URBANIZATION, URBAN CONCENTRATION AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

An international comparative study of the relations among the process of urbanization, urban concentration and economic development, and income distribution was performed by using data of developing and developed countries. Cross-section analyses at certain time periods for capturing "long-run" effects as well as time-series analyses for some countries for "short-run" effects were done taking advantage of the "rectangular" array of data. There were several interesting results: the pattern of unemployment rate in most developing countries shows an inverted-U shaped curve with respect to the degree of urbanization; the pattern of urban concentration is in the form of an inverted-U with respect to the economic development level; and the degree of inequality of income distribution seems to react in an inverted-U form to the variances in the extent of urbanization.     

How Do the Asian Economies Compete With Japan in the US Market? Is China Exceptional? A Triangular Trade Approach

We apply a trilateral trade approach to examine how Japanese exports and investment to China, or seven other Asian economies, affect Chinese, or the seven Asian economies', exports to the US market. The results suggest that while Chinese and Japanese exports are directly competitive in US markets, Chinese exports to the US are supported partly by Japanese exports to China. The positive correlation between Japanese exports to China and Chinese exports to the US is explained by vertical trade between Japanese multinationals and their affiliates in China. Indonesian and Philippine exports are also competing with Japanese exports in US markets, though the extent of the competition is much higher for China than for these countries.     

Analysis on bargaining about global climate change mitigation in international aviation sector

Understanding the basic interaction mechanism among nations surrounding the CO₂ emissions is critically important for the policy formulation analysis in aviation sector at present, especially for market-based measures such as emission allowance trading. We performed simulation analysis of the effects on pricing of emission allowances by including major players such as China and India into the hypothetical global CO₂ emission trading scheme according to non-cooperative game framework. In the presence of a negative public good, i.e., CO₂, we extended the Lindahl–Bowen–Samuelson condition to include a class of uncertainty typical in climate change policy into utility. By using the result, we explained, with some numerical examples, the welfare effects caused by the changes of factors, such as level of uncertainty, degree of risk averse, asymmetric utility structure, initial allocation among players, based on our model surrounding the bargaining of CO₂ emissions allocation games.     

Does the diversity of human capital increase GDP? A comparison of education systems

This paper examines how different education systems affect GDP by influencing the diversity of human capital. We construct an overlapping generation model in which agents are heterogeneous in income and innate ability, and the final goods are produced with differentiated intermediate goods. It is shown that under a realistic condition, the diversity of human capital induced by income inequality always lowers the GDP of the next period, while the diversity of human capital induced by heterogeneous ability can increase GDP, if the produced intermediate goods are sufficiently substitutable and firms have a large span of control. Hence, as public education equalizes education resources across households, it mitigates the negative effect of income inequality on GDP, while the effects of ability tracking crucially depend on the production structure of the economy.     

An analysis of an airport–airline relationship under a risk sharing contract

This paper analyzes a risk sharing incomplete contract under which an airline agrees to serve an airport in exchange for payment to/from the airport based on the difference between a realized and a target load factor. The key results are that we specified the relevant conditions on payments and utilities under which the incomplete contract can overcome the under-effort problem and achieve the efficient utility levels. These results are numerically illustrated by showing the impacts of the project prospect deterioration and the uncertainty increases on effort and utility levels.     

Exporting and Upgrading of Product Portfolio: Evidence from Korea,Japan and Indonesia*

This paper examines the effect of exporting on ‘product portfolio upgrading’ in a plant, using plant–product matched datasets for Korea, Japan and Indonesia. First, we find that a substantial part of aggregate shipments growth is explained by net adding of products for all three countries. Second, export starters are more likely to add products and to change product shares in plants than never exporters. Third, added products tend to have higher product quality than dropped products. Therefore, our results imply that the entry to export markets plays an important role in product portfolio upgrading: the process of reallocation from lower‐attribute to higher‐attribute products.