Quantitative easing and Japanese bank equity values

One of the primary motivations offered by the Bank of Japan (BOJ) for its quantitative easing program—whereby it maintained a current account balance target in excess of required reserves, effectively pegging short-term interest rates at zero—was to maintain credit extension by the troubled Japanese financial sector. We conduct an event study concerning the anticipated impact of quantitative easing on the Japanese banking sector by examining the impact of the introduction and expansion of the policy on Japanese bank equity values. We find that excess returns of Japanese banks were greater when increases in the BOJ current account balance target were accompanied by “non-standard” expansionary policies, such as raising the ceiling on BOJ purchases of long-term Japanese government bonds. We also provide cross-sectional evidence that suggests that the market perceived that the quantitative easing program would disproportionately benefit financially weaker Japanese banks. J. Japanese Int. Economies 20 (4) (2006) 699–721.     

Third-Degree Price Discrimination in the Presence of Asymmetric Consumption Externalities

In this paper, we consider third-degree price discrimination in two markets in the presence of asymmetric consumption externalities; we establish that under plausible conditions, a firm reduces its price in the market with low price elasticity of demand. The firm can increase its profits by reducing the price for these consumers and enlarging the demand for other consumers, provided that positive consumption externalities exist. Moreover, we show that third-degree price discrimination enhances not only the firm’s profit but also total consumer surplus.

An Advertising Strategy Using Consumption Externality and Forgetting in the Case of Japanese Electronic Books

We construct a two-period model in which a consumer recognizes the existence of goods after advertised by firms, and total sales of the first period affect the utility of each consumer’s purchase in the second period, indicating a consumption externality. Some consumers see advertisements in the first period and remember the product, whereas some forget the product in the second period. We show that the advertising volume changes given the differences in the forgetting rate. In particular, we apply our method to the data on Japan’s electronic books obtained through a conjoint analysis survey to clarify that a better strategy is to sell a product to a small number of people at a low price or to lower the price to a certain level during the early period, and then to sell the product to a specific consumer segment at a higher price after reflecting the externality.     

Total factor productivity enablers in the ICT industry: A cross-country firm-level analysis

Advancements in productivity in the digital economy constitute an important engine for economic growth. What drives productivity dynamics in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector? This study examines the productivity dynamics of ICT firms across countries from the perspective of corporate balance sheets. We study the effects of intangible assets and leverage on productivity growth using firm-level panel data from five industrialized countries. We find that intangible assets positively affect the total factor productivity in the ICT sector. The positive effect of intangible assets on total factor productivity growth is larger for ICT manufacturing firms than for ICT service firms. We also find that leverage has a positive relationship with total factor productivity development in the ICT sector. In addition, our empirical results substantiated that productivity is catching up to the technological frontier. Furthermore, larger firms and/or younger firms generally show higher total factor productivity growth than their peers. Economies of scale are more prominent in the ICT service sector than in the ICT manufacturing sector. Our findings contribute to the understanding of cross-country productivity dynamics in the ICT sector at the firm level in the digital economy.     

Measurement of redistributive effect of tax rates from a longitudinal perspective: an application of the fixed taxable income approach

The primary objective of this article is to explore how the redistributive effects of tax rate change when using the fixed taxable income approach – where tax rates for each year in a period are applied to taxable income for a base year to calculate rate effects – instead of using an existing procedure to compute the rate effects. Standard rate effects are found to differ considerably from those calculated using the fixed taxable income approach in terms of both level and longitudinal trend.     

Thirty-five years of journal of econometrics

The paper discusses how the Journal of Econometrics started and has grown over the years. It analyzes a trend in the research areas of the published articles and reviews some of the important papers that have been published. It concludes with an assessment of the future of the journal.     

Shared renewable resources and gains from trade under technology standards

Using a two‐country, two‐good model of international trade, we examine gains from trade and strategic interaction in resource management among countries that share renewable resources such as fishery stocks. Two goods are a resource good, which is the harvest of the shared stock, and some other good that may be thought of as manufactures. The productivity of the resource good depends on harvesting technology and the stock level. This paper focuses on technology standards (e.g., restrictions on fishing gears, vessels, areas, and time) over other methods for resource management because they are most commonly implemented in fisheries. Technology standards are modeled as a restriction on the harvesting technology; that is, under strict technology standards, firms exploit resources as if they are using inferior harvesting technology. We show that an opening up of trade may reduce the shared stock and cause steady‐state utility to decrease in a resource‐good importing country and increase in a resource‐good exporting country. Strikingly, when the shared stock is in jeopardy (a high demand for the harvest), steady‐state harvest is maximized after an opening up of trade by what we call multilateral resource management in this paper and both countries gain from trade.