Coverage area expansion, customer switching, and household profiles in the Japanese broadband access market

This paper examines the diffusion process of Internet broadband access in Japan by modeling the household choice of access modes. Estimates reveal that the characteristics of users, rather than those of the access modes, play a significant role in demand substitution across the modes. Simulation exercises indicate that had optic fibers (fiber-to-the-home; FTTH) been made available to the whole country in 2005, only 10% of households would have switched to that mode. This result implies that once chosen, the household choice of access mode persists, and that indirect network effects are an important element in decisions to adopt the new technology of broadband. Finally, policy implications are discussed.     

An analysis of the intra-firm sales activities of Japanese multinational enterprises in the United States: 1977 to 1989

This paper examines the activities of the largest Japanese multinational enterprises (MNEs) operating in the United States by looking at data on exports, imports, and intra-firm trade between the Japanese subsidiaries in the United States and their parent and other foreign groups. It also examines how much of the domestic sales in the United States are accounted for by local production of the Japanese subsidiaries. Sales data provide an indication of the advantages of being multinational, which are mirrored in the growth of the post-investment sales of overseas units (both manufacturing and non-manufacturing). Data on the flows and stocks of foreign direct investment (FDI) represent the initial decisions to undertake FDI and largely ignore the learning effects of having overseas production.The authors are from the City University of Hong Kong and NORTACK Software Limited. We would like to thank the Editor, Dr Leung Hing-Man, the anonymous referees, and Don Daly, Wendy Dobson, Hiroaki Izumi, Terutomo Ozawa, Alan M Rugman and Rob Tran for their helpful comments. All errors and omissions, however, remain the responsibility of the authors.     

The role of preconceived ideas in macroeconomic policy: Japan's experiences in two deflationary periods

This paper examines the role of misleading economic ideas that most likely promoted the economic disasters of the two deflationary periods in Japanese economic history. Misleading ideas deepened the depression during the interwar years, and erroneous thinking has prolonged the stagnation of the Japanese economy since the 1990s. While the current framework of political economy is based on the self-interest of political agents as well as of voters, we highlight the role of ideas in policy making, in particular, in the field of macroeconomy where the incidence of a particular policy is not clear to the public. Using two significant examples, this paper illustrates the role of preconceived ideas, in contrast to economic interests, as dominant forces influencing economic policy making.     

Supplier density and at-home care use in Japan: Evidence from a micro-level survey on long-term care receivers

Following the introduction of the long-term care insurance scheme and deregulation of the market for at-home care services, Japan experienced a substantial increase in expenditure on care for the elderly. Using household-level survey data, we empirically examine whether the increase in care expenditure is associated with supplier density springing from the rise in the number of care providers following deregulation. We provide weak evidence that supplier density in the at-home care market is positively correlated with probability to use care or expenditure on care. Moreover, we find no link between the share of for-profit providers and the demand for at-home care services.     

Generic impossibility of Arrow’s impossibility theorem

Our major objective is to show that if there are infinitely many alternatives and society can be decomposed into the sum of two non-negligible coalitions, the set of all Arrovian collective choice rules that satisfy the ultrafilter property (its set of decisive coalitions form an ultrafilter), is nowhere dense in the set of all Arrovian collective choice rules. This result entails that (1) almost all Arrovian collective choice rules are non-dictatorial and (2) in any neighborhood of a dictatorial Arrovian collective choice rule, a nondictatorial Arrovian collective choice rule can be found, i.e., the property of admitting a dictator is not a locally stable property for Arrovian collective choice rules in the sense that the property does not withstand a small perturbation.     

Accounting Principles, Internal Conflict and the State: The Case of the ICAEW, 1948–1966

The series of Recommendations on Accounting Principles (RoAPs) issued by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) between 1942 and 1969 demonstrated the willingness of a professional accounting body to take a degree of responsibility for the form and content of British corporate financial reports. RoAPs 12 and 15 focused on the enduring problem of whether and how to take account of changing prices when constructing published financial reports. This article reveals disagreement between practising and industrial members in general, concerning how to address this issue, and examines the way in which the Council of the ICAEW sought to resolve this internal conflict within the constraints imposed by the need to be seen to behave in the 'public interest'. Major discord between the two main categories of membership emerged within the operation of the Taxation and Financial Relations (T&FR) Committee. What were judged by the ICAEW's leadership to be the extreme views of the industrial members were marginalized and suppressed by bypassing the normal channel for designing RoAPs and, instead, formulating them at the higher level of the Parliamentary and Law (P&L) Committee. The conflict between practising and industrial members continued in the period following the publication of RoAP 15, when further attempts were made to tackle the problem of accounting for inflation.     

How does the Price Regulation Policy Impact on Patient–Nurse Ratios and the Length of Hospital Stays in Japanese Hospitals?

This study examines how the 2000 and 2006 revisions of the fee‐for‐service system have affected patient–nurse ratios and the average length of hospital stays in Japan. The empirical results show that hospitals are quite responsive to changes in price policy. The fee revisions have certainly achieved the policy objectives of reducing patient–nurse ratios and the length of hospital stays. As a result, hospitals have responded by greatly increasing the number of expensive beds for acute care. However, this was not exactly predicted by the Japanese government, which has aimed to reallocate health‐care resources, such as beds, to subacute or long‐term care.     

Large but finite games with asymmetric information

Carmona considered an increasing sequence of finite games in each of which players are characterized by payoff functions that are restricted to vary within a uniformly equicontinuous set and choose their strategies from a common compact metric strategy set. Then Carmona proved that each finite game in an upper tail of such a sequence admits an approximate Nash equilibrium in pure strategies.