Integrating business modeling and roadmapping methods - The Innovation Support Technology (IST) approach

The purpose of this paper is to report the integration studies of business modeling and roadmapping methods for the “Innovation Support Technology (IST)” and the IST's practical application to real-world cases. The IST is conducted for the purpose of offering a convenient tool for engineers and researchers in order to enhance corporate value from R&D outputs. “Japan's lost decade” has forced companies to change R&D management and R&D operation style, especially regional industries. We propose the framework for revitalization of regional industries by using the Strategic Technology Roadmap made by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI-TRM) with business modeling. We applied this IST method to several real-world cases to show its effectiveness. This study represents the result of over four years (fall 2002) of work with the value creation framework of the business modeling method for R&D outputs, done by a group of researchers from JATES (Japan Techno-Economics Society).     

Interim efficient allocations under uncertainty

This paper considers an exchange economy under uncertainty with asymmetric information. Uncertainty is represented by multiple priors and posteriors of agents who have either Bewley's incomplete preferences or Gilboa-Schmeidler's maximin expected utility preferences. The main results characterize interim efficient allocations under uncertainty; that is, they provide conditions on the sets of posteriors, thus implicitly on the way how agents update the sets of priors, for non-existence of a trade which makes all agents better off at any realization of private information. For agents with the incomplete preferences, the condition is necessary and sufficient, but for agents with the maximin expected utility preferences, the condition is sufficient only. A couple of necessary conditions for the latter case are provided.     

Increasing marginal impatience and intertemporal substitution

For infinite-horizon models with recursive preferences the condition known as increasing marginal impatience is often adopted, but the condition is not fully understood in the literature. This paper shows that increasing marginal impatience is equivalent to the intuitive property that the substitutability between the consumption levels in two different periods is a decreasing function of the distance between the periods.     

Modeling Bank Runs in Financial Crises

In recent years, financial crises have occurred frequently in each region, and banks are facing harsh management environments. Bank runs of customers during a financial crisis are one of a bank’s most serious risks. This research aims to build a bank run model for financial crises, use that model to estimate the amount of deposit funds which flow out, and propose a framework for financial crisis risk management. The model proposed in this paper enables understanding of the factors which have the largest impacts on bank runs, providing valuable information for banks to cope with such risks. The model uses survey data, and clarified that bank runs have differences which depend on customer characteristics and branch location. We understood that during a financial crisis, an appropriate branch strategy must be adopted depending on the location and customer characteristics of each bank branch.     

Neighbors follow early adopters under stress: panel data analysis of submergence‐tolerant rice in northern Bangladesh

The benefits of a stress‐tolerant crop become visible under the stresses that the crop is tolerant against. We investigate the adoption of submergence‐tolerant rice in northern Bangladesh by using panel data of 461 households, interviewed in 2013 and 2015. The sample households were randomly selected in 31 villages where submergence‐tolerant rice seeds were given to a small number of farmers in each village. The results from the household fixed‐effects model indicate that submergence in the previous year increased the adoption of submergence‐tolerant rice. The adoption impact was larger among farmers who were neighbors of early seed recipients. Our results suggest that being neighbors of early seed recipients may have helped the neighboring farmers observe the benefits of the submergence‐tolerant rice under submergence. The results indicate the importance of the information flow from early recipients to neighboring farmers.     

Time Spent on Beneficial Leisure Activities Among Elder Caregivers in Their Third Age

The Third Age is an emerging postretirement life stage characterized by better health and greater independence than previous cohorts have experienced, and recognized as an ideal time for personal growth and leisure. Yet the same demographic force that is partially responsible for this new life stage—population aging—is also driving an increased need for long-term services and supports, and Third Agers often find themselves fulfilling these caregiving roles. Thus, data from the 2013 American Time Use survey were analyzed to assess elder-caregiving-related barriers to leisure among Third Agers. While, caregivers were found to report more total leisure time and social activities, they reported less time on physical activities than noncaregivers. Results were found to differ by weekday or weekend status. Future research needs to consider specific types of leisure time use, as well as timing of leisure activities, to promote quality of life among caregivers in their Third Age.     

The Perceptual Gaps Between Companies’ and University Students’ Views on Fundamental Competencies

This study examines the gap between the competencies that companies expect of university students and those that university students believe companies are seeking. We find that a gap exists between companies’ and students’ evaluations of the competencies required in the workplace. Surprisingly, companies’ and students’ priorities related to competencies are different. Our results show that both companies and students highly value versatile personal competencies as essential skills for employees. Teamwork skills are not a top priority for companies although students value them highest of the various attributes. Gaps also exist between the two groups regarding their evaluation of personality traits. These findings contribute to the development of appropriate curricula for universities and career education.     

Can everyone benefit from economic integration?

There is no Pareto efficient allocation rule which always encourages economic integration. Further, for any efficient rule treating indistinguishable agents identically in welfare terms, there is an economy in which a third of the agents are hurt upon integration.     

The effects of external financing costs on investment timing and sizing decisions

We develop a dynamic model in which a firm exercises an option to expand production on either a small or large scale with cash reserves and costly external funds. An intermediate level of cash reserves, which is insufficient for the large-scale investment but sufficient for the small-scale investment, provides an incentive for the firm to invest early in the small-scale project. These results fill the gap between two types of results: (i) empirical findings of a U-shaped relation between the investment volume and internal funds and (ii) empirical predictions of a U-shaped relation between the investment timing and internal funds. In addition, our results have real-world implications for investment in alternative projects.