According to decision making theory, if we know the user’s utility Ui = U(si) of all possible alternatives si, then we can uniquely predict the user’s preferences. In practice, we often only know approximate values Vi ≈ Ui of the user’s utilities. Based on these approximate values, we can only make probabilistic predictions of the user’s preferences. It is empirically known that in many real-li...

Allowing for variations in behaviour across respondents is one of the most fundamental principles in discrete choice modelling, given that the assumption of a purely homogeneous population cannot in general (or ever) be seen to be valid. Two approaches have classically been used to address this problem; the use of deterministic segmentations of the population, and the use of a random continuous...

Climate change and uncertain economies challenge small Native communities of the North American Arctic, with their reliance on local fish and wildlife resources. Methodological boundaries of single-discipline analyses limit the contribution of academic research to the real-world questions facing Arctic residents. Oversimplified assumptions and lack of data hamper mainstream economic approaches ...

This paper proposes a rank-based estimator for a location parameter in the binary choice model under a monotonic index and symmetry condition, given an initial Jnconsistent estimator for the slope parameter. The estimator converges at the usual parametric rate. Compared with existing estimators, no nonparametric smoothing is needed here. A small Monte Carlo study illustrates the usefulness of t...

Discrete choice models are employed (as the name suggests) to explain a discrete choice that an individual makes. For example, such a choice might be whether or not to join the labor force, whether or not to buy a car, whether or not to continue on to graduate school, whether or not to accept a job with a consulting …rm, or whether or not to sign up with an internet provider. Later in the cours...

Strategic planning, product design and marketing decisions often require a thorough understandinq of consumers' preferences and choice behaviors. This paper describes the use of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for eliciting preferences by questionnaire. Using AHP, consumers can comfortably provide quantitative measures of numerous, diverse and intangible influences on their choices. The pr...

Many of the existing methods for evaluating an airline’s on-time performance are based on flight-centric measures of delay. However, recent research has demonstrated that passenger delays depend on many factors in addition to flight delays. For instance, significant passenger delays result from flight cancellations and missed connections, which themselves depend on a significant number of facto...

In some environments, a player only learns the choice of another player if he or she undertakes a risky choice. While costless preplay communication (cheap talk) has been found to be effective in experimental coordination games, participants have typically learned both own payoffs and the other player’s action. Are both of these components necessary for cheap talk to be effective? In our 2 2 st...

The Dilemma of Direct Democracy CRAIG M. BURNETT, ELIZABETH GARRETT & MATHEW D. McCUBBINS The dilemma of direct democracy is that voters may not always be able to make welfareimproving decisions. Lupia’s seminal work has led us to believe that voters can substitute voting cues for substantive policy knowledge. Lupia, however, emphasized that cues were valuable under certain conditions and not o...

Considerably less research has been done on modeling freight demand with disaggregate discrete models than on modeling passenger demand. The principal reason for this imbalance is the lack of freight demand data. Freight demand characteristics are expensive to obtain and are sometimes confidential. This paper analyzes the freight demand characteristics that drive modal choice by means of a larg...