RENEWABLE RESOURCE AND CAPITAL ACCUMULATION UNDER UNCERTAINTY

An economy endowed with a renewable natural resource and physical capital is considered in order to examine the characteristics of possible transformation from natural to man-made capital, as a potential means of surviving over long periods of time if the natural resource may be depleted or fall short of certain sustainable levels. Natural resource together with physical capital is utilized to produce a commodity that is either to be sold in a market to earn sales revenue or invested to accumulate physical capital. The reserve size of resource and the production technology are both subject to uncertainties that are modeled by Wiener processes. The Wiener process is used to express the intrinsic nature of uncertainty for a long planning horizon such as on natural resources, in which distant futures are more difficult to foresee than the near future. It is shown that there exists a steady-state equilibrium in this economy under certainty and that, under some plausible conditions, the expected rate of change in resource harvest over time under uncertainty is less than the rate under certainty, while that of product sales is not affected by uncertainty.     

Hepatocellular carcinoma: Prospective assessments of the T-factor with CT,US, and MR imaging

The capabilities of computed tomography (CT), ultrasonography (US), and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging were studied in order to determine the role of each of these noninvasive examinations for estimating the T-factor of hepatocellular carcinomas (HCCs). Fifty-one patients with surgically proven HCCs received CT (50 patients), US (46 patients), and MR (44 patients). The images of CT, US, and MR were prospectively evaluated for main tumor size, intrahepatic metastases, and vascular invasion, which compose the T-factor of HCC, and compared to pathological results. The sizes of the main tumor were estimated correctly by all examinations. For estimating intrahepatic metastases, US (74%) and MR (73%) were superior to CT (65%). For estimating portal invasion, CT (79%) was superior to US (70%) and MR (66%), because CT could demonstrate the segmental staining caused by portal invasion. The estimates of hepatic venous invasion were difficult during any of the examinations. We conclude that presurgical evaluations of the T-factor require the use of US and CT or MR and CT.     

An Interest Rate Model with Upper and Lower Bounds

We propose a new interest rate dynamicsmodel where the interest rates fluctuate in a bounded region. The model ischaracterised by five parameters which are sufficiently flexible to reflect theprediction of the future interest rates distribution. The interest rate convergesin law to a Beta distribution and has transition probabilities which arerepresented by a series of Jacobi polynomials. We derive the moment evaluationformula of the interest rate. We also derive the arbitrage free pure discountbond price formula by a weighted series of Jacobi polynomials. Furthermore wegive simple lower and upper bounds for the arbitrage free discount bond pricewhich are tight for the narrow interest rates region case. Finally we show thatthe numerical evaluation procedure converges to the exact value in the limitand evaluate the accuracy of the approximation formulas for the discount bondprices.     

Trading profitability from learning and adaptation on the Tokyo Stock Exchange

This study proposes unexamined technical trading rules, which are dynamically switching strategies among filter, moving average and trading-range breakout rules. The dynamically switching strategy is formulated based on a discrete choice theory consistent with the concept of myopic utility maximization. We utilize the transaction data of the individual stocks listed on the Nikkei 225 from September 1, 2005 to August 31, 2007. We demonstrate that switching strategies produce positive returns and their performance is better than those from the buy-and-hold and non-switching strategies over our sample periods. We also demonstrate equivalent performance for switching with different learning horizons, implying that behavioural heterogeneity of stock investors arises from the coexistence of different strategies with varying degrees of learning horizons. Our result supports several research assumptions and results on agent-based theoretical models that successfully replicate empirical features in financial markets, such as fat tails of return distributions and volatility clustering. However, upon considering the effects of data-snooping bias superior performance disappears.     

Prediction of Individual Bond Prices via a Dynamic Bond Pricing Model: Application to Japanese Government Bond Price Data

In this paper, we propose a dynamic bond pricing model and report the usefulness of our bond pricing model based on analysis of Japanese Government bond price data. We extend the concept of the time dependent Markov (TDM) model proposed by Kariya and Tsuda (Financial Engineering and the Japanese Markets, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, Vol. 1, pp. 1–20) to a dynamic model, which can obtain information for future bond prices. A main feature of the extended model is that the whole stochastic process of the random cash-flow discount functions of each individual bond has a time series structure. We express the dynamic structure for the models by using a Bayesian state space representation. The state space approach integrates cross-sectional and time series aspects of individual bond prices. From the empirical results, we find useful evidence that our model performs well for the prediction of the patterns of the term structure of the individual bond returns.     

Bank competition and monetary policy

There is an apparent theoretical discrepancy between the effects of monetary policy shocks on economies with differently competitive banking sectors. We employ cross-country data to investigate this hypothesis with two different approaches. First, using aggregate data we analyze the correlation between two indices: (i) a cumulative impulse response function providing an index of the effect of monetary policy shocks; and (ii) Panzar and Rosse's H-statistic as an index of the state of bank competition. Second, using disaggregated data we regress bank lending on the interaction of bank competition and monetary policy shocks. The first approach does not provide any evidence of a relationship between monetary policy shocks and bank competition. However, the second approach suggests that competition in the banking industry leads to smaller monetary policy effects on bank lending.     

Implementation of multi-agent incentive contracts with the principal's renegotiation offer

The purpose of this paper is to explore a mechanism for supporting desired equilibrium actions in a one-principal, multi-agent model when the principal makes a renegotiation offer. We show that there exists a mechanism in which the principal's most preferred mixed strategy is always supported. Received: 30 May 1997 / Accepted: 10 October 1998     

Trading and Ordering Patterns of Market Participants in High Frequency Trading Environment: Empirical Study in the Japanese Stock Market

In this study, we investigate ordering patterns of different types of market participants in Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) by examining order records of the listed stocks. Firstly, we categorize the virtual servers in the trading system of TSE, each of which is linked to a single trading participant, by the ratio of cancellation and execution in the order placement as well as the number of executions at the opening of the afternoon session. Then, we analyze ordering patterns of the servers in the categories in short intervals for the top 10 highest trading volume stocks. By classifying the intervals into four cases by returns, we observe how different types of market participants submit or execute orders in the market situations. Moreover, we investigate the shares of the executed volumes for the different types of servers in the swings and roundabouts of the Nikkei 225 index, which were observed in September in 2015. The main findings of this study are as follows: Server type A, which supposedly includes non-market making proprietary traders with high-speed algorithmic strategies, executes and places orders along with the direction of the market. The shares of the execution and order volumes along with the market direction increase when the stock price moves sharply. Server type B, which presumably includes servers employing a market making strategy with high cancellation and low execution ratio, shifts its market making price ranges in the rapid price movements. We observe that passive servers in Server type B have a large share and buy at low levels in the price falls. Also, Server type B, as well as Server type A, makes profit in the price falling days and particularly, the aggressive servers in the server type make most of the profit. Server type C, which is assumed to include servers receiving orders from small investors, constantly has a large share of execution and order volume.     

SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGHS AND NETWORKS IN THE CASE OF SEMICONDUCTOR LASER TECHNOLOGY IN THE US AND JAPAN, 1960s–2000s

United States organisations took a clear lead in semiconductor laser research until the mid‐1970s. After the 1980s, many important breakthroughs were developed by Japanese organisations. Exploring the journal Applied Physics Letters, this study examines how semiconductor laser technology developed in these two countries and how this change in the country‐level industrial leadership in the scientific research occurred. Examining the relationship among industrial organisations, research networks, and scientific breakthroughs, it discusses how these coevolved and how breakthroughs were channelled in different directions. R&D targets were channelled into small markets in the US, but were concentrated into the same markets in Japan.