Current accounts of Japanese airports

The paper examines the current account of 41 major airports. When we exclude depreciation costs, only seven airports are profitable. When depreciation is excluded, only three airports are making profits. Airports managed by local governments are very difficult to sustain financially without subsidies. Airports with more than 5.2 million passengers are profitable when depreciation is taken into account, however most local airports have fewer than 2.5 million passengers. When depreciation costs are excluded, airports need at least 2.7 million passengers to be viable.     

Analysing Mechanism of an Economic Phase

In this paper, we define the thetical and antithetical phases of macroeconomy on a formal basis. And we formulate a bubble economy and its collapse by using these definitions. The concept of thetical and antithetical phases is introduced into economics by Kinoshita. In the course of discussion, we also make clear the difference between economic growth and bubble economy, while describing a mechanism of collapse of a bubble economy by using a simple macro-economic model instead of a specific model. As a result, we can analyse not only the state of thetical economy phase, and antithetical economy phase, but also bubble economy phase and bubble bursting economy phase. And we can describe mechanism of transitions among four economic phases.     

Unfunded pension liabilities and stock returns

This paper investigates whether the market rationally anticipates the value implications of unrecognized pension obligations, using a large sample of Japanese firms where pension obligations are substantially underfunded. If a firm's unrecognized pension obligation is not incorporated into its share price, its stock returns will be lower than those of other firms, because its deficit will affect the firm's income statement in the coming years. We find that firms with large unrecognized obligations earn lower risk-adjusted returns. This evidence suggests that the market does not efficiently incorporate information in the pension items.     

Asymmetric loss and herding behaviour of exchange rate forecasters: evidence from South Africa

This study examines the asymmetry of the loss function for private forecasters in exchange rate forecasts of the South African rand. It tests rationality under the possibility of an asymmetric loss function. The results indicate less evidence of asymmetry for a horizon of 1 month but considerable evidence of asymmetry for a horizon of 3 months. However, the shapes of the distributions formed by estimated asymmetry parameters of sub-samples for each forecaster are symmetric, regardless of the forecast horizons, which implies that these forecasters do not herd or antiherd. In fact, the results of our empirical herding test show that forecasters neither herd nor antiherd, which is in sharp contrast to recent findings on antiherding for foreign exchange rates in emerging market economies. Our findings provide consistent evidence for a recent suggestion that antiherding might result in the rejection of rationality, even under asymmetric loss functions. Our findings also suggest that central bank transparency might be associated with herding behaviours.     

Soil and water conservation technologies: a buffer against production risk in the face of climate change? Insights from the Nile basin in Ethiopia

This study investigates the impact of different soil and water conservation (SWC) technologies on the variance of crop production in Ethiopia to determine the risk implications of the different technologies in different regions and rainfall zones. Given the production risks posed by climate change, such information can be used by decision makers to identify appropriate agricultural practices that act as a buffer against climate change. Results show that SWC investments perform differently in different rainfall areas and regions of Ethiopia and that the effectiveness of technologies such as irrigation, fertilizer, and improved seeds often depends on whether these investments are coupled with SWC measures. These results underscore the importance of the selection of appropriate combinations of technologies and careful geographical targeting when promoting and scaling up SWC technologies for adaptation to climate change.     

Health insurance reform and economic growth: Simulation analysis in Japan

This paper evaluates the drastic reforms of Japanese public health insurance initiated in 2006. We employ a computable general equilibrium framework to numerically examine the reforms for an aging Japan in the dynamic context of overlapping generations. Our simulation produced the following results: first, an increase in the co-payment rate, a prominent feature of the 2006 reform, would promote economic growth and welfare by encouraging private saving. Second, the ex-post moral hazard behavior following the increase in co-payment rates, however, reduces economic growth. Third, Japan's trend of increasing the future public health insurance benefits can mainly be explained by its aging population, and increasing the co-payment rate does little to reduce future payments of public health insurance benefits. Fourth, the effect on future economic burdens of reducing medical costs through efficiencies in public health insurance, emphasis on preventive medical care, or technological progress in the medical field is small. Finally, a policy of maintaining public health insurance at a fixed percentage of GDP will require reducing public health insurance benefits, perhaps up to 45% by 2050. Such a policy also reduces economic growth until approximately 2035. Our simulation indicates that the reform does not significantly reduce future public health insurance benefits, but it can enhance economic growth and welfare by encouraging private saving.     

Average employee tenure,voluntary turnover ratio,and labour productivity: evidence from Japanese firms

Using Japanese firms' data, this study shows that voluntary turnover ratio is negatively related to firm labour productivity. While recent studies have reported the negative influence of turnover on organizational performance (Kacmar et al., 2006 Kacmar, K.M., Andrews, M.C., van Rooy, D.L., Steilberg, R.C. and Cerrone, S. 2006. Sure Everyone can be Replaced… But at What Cost? Turnover as a Predictor of Unit-Level Performance. Academy of Management Journal, 49: 133–44. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Shaw et al., 2005a Shaw, J.D., Gupta, N. and Delery, J.E. 2005a. Alternative Conceptualizations of the Relationship between Voluntary Turnover and Organizational Performance. Academy of Management Journal, 48: 50–68. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), they analysed only US samples. Our study contributes to researchers' efforts to generalize the relationship between voluntary turnover and organizational performance. Turnover is detrimental to labour productivity as it reduces the stock of firm-specific human capital that a firm retains. Findings suggest that firm average employee tenure mediates the relationship between voluntary turnover and labour productivity.     

Deregulating Overtime Hours Restrictions on Women and its Effects on Female Employment: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Japan

This paper provides novel evidence on the effect of deregulating overtime hours restrictions on women by using the 1985 Amendments to the Labour Standards Act (LSA) in Japan as a natural experiment. The original LSA of 1947 prohibited women from working overtime exceeding two hours a day; six hours a week; and 150 hours a year. The 1985 Amendments exempted a variety of occupations and industries from such an overtime restriction on women. Applying a difference‐in‐difference model to census data, we find causal evidence pointing to the positive effect of this particular piece of labour market deregulation on the proportion of female employment. We then carry out a series of sensitivity analyses to ensure the robustness of our finding. Especially, we conduct a falsification test and an event study to show that our causal inference is not threatened by the differential pretreatment trends. Finally, we use quantile regressions and find that for jobs with more rapidly growing proportion of female employment, the effect of the exemption from the overtime work restriction on women is larger.