Deposit insurance and depositor discipline: direct evidence on bank switching behaviour in Japan

As Japan's financial system becomes more market oriented, depositor discipline is playing a larger role in the monitoring of banks. Matching household survey data with banks’ financial data, we examine households’ response to bank risk and different deposit insurance schemes. We find that bank switching in response to risk increased between 1996 and 2001 and households’ choice of bank adequately reflects banks’ financial health. We also examine the determinants of households’ knowledge of the deposit insurance scheme and how this affects switching behaviour. The results suggest that depositor discipline works and could play an important supplementary role in bank monitoring.     

环境公益诉讼与行政诉讼的原告适格——欧盟各国的发展情况

环境公益诉讼,尤其是行政诉讼中,原告适格问题是制度建设的重要事项。欧盟各国以《奥胡斯公约》及欧盟指令为轴心,通过各自的公益行政诉讼制度建设,如民众诉讼制度、制定特别法承认团体的原告适格,或通过扩大传统的利益概念,扩大法保护的对象等不同方式达到扩大原告适格的目的,实现公约所保障的司法参与权,使得司法保障成为环境政策中不可欠缺的制度性手段。     

Testing for negativity in a demand system: A Bayesian approach

The paper introduces Bayesian inference into a demand model. This allows us to test for the negativity condition of the substitution matrix which is difficult to handle directly in the traditional approach. To illustrate the Bayesian inference procedures, we estimate the Rotterdam model and test the demand properties using Japanese data. The empirical results show the importance of specifically considering negativity in demand analysis. First version received: September 1997/final version received: February 1998     

The influence of ownership structure on internationalization

Common reasons mentioned for a firm's internationalization are related to advantages for the firm. However, if firms are conceptualized as political coalitions, this view does not seem to be sufficient to explain why and to what extent firms internationalize. A principal-agent theoretical approach focusing the ownership-stake-related motivations and bargaining power of owners plus the range of actions managers can employ in different ownership situations offers an alternative explanation. We consequently studied the influences of ownership structure – defined as the concentration of ownership – on a firm's degree of internationalization and the main regions of international diversification. Overall, we conclude that the relationship is non-linear. To test our hypotheses, we utilize panel data for the 102 largest German manufacturing firms from 1990 to 2006. The analysis confirms our assumptions.     

Households’ attitudes toward earthquake protection: An empirical analysis of the impact of fiscal support in Japan

Faced with an aging society and major earthquake risk in the near future, promoting the improvement of existing houses is one of the most important issues in Japan. In this paper, we formulate two types of demand models for home safety: a model for barrier-free conversion and a model for seismic retrofit based on a logit model. We explore statistically the factors that affect the demand for each improvement using prefectural data in Japan. We also analyze statistically the significance and impact of financial support programs for improving existing houses, which the Japanese government has implemented at the prefectural and municipal level. The results clarify the differences between the determinants of each type of improvement and show that the support program for barrier-free conversion has a positive and statistically significant effect on households’ preference. However, neither the seismic test nor the seismic retrofit program conducted by prefectures has a positive impact on preference, whereas those by municipalities do affect preference.     

Lesson practice and teachers’ views on citizenship and gender: focusing on home economics and civics in Japan

Home economics and civics as school subjects in Japan have a common feature, in that both subjects nurture a sense of citizenship at home, in the workplace and in the wider society. In addition, both have the potential to help students recognize the gender bias around them and can empower them to help make a more gender‐equal society. Focusing on this, the purpose of this report was to investigate home economics and civics teachers’ views, in order to analyse the features of the two subjects and the relationship between them. Questionnaires were sent to home economics and civics teachers of all the senior high schools in four prefectures around Japan in October 2001, and 357 samples were analysed. The results were as follows: (a) Home economics teachers and female teachers expressed more interest in lessons on gender than civics teachers and male teachers. Concerning lessons on citizenship, no statistical difference in teachers’ interest was found. (b) Topics on citizenship were learned in the fields of consumer, environment and social welfare issues in both subjects. More lessons were reported to take place in home economics than in civics. (c) In home economics, topics on gender were learned as core issues in the areas of family relations, family law and parenting. On the other hand, in family law, civics, topics on gender were taught as marginal issues in the area of basic human rights and labour issues. (d) Home economics teachers thought the goals of gender education were to empower students to overcome narrow gender roles and to strengthen self‐respect. In contrast, civics teachers thought it would empower a sense of human rights. Concerning citizenship education, teachers of both home economics and civics thought the goals would enable students to recognize social problems as their own issues and try to solve them.     

Capturing the volatility smile of options on high-tech stocks—A combined GARCH-neural network approach

A slight modification of the standard GARCH equation results in a good modeling of historical volatility. Using this generated GARCH volatility together with the inputs: spot price divided by strike, time to maturity, and interest rate, a generated Neural Network results in significantly better pricing performance than the Black Scholes model. A single Neural Network for each individual high-tech stock is able to adapt to the market inherent volatility distortion. A single Network for all tested high-tech stocks also results in significantly better pricing performance than the Black-Scholes model. Dr. Gunter Meissner (gmeissner@hawaii.rr.com) is president of Derivatives Software, www.dersoft.com, and associate professor of finance at the Hawaii Pacific University; Noriko Kawano, MSIS, is currently working as a software engineer at Hawaii Dental Service. The article was presented at the eighth Asia Pacific Finance Conference, Shanghai, July 2000.     

The Robustness of Cartels Facilitated by Anti-Dumping Regulations

This study formulates Prusa's (1992 ) theory that anti-dumping regulations facilitate the formation of cartels between an exporter and import-competing firms. It demonstrates that interest rates and product differentiation are two key factors that may determine the robustness of the cartels. It builds a Bertrand duopoly model with differentiated products that explains how anti-dumping regulations might encourage the creation of cartels. To highlight the circumstances under which an import-competing firm is seriously hurt by dumped exports, this study adopts the following setting. First, both the exporter and the import-competing firms sell only in the home market. Second, if the exporter's product is sold at a cheaper price than the product of an import-competing firm in the home market, this is a sufficient condition to initiate an anti-dumping petition. Although the setting might also provide the circumstances under which the anti-dumping authority could be over-protecting the import-competing firm, it makes it possible to view the exporter as a predator. Since the setting enables the exporter to be free from the need to make profits in its own market, it sets a lower price for its product only if it decides to undertake predatory activities against an import-competing firm.     

PPP: Further evidence from Japanese regional data

This paper empirically analyzes Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) among Japanese municipalities from 1990 to 2003. Using panel unit root tests including one that considers cross-sectional dependence in the data (e.g., [Moon, H. R. and Perron, B. (2004). Testing for a unit root in panels with dynamic factors. Journal of Econometrics, 112, 81–126.]), we find evidence in favor of PPP, confirming the stationarity of relative prices in Japan and thus the long-run co-movement of municipal prices. Furthermore, the half-life of a shock is found to be about 2 years, which is faster than that of the international PPP. As in the European and US studies, short-term deviations from PPP can be explained by income differentials and distance between cities.