IUJ Repository (International Univ. of Japan)
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Spatial Analysis of the Japanese Gas Industry
Get PDFThis study analyzes gas prices, costs, and expenditures in Japan from a spatial perspective. The main findings are as follows: (1) Gas prices, costs, and expenditures exhibit spatially dependent patterns throughout Japan and are related to the service area locations of the gas distributors. (2) Regional conditions, including weather, production shipment, and availability and method of procuring domestic natural gas are the main determinants influencing gas prices and cost levels in Japan. These findings indicate that the Japanese government pays special attention to geographical perspectives in dealing with gas policies.departmental bulletin pape
Cooperative choice and its framing effect under threshold uncertainty in a provision point mechanism
Get PDFThis paper explores how threshold uncertainty affects cooperative behaviors in each of public goods provision and public bads prevention. The following facts motivate our study. First, resource and environmental problems can be either framed as public bads prevention or public goods provision. Second, the occurrence of these problems is characterized by the existence of thresholds which is interchangeably represented by "nonconvexity," "bifurcation," "bi-stability," or "catastrophes." Third, the location of such a threshold is mostly unknown to observers. We employ a provision point mechanism with threshold uncertainty, and analyze the response of cooperative behaviors to uncertainty and to the framing in each type of social preferences categorized by a value orientation test. We find that aggregate framing effects are negligible, though response to the frame is opposite to the type of social preference in each subject. "Cooperative" subjects become more cooperative in negative frames than in positive frames, while "individualistic" subjects are less cooperative in negative frames than in positive ones. This implies that insigni cance of the aggregate framing effect arises from the behavioral asymmetry. We also find the percentage of cooperative choices non-monotonically varies with the degree of threshold uncertainty, irrespective of framing and value orientation. More specifcally, the degree of cooperation is highest in the intermediate level of threshold uncertainty, whereas it sharply drops as the uncertainty becomes suffciently large.departmental bulletin pape
Aggregate Demand, Aggregate Supply and Economic Growth of Vietnam: Theory and evidence on an econometric analysis
Get PDFThis paper examines the determinants of economic growth of Vietnam focusing on an aggregate demand and aggregate supply with an econometric analysis. According to the regression and scenario simulation analysis, we can see that although the Vietnamese economy has achieved steady growth since Doi Moi, the supply-side is still too weak to meet the demand-side increases, which results in the macro imbalances including trade deficit and inflation as experienced in 2007-08. FDI inflows have played a significant role to strengthen the supply-side economy so that the Vietnamese government needs to improve her environments to attract foreign capital inflows for sustainable growth.departmental bulletin pape
Is Momentum Really Momentum? : International Evidence
Get PDFNovy-Marx (2010) finds that momentum is primarily driven by stock performance twelve to seven months prior to portfolio formation in the US market. We examine whether this finding holds in international stock markets. In particular, we investigate whether intermediate horizonpast performance is more dominant than 52-week high momentum strategy and recent pastperformance with individual stock data in international markets. Our results indicate that the intermediate past, recent past, and the 52-week high momentum effects are prevalent in international markets. The intermediate horizon past performance during the last twelve to seven months dominates in most of the markets studied. The 52-week high momentum and the recentpast performance during the last six to two months are highly correlated. However, they are not as important as stock performance during the last twelve to seven months.departmental bulletin pape
Nation, Race, Language, and Spirituality: Reading Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation
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Who Has to Pay More, Health Service Sectors, the Pharmaceutical Industry, or Future Generations? : A Computable General Equilibrium Approach
Get PDFPDFThis paper presents a computable general equilibrium (CGE) framework to numerically examine the effect of tax/subsidy reforms of health related sectors. The generalized framework with the latest Japanese input-output table of year 2005 with 108 different production sectors provides the following results: A 50 percent tax cut of the pharmaceutical industry, or a 50 percent subsidy increase for the hospitals sector induces a welfare gain of 95.6 billion or 72.3 billion Japanese yen, respectively, when the government budget is not balanced. However, such an unbalanced budget policy also generates new deficits of 9.26 billion and 5.58 billion Japanese yen, respectively.\nEven if the government budget is balanced, welfare enhancing reforms are still possible but only with sacrifices of the pharmaceutical industry. If the pharmaceutical industry is also compensated with the balanced budget, then welfare enhancing reforms only within health related sectors seem implausible. While the best reform with a compensation policy results in a welfare gain of 61 billion Japanese yen, such a reform still generates deficits of 4.4 billion Japanese yen. If the government tries to minimize deficits with a compensation policy, then deficits can be reduced to 0.62 billion Japanese yen, but a welfare gain completely vanishes.departmental bulletin pape
Do Types of Public Services Matter? : Evidence from the Expenditures of Direct versus Population-based Public Health Services in Georgia Counties
Get PDFThe American state of Georgia has a decentralized public health system, with county health departments providing services in cooperation with 18 regionally organized public health districts. Drawing upon the policy typology literature, this paper examines differences in public health expenditures on direct versus population-based services. For direct services that benefit particular individuals and groups, influences by local organized interests might be a relevant factor in the expenditure decision-making process. On the other hand, coordination at the district level is expected to be more important in population-based services which have spillovers across counties. An analysis using county-level expenditure data reports some supporting evidence.departmental bulletin pape
Does Internet Use Crowd Out Face-To-Face Ties? Empirical Evidence from the Cumulative General Social Survey Data
Get PDFThis study examines if Internet use crowds out or facilitates face-to-face ties byanalyzing the cumulative General Social Survey data. Assumed is that the impact of Internet use varies according to types of Internet services and modes of Internet use. GSS data show that face-to-face engagements measured in spending a social evening, friends, and relatives staying incontact with, and voluntary membership remained almost unchanged for the past four decades. No sharp slash or jump was observed before and after the late 1990s. Spending a social evening with relatives, neighbors, and friends are not influenced by Internet use regardless of whetherthey are email, WWW, or deliberative and entertaining purposes. Emailing and deliberative use of WWW are positively related to the number of friends and relatives keeping in touch with byface-to-face, meetings or events, telephone, and U.S. postal mail, while the time spent for WWW has the negative effect. Finally, voluntary membership is positively associated with deliberative use of WWW and not with email and WWW use for entertainment. The Internet is not necessarily a technology culprit of the decline in social capital but its impact depends how effectively people use for society and themselves.departmental bulletin pape
Should Indonesia Suffer from More Reduction of the Subsidy to the Petroleum Sector?
Get PDFWe numerically examine the impact of the actually implemented reduction policy of the subsidy to the petroleum sector by using a static CGE model with the latest input-output table of Indonesia of year 2008. Our simulation results indicate that the Indonesian economy suffered from the actually implemented policy with a welfare loss of 28,417.78 billion rupiah even with the conversion policy. Furthermore, the proposed future reduction policy by the Ministry of Finance would unavoidably result in a welfare loss even when the government continues the current conversion policy. However, our simulation results also suggest that a new future conversion policy with a slightly additional subsidy to the LPG sector would eventuate in completely offsetting the negative effect of the proposed plan on the future welfare with an expanding government expenditure.departmental bulletin pape
Urban Inequality in Indonesia
Get PDFAccording to an inequality decomposition analysis by urban and rural sectors in Indonesia, urban inequality's contribution to overall inequality in per capita household expenditure has been increasing steadily with widening urban inequality and urbanization proceeding following globalization and financial/trade liberalization. According to the Theil T index, the contribution rose from 54% to 63% during the 1996-2002 period. Urban inequality is expected to play a more important role in overall inequality. This paper explores the determinants of urban inequality in Indonesia using monthly household consumption expenditure data for 1999, 2002, and 2005 from the National Socio-Economic Survey (Susenas). It focuses on educational differences as the major determinant, since according to previous studies in Asian countries they account for around 20-40% of overall inequality.departmental bulletin pape