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In this chapter, we examine the relationship between the cyclical components of output, the price level and the inflation rate. During the post-war period, there is a negative correlation between output and the price level and a positive correlation between output and the inflation rate. A phase shift in the cyclical component between output and the price level can account for these two facts. The phase shift is consistent with movements in the price level Granger causes movements in output. In addition, we consider time-varying correlations between the two pairs of series. Spectral analysis suggest the price and output have different wavelengths, but the difference is not statistically significant.

The collection of chapters in this 30th volume of Advances in Econometrics provides a well-deserved tribute to Thomas B. Fomby and R. Carter Hill, who have served as editors of the Advances in Econometrics series for 25 and 21 years, respectively. Volume 30 contains a more varied collection of chapters than previous volumes, in essence mirroring the wide variety of econometric topics covered by the series over 30 years. Volume 30 starts with a chapter discussing the history of this series over the last 30 years. The next five chapters can be broadly categorized as focusing on model specification and testing. Following this section are three contributions that examine instrumental variables models in quite different settings. The next four chapters focus on applied macroeconomics topics. The final chapter offers a practical guide to conducting Monte Carlo simulations.

To retain consumer attention and increase purchasing rates, many e-commerce vendors have adopted content-based recommender systems. However, apart from text-based documents, there is little theoretical background guiding element selection, resulting in a limited content analysis problem. Another inherent problem is overspecialization. The purpose of this paper is to establish a value-based recommendation methodology for identifying favorable attributes, benefits, and values on the basis of means-end chain theory. The identified elements and the relationships between them were utilized to construct a recommender system without incurring either problem.

This study adopted soft laddering and content analysis to collect popular elements. The relationships between the elements were established by using a hard laddering online questionnaire. The elements and the relationships were utilized to build a hierarchical value map (HVM). A mathematical model was then devised on the basis of the HVM to predict user preferences of attributes.

The results of a performance comparison showed that the proposed method outperformed the content-based attribute recommendation method and a hybrid method by 39 and 68 percent, respectively.

Although hybrid methods have been proposed to resolve the problem of overspecialization in content-based recommender systems, such methods have incurred “cold start” and “sparsity” problems. The proposed method can provide recommendations without causing these problems while outperforming the content-based and hybrid approaches.

Previous empirical studies have not documented the link between vegetarians’ dietary constraints and travel intentions. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to utilise a mixed-methods approach to examine the interrelationships of this group’s travel motivations, travel constraints, constraint negotiations and behavioural intentions, with special reference to how dietary constraints deter its members from travelling, and its extent.

An online questionnaire was administered to outbound Taiwanese vegetarian travellers (n=418), and this was followed by in-depth, semi-structured interviews (n=9) to complement the quantitative data.

The results indicated that vegetarians’ dietary constraints significantly deterred them from travelling in certain circumstances: notably, in the company of non-vegetarians. Nevertheless, it was found that some vegetarians efficiently negotiated their constraints and persisted in travelling, in some cases, by compromising their dietary preferences.

Travel agents and planners should explore more strategies to meet the needs of vegetarian travellers to increase this group’s travel satisfaction.

This study established the first theoretical model explaining the relationships among vegetarians’ travel motivations, dietary constraints, constraint negotiations and travel intentions.