Search Results (48)

With the aim to characterise the situation of the subsector, 25 poultry farms of the endangered native Utrerana chicken egg-laying-oriented breed (Gallus gallus Linnaeus, 1758) were surveyed in Andalusia (southern Spain) from 2021 to 2023 to investigate the structure of the farms, number of birds, health status, feeding management, and marketing of their products. It was found that the pace of foundation of Utrerana chicken farms accelerated from 2009, and most of the farms were concentrated in the province of Seville. Only 40% of the farms were legally registered. This breed is raised on small farms mainly dedicated to self-supply and raising birds for conformation and their aesthetic values, with limited marketing of eggs and meat, with facilities consisting often of one poultry house and one outdoor enclosure, and with a low number of laying hens per farm (53.5 on average). Current productivity is low, with an average of 139 eggs per hen per year, but hens have a long reproductive lifespan, averaging 4 years. The Partridge variety of the breed was the most common, followed by the Black-barred and Black varieties, while the White variety was very scarce, with only 31 specimens in total. Two-thirds of the farmers also raised other breeds of chickens, in addition to the Utrerana. The management and production system was free-range or backyard, with a certain proximity to the requirements of European Union-certified organic production with regard to stocking densities and generally with a good sanitary status, respect for welfare, and implementation of biosecurity measures on the farms. The feeding of the chickens was based on grazing in outdoor enclosures and on the provision of grains and compound feed, with 40.0% of farmers using commercial compound feed and half preparing feed themselves. Two-thirds of the farmers were affiliated with the National Association of Utrerana Chicken Breeders (“Asociación Nacional de Criadores de Gallinas Utreranas”, ANCGU, in Spanish); almost half of them took part with their birds in fairs and conformation shows, such as the Utrerana Chicken Fair held in Utrera (province of Seville) and more than a quarter of them have sold live birds of the breed at these fairs. The farmers carry out few promotional and advertising activities for their farms and products, predominantly by using social networks, and the market area reached is mainly local. In conclusion, this research has shown that the current alternative production system for Utrerana chicken is similar to that of the hens that originated the breed and consists of a few amateur farms, with a small number of birds, distributed mainly throughout the Andalusian countryside. It has been highlighted that there is a need for the livestock authorities to implement programmes for supporting farmers and promoting the breeding of this endangered avian breed, native to the Spanish zoogenetic heritage. Full article

The changing demographics of the global population represent a significant challenge for humanity. Such changes have an impact on the functioning of the economy, including the housing market, and necessitate constant monitoring. This study evaluated the spatial diversity of all the large and medium-sized cities in the West Pomeranian Voivodeship, situated in the north-west of Poland, in terms of three key factors: demographic potential, housing stock and their price levels. Furthermore, the interactions between the cities’ positions in the rankings, which were created on the basis of the aforementioned phenomena, were identified. In order to achieve the objectives of the study, the linear object ordering method, the Hellwig pattern method and Kendall’s tau rank correlation coefficient were employed. The research was conducted using data from the years 2018 to 2022, sourced from the databases of the Polish Statistical Office and the Analysis and Monitoring System of the Real Estate Market. The study observed a relatively strong positive correlation between the positions of cities in the ranking created for demographic potential and the level of residential property prices for the year 2020. The correlation between the positions of cities in the rankings for demographic potential and housing real estate stock was found to be very weak. The case of Koszalin was identified as an optimal location for residence due to the existing residential property stock and its prices. This was corroborated by the city’s residents, who also enabled the city to be ranked at the top of a ranking created for this phenomenon through the diagnostic variables for demographic potential. This article addresses a research gap, as, to the best of our knowledge, the indicated relationships have not yet been analysed in the contexts presented in the article. Full article

This paper examines the quantile connectedness between Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), housing market sentiment, and stock market sentiment in the U.S. over the period between January 2014 and June 2022 using the quantile vector autoregression (QVAR) model. We find modest spillover effects at the median quantile (8.51%), which become more pronounced at the extreme tails (between 50.51% and 59.73%). The COVID-19 pandemic amplifies these interconnections. REITs are net receivers at the median but net transmitters at extreme quantiles, while stock market sentiment mainly transmits during normal conditions and receives in highly bullish markets. Home purchase sentiment shifts from fluctuating roles before the pandemic to being a net transmitter post-2021. Overall, negative shocks have a greater impact than positive ones, and REITs exhibit stock-like behavior. These findings underscore the importance for fund managers and investors to consider sentiment volatility in both stock and real estate markets, especially during extreme market conditions. Full article

Riyadh has recently witnessed rapid growth in the use of short-term rentals. Their impact on the city’s housing market and long-term rentals has been critical. The emergence of recreational festivals such as the Riyadh and Diriyah Seasons, with their accompanying events, as well as the widespread use of daily rental platforms such as Airbnb, have created a new market for short-term rentals that has changed the city’s rental landscape. This study compared data on the number of units geared toward daily rent and their average daily rates (ADRs), obtained from the Airbnb platform, with data on long-term rental units and their revenue, extracted from the Ejar platform. The data cover the five sectors of Riyadh city. Sample neighborhoods were selected from each sector. The results show that after a period of stagnation due to the precautionary measures taken during the COVID-19 pandemic, the short-term rental market saw a significant recovery once these measures were lifted. The emergence of the short-term rental market has negatively affected the long-term rental market by drying up its stock and raising rent prices, thus leading to tourism-induced displacement of low-income residents and further exacerbating the housing problem in the city. Therefore, there is an urgent need to regulate this new rental market to maintain a balance between short- and long-term markets in Riyadh. Full article

Increasing flood losses in the Gulf of Mexico related to development patterns and climate hazards pose serious threats to resilience and insurability. The purpose of this study is to understand how scale, social vulnerability, risk, and urban form relate to National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) policy coverage and flood exposure. Our multilevel models identify that flooding is significantly clustered by region and counties, especially shoreline counties. Our measures of risk suggest that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) special flood hazard area (SFHA) underestimates risk and exposure when compared with the Flood Factor and that there is some compensation in terms of insurance coverage, suggesting a pattern of adverse selection. Older housing stock appears both less insured and less exposed, raising questions of whether current growth patterns are increasing risk independent of environmental change. Our models suggest that census tracts with higher percentages of black residents are less insured and more exposed, and a similar pattern exists for rural areas. Our results highlight the need to seek common solutions across the Gulf of Mexico, concentrating on the most flood-exposed counties, and that specific resilience strategies may be necessary to protect areas with socially vulnerable populations, especially in rural areas. Underlying challenges exist due to the spatial relationship between exposure and social vulnerability and the potential for adverse selection in insurance markets due to different measures of risk. Full article

Public Housing Companies (PHCs) play an important role in the Swedish housing market, with approximately 300 companies managing circa 802,000 dwellings. The public housing sector thereby represents almost 20 percent of the total housing stock in Sweden and half of the apartments that are available for rental. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the most important factors behind the profitability in Swedish PHCs between 2010 and 2019. The effects of internal growth, age, and capital structure in the PHCs are analyzed together with the effect of the growth of the local market, as well as local rent levels. Financial information for circa 300 PHCs in Sweden was gathered from annual reports published between 2010 to 2019. The financial information was analyzed using panel data analysis methods with several explanatory variables to explain the financial performance of the PHCs. The results from the analysis indicate a highly significant and positive relationship between the annual change in population, age, and profitability in the PHC. A highly significant and negative relationship was found between the PHC internal growth, capital structure, and profitability. The results showed no significant relationship between changes in income, rent levels, and profitability in Swedish PHC. Full article

We use house prices (HP) and house price indices (HPI) as a proxy to income distribution. Specifically, we analyze distribution of sale prices in the 1970–2010 window of over 116,000 single-family homes in Hamilton County, Ohio, including Cincinnati metro area of about 2.2 million people. We also analyze distributions of HPI, published by Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), for nearly 18,000 US ZIP codes that cover a period of over 40 years starting in 1980’s. If HP can be viewed as a first derivative of income, HPI can be viewed as its second derivative. We use generalized beta (GB) family of functions to fit distributions of HP and HPI since GB naturally arises from the models of economic exchange described by stochastic differential equations. Our main finding is that HP and multi-year HPI exhibit a negative Dragon King (nDK) behavior, wherein power-law distribution tail gives way to an abrupt decay to a finite upper limit value, which is similar to our recent findings for realized volatility of S&P500 index in the US stock market. This type of tail behavior is best fitted by a modified GB (mGB) distribution. Tails of single-year HPI appear to show more consistency with power-law behavior, which is better described by a GB Prime (GB2) distribution. We supplement full distribution fits by mGB and GB2 with direct linear fits (LF) of the tails. Our numerical procedure relies on evaluation of confidence intervals (CI) of the fits, as well as of p-values that give the likelihood that data come from the fitted distributions. Full article

Malta faces a significant challenge in reducing carbon emissions, with energy consumption in its 153,100 occupied residences contributing to 30% of CO₂ emissions. This study focuses on a sample of an 1870s, 80 sq-m footprint, three-story residence, emblematic of similar properties facing marketability issues due to age, structure, and maintenance. The objective is to assess a techno-economic energy and CO₂ abatement framework, including advanced lighting devices, appliances, photovoltaics, wind turbines, energy storage, and vehicle-to-grid possibilities. The research evaluates comfortability and calculates potential 25-year kWh reduction and cost savings for each measure. The findings demonstrate the feasibility of implementing diversified renewable and alternative energy sources in such residences. Over 25 years, approximately 250 MWh of energy could be mitigated, leading to a reduction of approximately 140 metric tons of carbon dioxide. The study emphasizes the importance of housing stock efficiency in both new construction and retrofitting, focusing on building performance for health, comfort, and living standards. While most systems are viable, further research is needed for system-wide strategy implementation, particularly in areas like energy storage and wind turbine solutions. The study concludes that adopting emerging technologies could be advantageous in minimizing system costs through innovative building-integrated designs. Full article

Evidence of the asymmetric wealth effect has important implications for investors and continues to merit research attention, not least because much of the evidence based on linear models has been refuted. Indeed, stock and house prices are influenced by economic activity and react non-linearly to positive/negative shocks. This problem justifies our research. The objective of this study is to examine evidence of cointegrations between the US housing and stock markets and between the US and European stock markets, given the international relevance of these exchanges. Using data from 1989:Q1 to 2020:Q2, the Threshold Autoregression model as well as the Momentum Threshold Autoregression model were calculated by combining the US Freddie, DJIA, and SPX indices and the European STOXX and FTSE indices. The results suggest a long-term equilibrium relationship with asymmetric adjustments between the housing market and the US stock markets, as well as between the DJIA, SPX, and FTSE indices. Moreover, the wealth effect is stronger when stock prices outperform house prices above an estimated threshold. This empirical evidence is useful to portfolio managers in their search for non-perfectly related markets that allow investment diversification and control risk exposure across different assets. Full article

Real estate management is a complex process that consists of making or indicating decisions of both a tactical and strategic character. To ensure the realization of the tasks, real property owners need to adjust their services to respond to technological pressure, a dynamically changing market, and the demands of the customer, thus resulting in various innovations introduced by the owners in the process of the public housing management. A review of the subject literature was the source of the theoretical motivation to conduct the empirical research on the innovations implemented by property owners. The main objective of said research was to ascertain which innovations have been implemented by the entities that were owners of public property in the Częstochowa City Commune and how were they evaluated by the residents. A questionnaire survey was used to verify the hypotheses. Statistical analyses were also carried out using the IBM SPSS Statistics 26 package, which was used to analyze basic descriptive statistics, including the Shapiro–Wilk test, the Student’s t-test for independent samples, Spearman’s rho correlation analysis, Pearson’s r correlation analysis, and linear regression analysis. The research presented in this paper was conducted in the Q3 and Q4 of 2020 among the residents of the public housing in Częstochowa, Silesian Voivodeship, Poland. The measurement tool used was a survey form. The survey itself was submitted by 444 respondents (n = 444). The results of the research made it possible to determine which innovations were implemented by the municipality in question and to what extent they were important or for the residents. The main finding of the survey is that residents of the municipal housing stock consider the innovations implemented by the municipality to be important. Full article

The building sector is crucial in all of the possible net zero scenarios suggested for the European Union. In this area, the Italian situation is exemplary. Italy suffers from an aging and low-performance building stock and needs to increase its annual rate of energy retrofits in order to achieve its 2030 and 2050 targets. Even though since at least 2007, several different incentives schemes intended to stimulate energy-efficiency interventions have been in place, Italy has not been sufficiently able to promote deep retrofits. In 2020, in order to help the economy recover after the lockdowns that were introduced to face the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, the existing incentives were increased to up to 110% of investments for interventions that improved the energy class by at least two grades. This so-called “Superbonus” was also extended to the public social housing sector thanks to a credit assignment scheme. Given the results of this provisional phase, a possible policy roadmap for the energy renovation of the residential and educational building stock in Italy is presented in this paper through an analysis of data related to the implementation of current instruments in terms of number of interventions, investment needed, energy savings and evaluation of potential benefits and costs that can derive from an increase in the current deep-renovation rate. Through definition of a long-term renovation strategy, this paper illustrates how market barriers and other issues in instrument design can be tackled and how policymakers can help to develop a sustainable long-term roadmap for energy-efficient buildings. Beyond the residential sector, public buildings, particularly educational buildings, are taken into consideration as well, as they are places of collective use that represent the social values of fairness and sustainability and can therefore have an exemplary role for private initiatives. Full article

Australian housing prices are reported to be overvalued and unaffordable for the past two decades. Many researchers and practitioners have attributed the persistent growth in housing prices to the prolonged period of low borrowing costs. However, due to inflationary pressure, the Central Bank has raised its cash rate consecutively in recent months. This paper aims to examine whether interest rate rises affect housing price in different parts of Australia. Evidence generated from the analysis reported bipolar results between the large and smaller cities, whereby housing prices in Sydney and Melbourne show a significant negative relationship with interest rate changes while Brisbane and the Gold Coast and Perth and Adelaide, respectively, are showing negative but insignificant results during the study period. Short-run trend projections on housing prices indicate that Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and the Gold Coast are on a downward trend while Adelaide and Perth will maintain its current momentum before plateauing out later next year. Likewise, control variables, such as oil prices, inflation rate and stock market performance, are found to be related to housing prices in larger cities only. These findings have implications on housing policy, house purchase decisions and investment portfolio management strategy. Full article

Quail (Coturnix genus) game farms were characterised in Spain using variables related to their age, geographical distribution, farmed species, structure, size, and commercialisation, using a survey conducted on 21 farms in 2018. It was found that 38.1% of the sample represented complete-cycle farms, and 61.9%, which have no breeding flocks, undertook only the finishing phase of quail raising. The average size of the breeding flock, with regard to complete-cycle farms, was 1096 males and 3735 females, with a female/male ratio of 3.6, and 75% of these farms carried out self-replacement of breeding quails. The most farmed species was European quail (Coturnix coturnix), followed by Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica), and hybrids of both species. In addition to quail, all farms produced other gamebird species such as pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) and red-legged partridge (Alectoris rufa). The rearing phase, which began when the chicks were one-day-old, lasted 35.3 days on average (range: 25–49 days), with an average stocking density of 47.2 birds/m² in the brooder house. The finishing phase, which was carried out in flying pens at a stocking density of 9.5 birds/m², ended when the quails’ average age was 60.5 days. All farms sold quails for release in hunting reserves (EUR 1.54 per bird) and for dog training (EUR 1.65 per bird) for almost 10 months of the year; only 62% sold quails for shooting after being thrown with an adapted clay-pigeon shooting machine (EUR 1.49 per bird). Transporting quails to their destination (95.2% of the farms) and releasing the birds in the client’s hunting preserve (52.4% of the farms) were services offered by the farms, among others. The main advertising and promotional strategies undertaken by the quail game farms to gain a share of the market included maintaining a business website (85.7% of the farms) and attending game and agricultural fairs (47.6% of the farms). In conclusion, this alternative poultry sector has been consolidated in Spain, five decades since the establishment of the first game farms, and it satisfies a relevant part of the demand for quail hunting. Full article

The search for a pleasant home has concerned people ever since. Paradoxically, people are facing strong difficulties in finding a decent place to settle their lives in cities. As such, the housing market regained momentum in connection with the development of Smart Cities, where life quality of residents is strongly emphasized. Well-being in the metropolis is affected by a wide variety of factors with housing supply being among the most important, hence stirred by financing costs, construction costs, vacancy rate, sales delay, inflation rate, housing stock, price of agricultural land, and regulation. The present article reviews empirical studies on housing supply for a better understanding of the dynamics in this market, shedding some light on the expectable outcomes of policy actions in the promotion of sustainable housing towards the smart city transition. Our review shows that the long-run price elasticity of housing supply is larger than the short-run, as well as the existence of substantial differences in the price elasticity across countries and regions. As such, overall, the hypothesis of a perfectly elastic supply is rejected. In addition, our review highlights that housing supply is negatively related to financial costs, inflation, sales delay, and the existence of regulatory or physical constraints. Also, the elasticity is lower when there are regulatory constraints. Newfangled strategic interaction models, though overlooked in the literature, reinforce that housing does not fit the perfect competition frame. The review proves that we are in face of a non-competitive market in which policy intervention is required to maximize social welfare; policy packages to grant people access to the housing market may be required. However, policy interventions should be carefully designed and clear, to mitigate their potentially negative impact on the housing supply as adverse results may be harmful to the transition towards a smart city. Full article

Emerging markets offer some of the world’s most impactful investment possibilities for investors concerned with addressing global climate and socioeconomic issues. Sophisticated investors conjectured that socially responsible investment (SRI) or environmental social and governance (ESG) might give greater returns than investing in conventional stocks in an emerging market. At the same time, the investors favour conserving the environment while generating long-term economic growth. Being able to earn greater returns is an indication of an inefficient market. This paper investigates the random walk (weak-form of the efficient market) of SRI/ESG indices in the emerging market (based on IMF emerging market criteria). We use the daily data as a sample. Random walk is tested using an Augmented Dickey–Fuller (ADF) Unit Root test, Variance ratio test and Hurst exponent test. The findings report that all the indices are not following a random walk. Lack of ESG disclosure, inadequate corporate governance regulation and behavioural bias might be reasons for market inefficiency. Its implications for investors to reap abnormal market returns by identifying the undervalued stock in the emerging economies. The regulator’s approval of operational guidelines and the licensing of exchanges and clearing houses help maintain the markets’ fairness. Then, the regulator should intensify corporate governance enhancement, implementation and enforcement continuously; enhance the market and institutional infrastructure, and focus policy on encouraging a more significant and more diverse investor base. Full article