Professor Ju-Chin Huang Publishes in Land Economics

Professor Ju-Chin Huang latest research, “A Hedonic Price Model to Recover Marginal Willingness to Pay for Product Attributes in the Presence of Market Power,” published in the August 2025 issue of Land Economics. 

The study, co-authored with Min Qiang Zhao, advances hedonic pricing methodology by developing an approach that jointly estimates both price-cost markups and consumers’ marginal willingness to pay for product attributes within imperfectly competitive markets. This improvement, based on the widely used semi-log specification, enhances the applicability and reliability of empirical hedonic valuation studies. 

Applying this new framework to U.S. ski lift ticket prices, Huang and Zhao find a price-cost ratio between one and two, with pass-sharing arrangements further increasing markups. The research demonstrates that ignoring market power can bias the estimated value of product attributes — a finding with important implications for economists, policymakers, and industry decision-makers who rely on hedonic valuation methods. 

Land Economics is a leading peer-reviewed journal covering the intersection of economics, natural resources, and public policy.