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Economists have always found it difficult to investigate the demand for the automobile good due to its heterogeneity. In this paper, the automobile is treated as a differentiated product, and a two-step approach is used to estimate a system of structural demand equations for automobile attributes. The obtained results are statistically sound and in conformity with theoretical expectations. This should be taken as an indication of the validity and robustness of the procedure used in this analysis.

This paper uses a two-stage cost function model to analyse substitution possibilities among inputs in the production of urban housing. Aggregate price indexes for groups of inputs are generated in the first stage, and then used in the estimation of the aggregate cost function in the second stage. The procedure is valid under the assumption of weak separability. The use of flexible functional forms at both stages allowed the analysis to be carried out by imposing fewer restrictions as a part of the maintained hypothesis than has been the case in the previous literature. The findings are consistent with the postulates of cost-minimising factor demand theory.

This paper tests for the existence of short-run equilibrium in the urban housing market in Metropolitan Toronto. The alternative hypothesis is the housing market segmented with respect to locational and structural attributes. We found insignificant differences in attribute prices across hypothesized submarkets. This implies that an unstratified hedonic price regressions model, based on the assumption of short-run equilibrium, is equally efficient in the analysis of housing prices as a model based on a number of subsamples stratified along lines of segmentation.

This paper uses cost functions to test the hypothesis of constancy of the elasticity of substitution among land and capital inputs in the production of single-family housing. The findings suggest that the substitution parameter varies over the range of the sample. The hypothesis of homotheticity in the production is also rejected. This implies that the CES and Cobb–Douglas production functions are not suitable for urban housing production modelling. The analysis has been carried out by imposing much weaker restrictions as a part of the maintained hypotheses than has been the case in the recent literature.

In this paper, we have empirically estimated demand equations for housing attributes, using a two-step approach in conformity with the procedure proposed by Sherwin Rosen. The identification problem inherent in Rosen's procedure has been avoided by estimating separate equations for distinct market segments in the first step. The estimates of the demand functions obtained in the second step are consistent with theoretical expectations.

The objective of this paper is to investigate the role of marketing competition in the NorthAmerican automobile market. This is accomplished by estimating a market-share demand function. The main difficulty with the analysis of demand for automobiles is heterogeneity of model types. Quality differences among different models, both at a point in time and through time cannot be ignored, since price and sales depend on them. One way to remedy this situation is to apply the hedonic method by regressing the price of a model on its characteristics. In this way, the implicit prices for each of the qualitative attributes are derived and then used, free of quality-differences, in the second stage estimation of a market-share demand function. There has been considerable interest in estimating demand functions for automobiles. However, most of the previous research has focused on total automobile demand. In this approach, equations on total sales are estimated without taking into account differences in quality characteristics of different model types. These studies usually relate the depreciation of the service level of the currently held stock of automobiles to the demand for new stock. This leads to a very general stock adjustment [7] or generalized acceleration framework [10]. The best known time-series studies of the aggregate automobile demand using different variants of this approach are those of Chow [2], Suits [15], Wykoff [19], and Westin [18]. The estimates of price elasticities from these studies are about - 1, and income elasticities range from 1.5 to 4. Previous research on automobile demand allowing for qualitative differences in characteristics among different models is much less extensive. The most important research effort in this direction is the paper by Cowling and Cubbin [4]. They explained market-share movements for different car manufacturers by changes in quality adjusted prices using data from England for the period 1957-1968. Their quality adjusted price vector is proxied by the residuals from hedonic price regressions, using the data on manufacturer's models. The idea that the residuals from the regression of prices of differentiated goods on their qualitative attributes are the quality adjusted prices, was suggested by Griliches [8]. Cowling and Cubbin used, as their quality-adjusted price for a specific manufacturing firm, the mean residual computed by taking into account all the models offered by