Analysing spending behaviour for different airline tourists: Evidence from Taiwanese tourists travelling to North-East Asia

This study investigates the spending behaviours of Taiwanese outbound tourists travelling to Japan or Korea and explores the differences between various airline travellers. 432 travellers were analysed and found that their spending behaviours were quite different at destinations. The seemingly unrelated regressions model was further employed and the results suggested that the impacts of trip characteristics and personal socio-demographics on various levels of travel expenditures vary somewhat across different types of airline users, and tourist consumption behaviours at destinations are partially subject to prepaid expenditures. Implications for the aviation and tourism industry are discussed.

Tobacco Product Access Scenarios Influence Hypothetical Use Behaviors

Objective: In this paper, we characterize how potential policies restricting access to tobacco products may impact use behaviors among adult, past 30-day, smokers and e-cigarette users. Methods: We conducted an online experiment with 820 smokers, e-cigarette users, and dual users (April 27-June 8, 2020). We randomized participants to one of 4 hypothetical access scenarios: (1) tobacco retail stores open + pharmacies open (TOPO); (2) tobacco stores open but favorite brand unavailable + pharmacies open (TOPO-NFB); (3) tobacco stores closed + pharmacies open (TCPO); and (4) tobacco stores closed + pharmacies closed (TCPC). Outcomes (measured on 0-100 visual analog scales) included the likelihood of quitting, reducing, switching brands or products, and finding another source of tobacco products. Seemingly unrelated regressions tested for associations between access scenarios and prospective tobacco use behaviors. Results: Participants in the TCPO and TOPO-NFB scenarios were more likely to reduce use, switch brands/products, and find another source (ps < .001) than those in the TOPO scenario. Dual and flavored product users were more likely to switch products (ps < .01). Conclusions: When tobacco retailers are closed, tobacco users may be more likely to quit and/or reduce use compared to when retailers are open. However, access restrictions could prompt users to switch tobacco brands/products or sources.

DRIVERS OF FUTURE SAVINGS OF MALAYSIAN HOUSEHOLDS

The households’ savings in Malaysia have shown a deteriorating trend that negatively impacts their financial security. The Financial Inclusion and Capability Study of BNM (2016) indicates that merely 6 percent of Malaysians could survive for more than six months and 18 percent up to three months if they lose their main source of income. Thus, it is imperative to examine the drivers of future savings of Malaysian households. A sample of 1,106 bank customers in three cities of peninsular Malaysia was recruited, and the descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and Seemingly Unrelated Regressions (SUR) were employed. The results reveal that about 25 percent of households are not likely to make any changes in their savings profile in various financial and physical assets. The drivers of future saving are found to be socio-demographic parameters, such as age, education level, the number of working members in the household, and income, and other parameters, such as the percentage of income saved, and the period of the saving plan, which have a significant relationship with the change in future savings of the households. The policy implications of the findings are also presented.

Improved Average Estimation in Seemingly Unrelated Regressions

In this paper, we propose an efficient weighted average estimator in Seemingly Unrelated Regressions. This average estimator shrinks a generalized least squares (GLS) estimator towards a restricted GLS estimator, where the restrictions represent possible parameter homogeneity specifications. The shrinkage weight is inversely proportional to a weighted quadratic loss function. The approximate bias and second moment matrix of the average estimator using the large-sample approximations are provided. We give the conditions under which the average estimator dominates the GLS estimator on the basis of their mean squared errors. We illustrate our estimator by applying it to a cost system for United States (U.S.) Commercial banks, over the period from 2000 to 2018. Our results indicate that on average most of the banks have been operating under increasing returns to scale. We find that over the recent years, scale economies are a plausible reason for the growth in average size of banks and the tendency toward increasing scale is likely to continue