and then testing how that affects the subsequent decision. We manipulated choice ambiguity by varying the subjective values of the decision options, and temporal delay by making one option quick to collect and one longer to collect. The behavioral results showed the expected effects: Decision times were shorter for unambiguous choices, participants showed a tendency to repeat the previous choice and decision times were shorter for repetitions, and decision times were shorter for earlier available choices. Response-locked mid-frontal theta power was increased for choice switches as compared to choice repetitions, and for the later available as compared to the earlier available option, but we found no effect of ambiguity.

Valuations and Decisions of Investing in Corporate Social Responsibility: A Real Options Viewpoint

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) implementation could raise corporate reputations and benefit long-term development. Studying the effects of CRS on corporate valuation is essential. However, studies on the valuation of CSR are limited, particularly studies involving a dynamic model for valuing CSR. This study applies a real options approach to derive the company valuation of CSR investments, CSR options value, and the optimal timing for implementing CSR. This study elucidates the value of CSR and the decision to invest in CSR. Specifically, the value of CSR options facilitates determining whether to invest in CSR, and the optimal threshold for implementing CSR indicates explicitly when to invest in CSR. In addition, numerical analyses and results are demonstrated to verify the established model. This is the first and novel attempt to consider the valuation model and optimal strategies of CSR investments using the methods of real options.

Essential information: Uncertainty and optimal control of Ebola outbreaks

Early resolution of uncertainty during an epidemic outbreak can lead to rapid and efficient decision making, provided that the uncertainty affects prioritization of actions. The wide range in caseload projections for the 2014 Ebola outbreak caused great concern and debate about the utility of models. By coding and running 37 published Ebola models with five candidate interventions, we found that, despite this large variation in caseload projection, the ranking of management options was relatively consistent. Reducing funeral transmission and reducing community transmission were generally ranked as the two best options. Value of information (VoI) analyses show that caseloads could be reduced by 11% by resolving all model-specific uncertainties, with information about model structure accounting for 82% of this reduction and uncertainty about caseload only accounting for 12%. Our study shows that the uncertainty that is of most interest epidemiologically may not be the same as the uncertainty that is most relevant for management. If the goal is to improve management outcomes, then the focus of study should be to identify and resolve those uncertainties that most hinder the choice of an optimal intervention. Our study further shows that simplifying multiple alternative models into a smaller number of relevant groups (here, with shared structure) could streamline the decision-making process and may allow for a better integration of epidemiological modeling and decision making for policy.