Tax Effects in a Model of Product Differentiation: A Note

We investigate how unit (or specific) tax and ad valorem tax affect equilibrium location choice in a model of product differentiation, which includes Hotelling (linear-city) and Vickrey-Salop (circular-city) spatial models as special cases. We find that neither tax affects equilibrium location patterns as long as each firm has the same production cost. Two taxes can yield different location patterns under cost heterogeneity among firms.     

日本物流探求的六个适用性

经济需求是现代物流产生和发展的前提,现代物流是随着经济的发展而产生和发展的.日本物流现代化水平的提高以及现代物流的全面发展,取决于日本物流发展六个方面的适用性及其平衡发展.这些适用性主要指地区适用性、环境适用性、国际适用性、战略适用性、管理适用性、理论适用性,可分为与国家层面紧密联系的社会经济问题以及与企业层面密切相关的管理问题两类,两者以一种交错复杂的形态存在,存在相互联系或相互对立的关系.     

How have inflation-targeting central banks responded to supply shocks?

This paper examines how inflation-targeting central banks have responded to supply shocks, based on the sign-restriction VAR approach. It is found that inflation-targeting central banks have become accommodative to adverse supply shocks following the adoption of inflation targeting.     

Gains from equity carve-outs and subsequent events

This study examines why the stock price of a parent company reacts positively to the announcement of a carve-out. The study also focuses on the gains associated with the combinations of carve-outs and each of four subsequent events: M&A activity, secondary offerings, spin-offs, and reacquisitions. The study finds that these secondary events are useful in evaluating the potential market reactions to carve-out announcements. By analyzing 201 carve-outs conducted by nonfinancial firms in the U.S., this study finds that the stock market reacts favorably toward the stock of a parent company when the parent-subsidiary relationship is preserved after a carve-out. However, this reaction changes when secondary events occur. To be precise, the market does not have a significantly positive reaction to the parent company's stock when the announcement concerns only M&A. These results indicate that the stock market expects secondary events when companies announce carve-outs and that it evaluates the combination of events upon the announcement of the carve-outs. In addition, this study finds that the market expects M&A as a secondary event.     

Executive Compensation in Japan: Estimating Levels and Determinants from Tax Records

Most studies of executive compensation have data on pay but not total income. Because exchange‐listed Japanese firms (unlike exchange‐listed U.S. firms) need not disclose executive compensation figures in their securities filings, most studies on Japan lack even good data on pay. Through 2004, however, the Japanese tax office disclosed the tax liabilities of the 73,000 Japanese with the highest incomes. We obtained this data, and match the high‐tax list against the list of CEOs of the firms listed in Section 1 of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. We thus estimate salaries and risk exposure in a new way. We confirm survey and anecdotal evidence that Japanese executives earn less than American—about one‐fifth the pay, adjusting for firm size and outside income. Tobit regressions show that pay in Japan depends heavily on firm size (a .22 elasticity) and on accounting profitability, but not on stock returns. Additionally, family owned firms and those with large lead shareholders pay less to employee CEOs not in the family or with large shareholdings, as do firms whose directors have less tenure on the board.     

中国和日本的加工食品贸易格局和经济效率分析

本文运用贸易经济效率指数比较了两个典型的东亚国家中国和日本在加工食品方面的贸易表现.由于大国效应和数量庞大的中小贸易公司的恶性竞争,以及缺少有效的贸易管理措施,中国大部分加工食品出口和部分产品进口的经济效率恶化了.而日本仅在食品进口方面经济效率下降,可能原因是严格的技术壁垒导致进口来源集中于发达国家.本文建议中国通过整顿贸易秩序以及合理选择贸易时机来提高加工食品贸易的经济效率,日本的可行对策则是在保证产品质量的同时改变进口来源.     

Econometric analysis of expected price formation

The current report analyses the process of producers' expected price formation through the estimation of supply functions, using vegetables and green tea in Japan as an example. At first, theoretical analysis shows that the factors which transform the producers' expected price formation from the lagged expectation to the rational expectation are as follows: decrease in information price, increase in managerial ability and/or organizational innovation, rightward shift of supply curve, and increase in price elasticity in supply curve. Second, supply functions are estimated by using the price expectation formation which include the rational expectation and the lagged expectation as its extreme form. Consequently, producers' price expectations were found to approach the rational expectations in the case of Chinese cabbage, lettuce and green tea, whose supply curves show high price elasticities, and whose producers' organizations gather price information and monitor the production more than other crops taken in this paper.     

Deregulation in an energy market and its impact on R&D for low-carbon energy technology

This paper analyzes the impact of deregulation in an energy market on R&D activities for new energy technology when climate policy is implemented. A model of growth with vertical innovation is modified by including an oligopolistic energy supply sector for demonstrating to what extent deregulation in the energy supply sector will affect R&D activities for low-carbon energy technology, provided that carbon taxation is implemented. The analysis shows that, when the elasticity of substitution between input factors is less than unity, deregulation will drive energy R&D activities and reduce CO₂ accumulation if the energy market is highly concentrated in the beginning.     

Flight-to-quality in the stock–bond return relation: a regime-switching copula approach

Financial Markets and Portfolio Management - This paper examines the existence, intensity and international dependence of flight-to-quality from stocks to government bonds. To this end, we develop...     

Individual Stock Returns and Monetary Policy: Evidence from Japanese Data

The present paper uses Japanese firm‐level data to investigate the effects of monetary policy on stock. The main purpose of this paper is to examine whether monetary policy has heterogeneous effects on stock returns and whether such heterogeneity can be explained by existing theories of monetary transmission mechanisms. We find little evidence that the demand sides of the interest rate and balance sheet channels explain the heterogeneous effects of monetary policy. However, there is evidence that the supply sides of the interest rate and balance sheet channels, when measured by capital intensity, financial leverage and interest payment burden, can explain its heterogeneous effects.