Defect Detection Using Unanimous Vote Among Mahalanobis Classifiers for Each Color Component

In manufacturing industries, product inspection is automated and the use of image data is increasingly being employed for defect detection. A manufacturing company in Japan produces an item and inspects the produced products using image data. Reducing the error rate is important in product inspection because poor inspection of products might lead to the delivery of defective products to consumers (consumer’s risk) and strict inspection increases production cost (producer’s risk). To reduce the error rate, we highlighted fault points using a two-dimensional moving range filter and discriminated defect production through a unanimous vote among Mahalanobis classifiers for each color component. For results, we achieved a lower error rate than the current system. This research is an empirical study of how to use image data in defect detection.     

Real exchange rate dynamics revisited: A case with financial market imperfections

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between real exchange rate dynamics and financial market imperfections. For this purpose, we first construct a New Open Economy Macroeconomics (NOEM) model that incorporates staggered loan contracts as a simple form of the financial market imperfections. Our model with such a financial market friction replicates persistent, volatile, and realistic hump-shaped responses of real exchange rates, which have been thought very difficult to materialize in standard NOEM models. Remarkably, these realistic responses can materialize even with both supply and demand shocks, such as cost-push, loan rate, and monetary policy shocks. This implies that the financial market development is a key element for understanding real exchange rate dynamics.     

Long-term effects of labor market conditions on family formation for Japanese youth

This study aims to examine how each cohort’s family formation is affected by labor market conditions experienced in youth in Japan. Although the deterioration in youth employment opportunities has often been blamed for Japan’s declining fertility rate, the effect of slack labor market conditions on fertility is theoretically unclear. We estimate the effects of regional labor market conditions at entry to the labor market and contemporaneous conditions on fertility, controlling for nation-wide year effects and prefecture fixed effects, and find the following. First, high school-educated women who experienced a recession while entering the labor market are less likely to have children. In contrast, a recession rather increases fertility among college-educated women. When summed up, the aggregate impact of labor market conditions experienced in youth on fertility is weak. Second, the unemployment rate at entry to the labor market is positively correlated with the probability of having two or more children conditionally on having at least one child. Third, the contemporaneous unemployment rate is negatively correlated with marriage of women in the local labor market, although the correlation is weak and concentrated on the less educated group.     

A Note on the 'Invariance of Market Innovation to the Number of Firms'*

This note disputes the claim by Sah and Stiglitz ( Rand Journal of Economics , 1987, pp.  98–108) that their strong invariance result holds in a wide range of situations.     

Urbanization,informal sector,and development

Urbanization is a universal phenomenon in the postwar world, but its qualitative nature is varied across countries. Some nations have experienced urbanization that accompanied skill upgrading, industrialization, and the expansion of the urban formal (modern) sector, but others urbanized without such modernization and underwent the expansion of the urban informal (traditional) sector simultaneously. The question that naturally arises is what are the underlying causes for the differences. The purpose of the paper is to tackle this question analytically based on a dynamic model of urbanization and development.     

Credit spread and monetary policy

We show that the spread-adjusted Taylor rule including a response to the credit spread is a theoretically optimal monetary policy under heterogeneous loan contracts. However, the optimal response to the credit spread is ambiguous, given the financial market structure.     

Recovery Process Model for Two Companies

The quantification of the recovery rate for the debt of the defaulted small company is one of the most important problems for banks and their supervisors. However, the data of the real recovery rates is seldom available for academic study. Therefore, there have been a few studies for the recovery rate for the debt. The recovery process model for a single company is introduced by Itoh (Asia Pac Financ Mark 2008). In this paper, we extend the model of Itoh (Asia Pac Financ Mark 2008) to two defaulted companies, and we model the recovery processes using an inhomogeneous bivariate compound Poisson process with the delays. In other word, we assume that the recoveries are occurred by the shocks, and that there are individual shocks that affect only one company and common shocks that affect two companies. Moreover, we assume that there are delays between the shock points and the recovery points. Therefore, the recovery points of two companies are correlated, but the recoveries do not occur synchronously almost surely. We derive the correlation of the recovery rates of the debts of two defaulted companies, and the expected value and the standard deviation of the recovery rate for the defaulted debt portfolio. Furthermore, we present two methods based on the Vernic recursion formula and the Monte Calro simulation for calculating the probability distribution function of the recovery process, and illustrate several numerical results.     

Optimal Taxation of Elderly Care Services

This paper explores optimal taxation of market purchases of an elderly care service, which can also be produced in the home. Home production cannot be taxed. If children discount parents' utility relative to their own utilities, an intergenerational externality arises in the family. When home production of the service is significant, the optimal tax rate on market purchases should be: (i) high , if the service and leisure are complements and the externality is strong, (ii) low , if they are substitutes , irrespective of the degree of the externality.     

A systematic quantitative backcasting on low-carbon society policy in case of Kyoto city

In order to realize a low-carbon society (LCS), it is necessary to formulate a comprehensive policy consisting of a large number of “options” (i.e., policies as well as technical and behavioral measures). Based on the concept of backcasting, this paper proposes a methodology and a model, called the backcasting model (BCM), that organizes a system of various LCS options and projects their detailed schedule toward a given target year. The methodology and model mainly focus on describing a complex system of LCS options and the consistency of their schedule. Other aspects such as the costs of LCS measures, stock dynamics of technologies, and effects of economic instruments are not explicitly considered. To permit quantitative treatment of various types of options, they are classified into several categories. The BCM calculates the schedule of the options under given quantitative information on the options and relationships between them. The methodology and model were applied to Kyoto City as an example. First, a quantitative snapshot of socioeconomic status and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions was described. In the snapshot, a 45% reduction of GHG emissions compared with 1990 was achieved with moderate economic growth. The BCM was applied to about 130 options shown in an action plan of the Kyoto Municipal Government, and a schedule of the options was calculated. This methodology treats wide-ranging and complex low-carbon options in a quantitative and consistent manner and supports the policymaking process toward the realization of a low-carbon society.