Tariff Rate as a Public Good

If domestic firms lobby for protection, the tariff rate is a public good to all domestic firms, whether they engage in lobbying or not. This paper analyzes how the endogenous tariff rate as a public good depends on the group size in two‐stage lobbying models. The result depends not only on whether domestic firms lobby cooperatively or not, but also on whether domestic firms incur indirect lobbying costs or not. This paper shows that if free riding is not very serious and if the number of domestic firms is small compared to the number of foreign firms, entry of a domestic firm is likely to increase the equilibrium tariff rate.     

On a two-step estimation of a multivariate logit model

In this article the author studies the properties of the two-step estimation method proposed by Domencich and McFadden (Urban Travel Demand, North-Holland, 1975) for a multivariate logit model and shows that it is consistent but asymptotically less efficient than the maximum likelihood estimator. Its computation, however, can be considerably simpler than that of the maximum likelihood estimator, especially in models involving several dependent variables.     

Evaluation of a Multi-robot Cafe Based on Service Quality Dimensions

While AI applications are popular in many domains, they should work harmoniously with domain exerts and end users. Furthermore, to develop such harmonious AI applications, we need agile AI platforms for not only developers, but also domain experts. Currently, we have developed PRactical INTElligent aPplicationS (PRINTEPS), which is a user-centric platform to develop integrated intelligent applications. This paper reports on a multi-robot cafe as a practical application of PRINTEPS and evaluates its service quality at a university festival. It is not clear if robotic services are perceived as attractive and/or valuable, and how the concept of robotic services could lead to customer satisfaction. Therefore, the evaluation of the quality of such services is necessary to identify the key factors that could contribute to improving customer satisfaction. The purpose of this research is to identify key factors in improving customer satisfaction in robotic services by evaluating the service quality of the multi-robot cafe. We designed questionnaire items based on SERVQUAL which is one of the service quality evaluation measurement methods and conducted a questionnaire survey at a multi-robot cafe held at a university festival. From the collected data, we modeled and evaluated the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction to identify key factors in robotic services using a Bayesian network. In addition, the experiment confirms the usefulness of PRINTEPS.     

Evaluating shifts in Japan's quality-of-life

This paper presents a Data Envelopment Analysis/Malmquist index (DEA/MI) analysis of the change in quality-of-life (QOL), which is defined as the state of a social system as measured by multiple social-indicators. Applying panel data from Japan's 47 prefectures for the period 1975–2002, we identify significant movement in the country's overall QOL using a “cumulative” frontier shift index. Results suggest that Japan's QOL rose during the so-called “bubble economy years” (second half of the 1980s), and then dropped in the succeeding “lost-decade” (1990s). We also identify those prefectures considered most “responsible” for the shift(s) in QOL. Moreover, the use of both upper- and lower-bound DEAs enabled an evaluation of both “good” and “bad” movements in QOL.     

Conservation Auctions and Compliance: Theory and Evidence from Laboratory Experiments

Many agri-environmental conservation programs are faced with the problem of imperfect monitoring. This provides farmers with an incentive for noncompliance, because they can receive subsidies without implementing the conservation scheme. In this paper, bidding behavior and auction performance are compared for discriminatory-price and uniform-price auctions in an imperfect monitoring environment. Our theoretical analysis suggests that auction performances are equalized between the discriminatory-price and uniform-price auctions. However, laboratory experiments reveal that, although the discriminatory-price auction has an advantage in terms of reducing policy costs, it is more likely to cause adverse selection. As a result, the uniform-price auction tends to have higher efficiency and cost-effectiveness when compliance behavior is taken into account.     

Excess demand function around critical prices in incomplete markets

We show that the aggregate excess demand function in an economy with incomplete real asset markets can be characterized by Walras’ law, homogeneity, and continuity around critical prices that cause one-dimensional drop of the dimension of the budget set.     

A Practical Teacher–Robot Collaboration Lesson Application Based on PRINTEPS

To support elementary school teachers in teaching by encouraging active learning while maintaining the interest of pupils, this study focuses on supporting teaching, learning, and monitoring the progress of students through a Teacher–Robot collaboration lesson application using not only laptops and tablets, but also robots and sensors. Since developing a lesson application is time consuming for teachers, we have developed an integrated intelligent application development platform named PRactical INTElligent aPplicationS (PRINTEPS) to aid Teacher–Robot collaboration. However, several functions and interfaces for education are missing. Therefore, in this study, we extend several functions for education to PRINTEPS. In addition, since it is necessary in learning and monitoring the progress of students to present learning content suitable to each pupil’s level of understanding, we also have provided support through the use of a tablet quiz system based on ontologies and rule bases. In the case study, we developed a Teacher–Robot collaboration lesson application and conducted lessons for sixth-grade pupils at an elementary school. From the case study, we have confirmed the effectiveness of our platform and the application.     

PRINTEPS: An Integrated Intelligent Application Development Platform based on Stream Reasoning and ROS

Although AI and service robot applications have become very popular in many domains recently, many of them are specific applications and it is still difficult to develop integrated intelligent applications such as a robot teahouse and teaching assistant robots. To develop such integrated intelligent applications, we need integrated intelligent application platforms that have AI integration and agile process facilities. From the above background, we are currently developing PRactical INTElligent aPplicationS (PRINTEPS), which is a platform for developing integrated intelligent applications by combining only five types of modules, namely knowledge-based reasoning, spoken dialogue, image sensing, motion management, and machine learning. This paper proposes a workflow editor in PRINETPS based on a service-oriented architecture and a Robot Operating System that enables real-time parallel processing for multiple robots and sensors by integrating the five types of modules. The editor also supports not only developers but also domain experts in updating workflows frequently. This paper also proposes a novel method to integrate signals acquired through image sensing with knowledge (ontologies and business rules) using C-SPARQL and Semantic Web Rule Language. To evaluate PRINTEPS, we developed a robot teahouse application including customer reception and guidance to table services using a humanoid robot with PRINTEPS. Through this case study, we demonstrated that the behaviors of the robot can be modified by changing the workflow, the ontology, and the rules.     

Failure of the index theorem in an incomplete market economy

Recently, it was proved that the index of an economy with incomplete real asset markets is typically +1$+1$ when the degree of incompleteness, which is defined as the difference between the number of states and the number of securities, is an even number. This paper considers the case where the degree of incompleteness is an odd number and proves that any odd number can be realized as the index of such an economy.