Current accounts of Japanese airports

The paper examines the current account of 41 major airports. When we exclude depreciation costs, only seven airports are profitable. When depreciation is excluded, only three airports are making profits. Airports managed by local governments are very difficult to sustain financially without subsidies. Airports with more than 5.2 million passengers are profitable when depreciation is taken into account, however most local airports have fewer than 2.5 million passengers. When depreciation costs are excluded, airports need at least 2.7 million passengers to be viable.     

Application of Multilevel Models to Structured Repeated Measurements

The linear mixed-effects model has been widely used for the analysis of continuous longitudinal data. This paper demonstrates that the linear mixed model can be adapted and used for the analysis of structured repeated measurements. A computational advantage of the proposed methodology is that there is no extra burden on the analyst since any software for linear mixed-effects models can be used to fit the proposed models. Two data sets from clinical psychology are used as motivating examples and to illustrate the methods.     

Bayesian model selection using encompassing priors

This paper deals with Bayesian selection of models that can be specified using inequality constraints among the model parameters. The concept of encompassing priors is introduced, that is, a prior distribution for an unconstrained model from which the prior distributions of the constrained models can be derived. It is shown that the Bayes factor for the encompassing and a constrained model has a very nice interpretation: it is the ratio of the proportion of the prior and posterior distribution of the encompassing model in agreement with the constrained model. It is also shown that, for a specific class of models, selection based on encompassing priors will render a virtually objective selection procedure. The paper concludes with three illustrative examples: an analysis of variance with ordered means; a contingency table analysis with ordered odds-ratios; and a multilevel model with ordered slopes.     

Deregulating Overtime Hours Restrictions on Women and its Effects on Female Employment: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Japan

This paper provides novel evidence on the effect of deregulating overtime hours restrictions on women by using the 1985 Amendments to the Labour Standards Act (LSA) in Japan as a natural experiment. The original LSA of 1947 prohibited women from working overtime exceeding two hours a day; six hours a week; and 150 hours a year. The 1985 Amendments exempted a variety of occupations and industries from such an overtime restriction on women. Applying a difference‐in‐difference model to census data, we find causal evidence pointing to the positive effect of this particular piece of labour market deregulation on the proportion of female employment. We then carry out a series of sensitivity analyses to ensure the robustness of our finding. Especially, we conduct a falsification test and an event study to show that our causal inference is not threatened by the differential pretreatment trends. Finally, we use quantile regressions and find that for jobs with more rapidly growing proportion of female employment, the effect of the exemption from the overtime work restriction on women is larger.     

Market Share Instability and the Dynamics of Competition: a Panel Data Analysis of Japanese Manufacturing Industries

This paper explores market share instability as a measure of market mobility. Using a newly constructed panel data set, we examine the determinants of the market share instability of leading firms in Japanese manufacturing industries. The findings suggest that there is a significant relationship between concentration and market share instability, and the market shares of leading firms are more stable in highly concentrated industries. We also provide evidence that industry growth has a significantly positive effect on market share instability.     

Average employee tenure,voluntary turnover ratio,and labour productivity: evidence from Japanese firms

Using Japanese firms' data, this study shows that voluntary turnover ratio is negatively related to firm labour productivity. While recent studies have reported the negative influence of turnover on organizational performance (Kacmar et al., 2006 Kacmar, K.M., Andrews, M.C., van Rooy, D.L., Steilberg, R.C. and Cerrone, S. 2006. Sure Everyone can be Replaced… But at What Cost? Turnover as a Predictor of Unit-Level Performance. Academy of Management Journal, 49: 133–44. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Shaw et al., 2005a Shaw, J.D., Gupta, N. and Delery, J.E. 2005a. Alternative Conceptualizations of the Relationship between Voluntary Turnover and Organizational Performance. Academy of Management Journal, 48: 50–68. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), they analysed only US samples. Our study contributes to researchers' efforts to generalize the relationship between voluntary turnover and organizational performance. Turnover is detrimental to labour productivity as it reduces the stock of firm-specific human capital that a firm retains. Findings suggest that firm average employee tenure mediates the relationship between voluntary turnover and labour productivity.     

Soil and water conservation technologies: a buffer against production risk in the face of climate change? Insights from the Nile basin in Ethiopia

This study investigates the impact of different soil and water conservation (SWC) technologies on the variance of crop production in Ethiopia to determine the risk implications of the different technologies in different regions and rainfall zones. Given the production risks posed by climate change, such information can be used by decision makers to identify appropriate agricultural practices that act as a buffer against climate change. Results show that SWC investments perform differently in different rainfall areas and regions of Ethiopia and that the effectiveness of technologies such as irrigation, fertilizer, and improved seeds often depends on whether these investments are coupled with SWC measures. These results underscore the importance of the selection of appropriate combinations of technologies and careful geographical targeting when promoting and scaling up SWC technologies for adaptation to climate change.     

Asymmetric loss and herding behaviour of exchange rate forecasters: evidence from South Africa

This study examines the asymmetry of the loss function for private forecasters in exchange rate forecasts of the South African rand. It tests rationality under the possibility of an asymmetric loss function. The results indicate less evidence of asymmetry for a horizon of 1 month but considerable evidence of asymmetry for a horizon of 3 months. However, the shapes of the distributions formed by estimated asymmetry parameters of sub-samples for each forecaster are symmetric, regardless of the forecast horizons, which implies that these forecasters do not herd or antiherd. In fact, the results of our empirical herding test show that forecasters neither herd nor antiherd, which is in sharp contrast to recent findings on antiherding for foreign exchange rates in emerging market economies. Our findings provide consistent evidence for a recent suggestion that antiherding might result in the rejection of rationality, even under asymmetric loss functions. Our findings also suggest that central bank transparency might be associated with herding behaviours.