Enterprise modeling and integration: A stochastic management approach

Recently, my book by Matsui has been published in Japanese, and the title is “Management of Manufacturing Enterprise: Profit Maximization and Factory Science.” Enterprise/Factory Science means the system science of the 3M & I, in which is the complex of huMan, Material/Machine, Money and Information, and would contribute to enterprise modeling and integration issues. This paper presents the problem of enterprise/factory science, and discusses a class of 3M & I system by a stochastic management approach. First, the 3M & I system is defined, and a variety vs. structure is introduced. Next, the two structures of management are distinguished, and the demand-to-supply and process-cycle management are discussed by structural modeling.     

Technical Improvements and Welfare under International Duopoly

It is now common wisdom that a free-trading country with perfectly competitive markets might be hurt by its own technical improvement of that country's export industry, and that an improvement in the import-competing industry never impoverishes the country if no commodity is inferior for that country. This paper examines the welfare effects of technical progress in a perfectly competitive industry and in an internationally duopolistic market in a two-country, two-good, one-factor trading model. It will be shown that the above propositions are severely qualified in our setting with duopolistic industry.     

The relationship between pollution abatement costs and environmental regulation: Evidence from the Chinese industrial sector

Since the 2000s, China has been trying to strengthen emission controls in response to increasing pollution problems. However, strict implementation of emission controls generates pollution abatement costs. Using regional data for 29 provinces in the Chinese industrial sector from 1995 to 2010, this study estimated the pollution abatement costs for each province through the measurement of environmental efficiency, by applying a directional distance function approach. Moreover, using panel data analysis, this study clarified whether there is a nonlinear relationship between pollution abatement costs and environmental regulations. The empirical results are as follows. The study confirmed that the burden of abatement costs tended not only to occur in the central and western regions but also to increase in the eastern region. Moreover, the nonlinear relationship is inverted U‐shaped; thus, pollution abatement costs increase, as a negative effect of environmental regulations, until a certain inflection point, after which they decrease.     

ANALYSIS OF HOUSEHOLD LEISURE AND SHOPPING BEHAVIOR IN IBARAKI PREFECTURE, JAPAN

Understanding household leisure and shopping behavior is an important component of market research, shop location decisions, travel behavior, and consumer behavior studies. This paper estimates a gravity model of travel behaviors related to leisure and shopping trips in the Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, based on a 1998 survey data set by Poisson regression. The overall results indicate that GDP per capita of cities of origin and of destination, population, train stations, and store area of the destination city affect trip flow positively. Intercity distance, store areas in the city of origin, and higher density in the city of origin negatively affect trip flow. Different variables distinctly affect the shopping behavior for different commodities.     

NATIONAL AND REGIONAL WAGE CURVES IN JAPAN 1981–2001

There is evidence in many countries of an inverse relationship between the real wages paid to workers and the unemployment rate in their local labor market, a so-called wage curve. However, the evidence to date for Japan has been rather limited. In this paper, we estimate wage curves for Japan using pooled cross-section time-series data from 1981 until 2001. The presence of a wage curve is confirmed. The wage curve has become slightly more elastic after the bubble economy of the 1980s than it was in the pre-bubble and mid-bubble period. The unemployment elasticity of pay is greater for males than for females. We also estimate regional wage curves using time-series data. The male wage curve elasticity is larger in the northern regions of Hokkaido and Tohoku and the western region of Shikoku, while it is smaller in the central regions of Hokuriku, Tokai and Kinki.     

A Theoretical Analysis of Liner Shipping Conferences and Strategic Alliances

We analyze the economic impacts of industrial organizational struggles on the international liner shipping market. Operating ratios of different markets are discussed by incorporating rate, service level, and other variables into a standard microeconomic model. If two different carriers agree on a shipping conference price and/or share a strategic alliance service level, and maximize consolidated profit, a member carrier finds it easier to make its operation profitable than the individual profit optimization case; other carriers are worse off in becoming profitable. If the carriers face inelastic demand, the price continues rising until demand becomes elastic enough for the equilibrium to be relevant. The conference is expected to play a coordination role so that the market does not become unsustainable in the adjustment process to reach equilibrium.     

Firm heterogeneity and international trade in services

This study, using panel data on Japanese firms, analyses the relationship between services trade and firm heterogeneity. It finds that the number of firms engaged in services trade is far less than that engaged in goods trade. Further, the productivity of services traders is higher than that of domestic firms and goods trading firms, whereas the productivity of firms that export services beyond the boundary of their firm groups is higher than that of those that export services only to their affiliate firms. These results suggest that only productive firms can engage in services trade by incurring the relatively large fixed costs.     

Pollution abatement efforts: a regional analysis of the Chinese industrial sector

Although China has had rapid economic growth, it has borne a more significant economic burden or loss because of environmental pollution. However, the country has addressed this problem with various pollution abatement efforts. Some prior studies analysed the relationship between such efforts and pollution emissions, but did not show how these efforts affect pollution reduction. This study investigates the effects of pollution abatement efforts on industrial SO_X, NO_X and CO₂ emissions in the context of pollution reduction in China by panel data for 29 provinces from 1995 to 2010. The empirical results are as follows. First, emissions have increased rapidly in the 2000s. Second, rapid income growth has led to a greater increase in emissions. Third, pollution abatement would assist improvements in environmental quality. Further, this study reveals that abatement efforts affect emissions through the adoption of pollution removal measures.     

Win/Loss Data and Consumer Switching Costs: Measuring Diversion Ratios and the Impact of Mergers*

We propose an identification strategy for diversion based on win/loss data. First, we show that win/loss data from the merging firms and market shares in two periods for all firms are sufficient to identify the diversion ratios between the merging partners. Second, we show that win/loss data from the merging firms alone are sufficient for partial identification, and we construct a lower bound that provides a good approximation to the diversion ratio when switching costs are high. We demonstrate the performance of our method with numerical simulations and with an application to the Anthem/Cigna merger.     

Multi-valued Document Classification Based on Generalized Bradley-Terry Classifiers Utilizing Accuracy Information

Due to the development of computer network, a large amount of documents are treated in many fields. The number of digital document data stored in databases is enormous, accordingly it is difficult for analysts to read all documents and classify it by hand. Therefore, it is necessary to develop the technology of automatic document classification by using computers these days. From the above needs, many classifiers with good performance have been proposed, i.e., Relevance Vector Machine （RVM） and Support Vector Machine （SVM） that are known as good binary classifiers. For multi-valued document classification problems, it is known that a multi-valued classifier by combining several binary classifiers has a good performance. In this study, the method to construct an efficient combination of binary classifiers based on improving Generalized Bradley-Terry （GBT） model, which has high extensibility, is focused. This model is an expansion of Bradley-Terry （BT） model. Though the BT model has a limitation on combination of classes, the GBT model enables us to utilize any binary classifier which classifies into two arbitrary subsets in the class set. Generally, when several binary classifiers learn from the training dataset, there would be the difference of accuracy between these binary classifiers, due to the existence of categories that cannot be easily classified. However, the conventional method of multi-valued classification by GBT binary classifiers does not take the accuracy of each classifier into consideration. To avoid this problem, a new way of multi-valued classification method by considering each classifier＇s accuracy is proposed. The purpose of this study is to construct a good multi-valued classifier by calculating the accuracy of each classifier and utilizing it as the weight. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, the simulation experiment by using newspaper articles is conducted.