% ============================================================================
% UQO Working Paper No. 4
% Hedonic Pricing of Short-Term Rental Properties:
% A Multi-Method Analysis of Airbnb Listing Prices in Quebec
% ============================================================================
\documentclass[12pt,letterpaper]{article}

% --- Encoding & Language ---
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[english]{babel}

% --- Page Layout ---
\usepackage[letterpaper, margin=1in, headheight=15pt]{geometry}
\usepackage{setspace}
\onehalfspacing
\setlength{\parindent}{1.5em}
\setlength{\parskip}{0pt}

% --- Typography ---
\usepackage{newtxtext,newtxmath}
\usepackage{amsmath,amsfonts}
\let\Bbbk\relax
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{mathtools}
\usepackage{microtype}

% --- Tables ---
\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{threeparttable}
\usepackage{tabularx}
\usepackage{array}
\usepackage{siunitx}
\usepackage{multirow}
\usepackage{longtable}

% --- Figures ---
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage[
  font       = small,
  labelfont  = bf,
  labelsep   = period,
  skip       = 8pt,
  justification = justified,
  singlelinecheck = false
]{caption}
\usepackage{subcaption}
\usepackage{float}

% --- Colors & Links ---
\usepackage[dvipsnames]{xcolor}
\usepackage[bookmarks, bookmarksnumbered]{hyperref}
\hypersetup{
  colorlinks  = true,
  linkcolor   = NavyBlue,
  citecolor   = NavyBlue,
  urlcolor    = NavyBlue,
  pdftitle    = {Hedonic Pricing of Short-Term Rental Properties: A Multi-Method Analysis of Airbnb Listing Prices in Quebec},
  pdfauthor   = {Simon-Pierre Boucher}
}

% --- Bibliography ---
\usepackage[authoryear,round,semicolon]{natbib}
\bibliographystyle{aer}

% --- Headers & Footers ---
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhf{}
\fancyhead[L]{\small\itshape Hedonic Pricing of Short-Term Rentals in Quebec}
\fancyhead[R]{\small\thepage}
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0.4pt}
\renewcommand{\footrulewidth}{0pt}
\fancypagestyle{plain}{%
  \fancyhf{}
  \fancyfoot[C]{\small\thepage}
  \renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}
}

% --- Section Formatting ---
\usepackage{titlesec}
\titleformat{\section}{\large\bfseries}{\thesection.}{0.5em}{}
\titleformat{\subsection}{\normalsize\bfseries}{\thesubsection.}{0.5em}{}
\titleformat{\subsubsection}{\normalsize\itshape}{\thesubsubsection.}{0.5em}{}

% --- Appendix Support ---
\usepackage{appendix}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\renewcommand{\theHequation}{\thesection.\arabic{equation}}

% --- Graphics Path ---
\graphicspath{{figures/}}

% --- Custom Commands ---
\newcommand{\E}{\mathbb{E}}
\newcommand{\Var}{\mathrm{Var}}
\newcommand{\Cov}{\mathrm{Cov}}
\newcommand{\R}{\mathbb{R}}
\newcommand{\eps}{\varepsilon}
\newcommand{\pval}{\textit{p}-value}

% ============================================================================
% METADATA
% ============================================================================
\newcommand{\WPnumber}{4}
\newcommand{\WPtitle}{Hedonic Pricing of Short-Term Rental Properties: A Multi-Method Analysis of Airbnb Listing Prices in Quebec}
\newcommand{\WPsubtitle}{}
\newcommand{\WPdate}{October 2026}
\newcommand{\WPversion}{1.1}
\newcommand{\WPabstract}{%
We estimate hedonic price functions for a province-wide cross-section of
Airbnb listings in Quebec, Canada, from a scrape of 5,000 listing cards
collected in early 2026 (3,456 with a displayed price). The displayed
price field is bimodal: about 28\% of priced listings, mostly small
Montreal rental units, show the total price of a stay of roughly three
weeks rather than a nightly rate. A two-regime mixture of hedonic
regressions estimated by EM separates the two populations sharply and
leaves 2,480 nightly prices, on which all estimation is based. A
semi-logarithmic hedonic model with city fixed effects, estimated with
heteroskedasticity-robust and clustered standard errors, explains 51\%
of the variance of log prices. Guest capacity (elasticity 0.33),
bathrooms (0.44) and bedrooms (0.16), a shared bathroom ($-32$\%), the
number of photos, the displayed rating (3.4\% per tenth of a point) and
local listing density are the priced attributes; the Superhost and Guest
Favourite badges carry no premium conditional on capacity, type and
location. Quantile regressions show that cheap listings are priced per
guest and certified by reviews, whereas expensive listings are priced
per room and are cheaper when heavily reviewed. Spatial lag, error and
Durbin models find moderate spatial dependence ($\hat\rho \approx 0.20$,
$\hat\lambda \approx 0.28$) with direct impacts within a few percent of
the OLS coefficients. Gradient-boosting models raise the out-of-sample
$R^2$ from 0.47 to 0.56 under random cross-validation and from 0.41 to
0.48 when whole areas are held out, and their SHAP decomposition ranks
the same attributes as the hedonic model. The paper provides the first
provincial hedonic evidence for Quebec's short-term rental market and a
template for detecting and handling stay-price contamination in scraped
platform prices.%
}
\newcommand{\WPkeywords}{hedonic price function, short-term rentals, Airbnb, implicit prices, quantile regression, spatial econometrics, machine learning, Quebec}
\newcommand{\WPjel}{C21, C31, C45, L83, R31, Z30}

% --- Author ---
\newcommand{\WPauthor}{Simon-Pierre Boucher}
\newcommand{\WPaffiliation}{%
  D\'epartement des sciences administratives\\
  Universit\'e du Qu\'ebec en Outaouais%
}
\newcommand{\WPemail}{simon-pierre.boucher@uqo.ca}
\newcommand{\WPaddress}{%
  Gatineau -- Pavillon Alexandre-Tach\'e\\
  283, boulevard Alexandre-Tach\'e\\
  Gatineau, Qu\'ebec, Canada J9A 1L8%
}

% ============================================================================
% DOCUMENT
% ============================================================================
\begin{document}

% --- Title Page ---
\input{sections/titlepage}

% --- Main Body ---
\input{sections/introduction}
\input{sections/data}
\input{sections/methodology}
\input{sections/results}
\input{sections/robustness}
\input{sections/conclusion}

% --- References ---
\newpage
\bibliography{references}

% --- Appendix ---
\newpage
\appendix
\renewcommand{\thetable}{A.\arabic{table}}
\renewcommand{\thefigure}{A.\arabic{figure}}
\setcounter{table}{0}
\setcounter{figure}{0}
\input{sections/appendix}

\end{document}