NATURAL DISASTERS,DAMAGE TO BANKS,AND FIRM INVESTMENT

This article investigates the effect of banks’ lending capacity on firms’ investment. To identify exogenous shocks to loan supply, we utilize the natural experiment provided by Japan's Great Hanshin‐Awaji earthquake in 1995. Using a unique data set that allows us to identify firms and banks in the earthquake‐affected areas, we find that the investment ratio of firms located outside the earthquake‐affected areas but having a main bank inside the areas was significantly smaller than that of firms located outside the areas and having a main bank outside the areas. Our findings suggest that loan supply shocks affect firm investment.     

Returns to Scale and Scale Elasticity in Farrell,Russell and Additive Models

This research extends the Farrell-based returns to scale methodology into Russell and Additive models in three ways with the focus of relationships between interior points and projected points. First, we present and prove four theorems that identify the scale nature. Second, we compare these results with the scale elasticity results. Third, we present techniques for estimating upper and lower bounds for the scale elasticities.     

Market discipline and bank efficiency

This paper investigates whether depositors and market investors exert disciplinary pressure on bank management in terms of efficiency improvement. We find that banks with more outstanding deposits are more cost-efficient, although little effect is found with respect to profit efficiency. This implies that depositors, the primary providers of funds to banks, likely play an important role in disciplining bank management, at least in terms of enforcing efficient use of inputs. Market discipline has garnered increasing attention as a mechanism to ensure bank soundness. Our results imply that depositors, the largest creditors to banks, may be of primary importance in this mechanism.     

What Do Banks Evaluate When They Screen Borrowers? Soft Information, Hard Information and Collateral

By applying factor analysis to unique data on loan screening for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Japan, we investigate the factors that banks actually evaluate when underwriting commercial loans. We find that banks emphasize three factors when they decide whether to grant loans: the relationship factor, the financial statement factor, and the collateral/guarantee factor. We also find that smaller banks place greater emphasis on the relationship and the collateral/guarantee factors, and that banks under competitive pressure emphasize the relationship factor to a greater extent. We interpret these findings based on the theory of relationship lending and lending technologies.     

An efficiency measure satisfying the Dmitruk–Koshevoy criteria on DEA technologies

The purpose of this paper is to develop an efficiency measurement model by enhancing a CCR (Charnes?CCooper?CRhodes) model and then to prove that the enhanced model satisfies five desirable properties: indication, strict monotonicity, homogeneity, continuity and units unvariance. In order for our model to be empirically tractable, we also provide an algorithm aimed at estimating efficiency scores.     

UNEMPLOYMENT, TRANS-BOUNDARY POLLUTION, AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY IN A DUALISTIC ECONOMY

This study is intended to examine the effects of environmental policies on employment, the use of polluting goods, and the unemployment rate under a model introducing trans-boundary pollution affecting the productivity of the other productive sectors. That model was designed by Copeland and Taylor (1999) , and transformed into a dualistic economy model constructed by Harris and Todaro (1970) . Results of our analyses show that enforcement of environmental policy through control of emissions taxes does not necessarily worsen urban unemployment. Therefore, we show that it is not usually proper to maintain that some environmental pollution cannot be avoided to establish economic development. Moreover, we analyze the effect of some environmental policies on social welfare and discuss the effectiveness of those policies.     

Does human capital or physical capital constrain output in Japanese prefectures?

This paper develops a dynamic–network DEA (data envelopment analysis) model where total output is jointly produced from two sectors: a human capital sector and a physical capital sector. Each prefecture produces a final output and an intermediate product which is used to augment future physical capital. The optimization method allows future production possibilities to be enhanced if some final output in the current period is foregone so that larger amounts of the intermediate product can be produced. The goal is to choose the amounts of final output and intermediate product so as to maximize the size of the production possibility set. The method also allows identification of whether output is constrained by a lack of physical capital, a lack of human capital or a lack of both types of capital. We apply our method to 47 Japanese prefectures during the period 2007–2009. A key finding is that a lack of human capital is constraining potential output.     

关于现代物流与市场营销的建议

21世纪的今天,世界经济和市场都发生了巨大的变化.与过去相比,对市场营销的认识也发生了很大的变化.与过去采用同样的观点和方法对市场营销进行认知,仅仅依靠市场战略进行市场营销活动,已经不能适应现代社会的发展了.在这样的背景下,应该通过现代物流与市场营销概念的统一,在重新审视现代物流的基础上,为满足消费者的需求(CS)、建立与客户之间的关系(CR),提出“现代物流与市场营销”的新概念.应当从客户、消费者的角度出发,提出“现代物流与市场营销”的新概念,推动供应链管理的发展.“现代物流与市场营销”这一新概念的提出,具有非常重要的意义.