Equivalence of the weak and strong axioms of revealed preference without demand continuity assumptions: A “regularity condition” approach

The main result of this paper is that, provided the range of the demand function is convex and the whole budget is spent, the strong axiom of revealed preference holds if and only if the weak axiom of revealed preference and a certain “regularity” condition both hold. The regularity condition is a relationship between two definitions of expenditure compensation function that must hold if the strong axiom holds. The paper distinguishes itself from previous work in that no continuity assumptions are made on the demand function. It also discusses the relationship of the regularity condition used in this paper to the one used by Uzawa and van Moeseke.     

Revealed favorability,indirect utility,and direct utility

This paper studies the axiomatic foundations of the indirect utility function, based upon a revealed preference approach. A chain of comparisons of budgets is regarded as giving a relation on the price-income space (a revealed favorability relation) rather than a relation on the commodity space (a revealed preference relation). The weak and strong axioms of revealed favorability are introduced by analogy with the weak and strong axioms of revealed preference, and the relationship between the former two axioms is investigated. The indirect and direct utility functions are then derived on the basis of the strong axiom of revealed favorability. Neither the continuity property of the demand function nor the convex property of its range is required for the approach taken in the paper.     

A Factor Endowment Theory of Endogenous Growth and International Trade

This paper presents a dynamic general equilibrium model of multi‐country, two‐good and two‐factor, in which both long‐run growth and international trade patterns are examined. In each country, government expenditure on a public intermediate good plays a crucial role in the realization of persistent growth. It is shown that the long‐run pattern of international trade is determined in a Heckscher‐Ohlin manner.     

Pareto-improving social optimal pricing schemes based on bottleneck permits for managing congestion at a merging section

Akamatsu, Sato, and Nguyen (2006 Akamatsu, T., Sato, S., &; Nguyen, X. L. (2006). Tradable time-of-day bottleneck permits for morning commuters (in Japanese). JSCE Journal of Infrastructure Planning 62(4), 605–620.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) proposed a first-best pricing scheme based on the concept of bottleneck permits. The scheme allows permit holders to pass a bottleneck at specified times and is shown to be able to minimize social cost. However, the scheme is not always Pareto-improving in that it may harm some drivers. The objective of this study is to design Pareto-improving pricing scheme with bottleneck permits for a V-shaped two-to-one merge bottleneck. First, the paper formulates the morning commute model in the network and describes the arrival time choice equilibrium in the network with merging bottleneck. Secondly, we show that the first-best pricing scheme with bottleneck permits for this V-shaped network does not always achieve a Pareto improvement, with the cost of one group of drivers is increased by the permit pricing, a phenomena akin to the bottleneck paradox of Arnott, de Palma, and Lindsey (1993 Arnott, R., de Palma, A., &; Lindsey, R. (1993). Properties of dynamic traffic equilibrium involving bottlenecks, including a paradox and metering. Transportation Science 27(2), 148–160.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). We propose three implementations of bottleneck permits for Pareto-improving: (1) merging priority rule is included in the bottleneck permits scheme by creating different market for each origin; (2) the permit revenues are refunded as monetary compensation to drivers whose cost is increased; and (3) the permit revenues are used to expand bottleneck capacity. For each implementation, we derive their equilibrium solutions and demonstrate that the Pareto improvement is achieved and social cost is decreased by using the permit revenues for expanding the bottleneck capacity.     

Institutional Economics as Theory of Policy Change: Impact of Past Policy Failures on Present Policy

Social scientists have developed several theories for understanding or evaluating policy change over time. Since all costs or benefits are not internalized owing to positive transaction costs, policymaking is always implemented under cost underestimation conditions and, therefore, is imperfect. I call this trait policy failure in this article. Furthermore, I show that a new framework combining the social costs approach and the legal/economic approach in institutional economics is suitable and can be applied to evaluating how past policy failures affect present policy, providing as an example the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.     

Measuring US sectoral shocks in the world input–output network

I measure the importance of sectoral shocks in US aggregate output by using the World Input–Output Table (WIOT). The WIOT allows me to correct potential sub-graph bias in previous literature, caused by using only the US industrial production input–output table. I report results from three closely related models to show how sensitive the analyses are to different specifications. The estimates vary from 10% to 45%.     

School Education,Learning‐by‐Doing,and Fertility in Economic Development

We examine the policy implications of relaxing constraints on the educational choice of individuals for economic development. Distinguishing human capital accumulation through schooling and through learning‐by‐doing and knowledge spillovers, we show that in the earlier stages of development, mitigating and eventually eliminating constraints on school education would be necessary for even further economic development. Expanded school education increases the income of individuals and encourages physical capital accumulation, which enlarges productive knowledge through implementation and operations. The increased labor productivity thus boosts economic growth. In the process, the fertility rate will decline because of the increased education cost per child.     

Welfare variations and the comparative statics of demand

By employing order-theoretic comparative statics, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions on the direct utility function (alternatively, on the indirect utility function) to guarantee that the compensating and equivalent variations are monotonically increasing in income. We also show that these conditions are sufficient to guarantee normal demand. Our results do not depend on the smoothness or strict quasiconcavity of the utility function, and can be extended to a setting with non-linear prices.     

Dual Technology Management Model of design and production utilizing CAE ＆ experiment

At present, one of the specific measures taken is an urgent improvement of intelligent productivity for the purpose of offering highly reliable products to create customer value in a short period of time. Against this background, the author focuses on the New Japan Production Model for establishing a development designing and production engineering system in the automotive industry. This paper presents the Dual Technology Management Model of design and production for establishing a development designing and production quality assurance system that is indispensable for CAE （Computer-Aided Engineering） and experiment in the automotive industry and its effectiveness is verified.