The regulations for indoor air pollution in Japan: a public health perspective

In recent years public health problems caused by indoor air pollution, known as ‘Sick Building Syndrome in housing’, or ‘Sick House Syndrome’ in Japan, have been drawing strong public concern. After conducting extensive exposure assessment, government authorities have taken effective measures to solve the problem. However, as a result of diversification and increase in quantities of industrial chemicals, existing regulations do not cover enough ranges of various potential hazardous chemicals. Hence, the regulations seek to be changed from hazard‐based regulation to a risk‐based one. Good indoor air quality (IAQ), which does not pose unacceptable health risks from all pollutants affecting indoor air, should be ensured for all public people. The objective of this study is to clarify the remaining issues to be solved urgently, related to the regulations to ensure a good IAQ. We reviewed enormous numbers of the existing governmental and industrial voluntary standards and/or guidelines, literature and documents concerning IAQ research in the past 40 years. Our results showed six subjects from those remaining issues. Based on these subjects we created a new scheme to control the IAQ; we especially regarded a comprehensive labeling system as one of the important strategies.     

An Analytical Evaluation Method of the Operational Risk Using Fast Wavelet Expansion Techniques

A financial institution that adopts an advanced measurement approach (AMA) as a method of computing operational risk capital has to measure 99.9 % value-at-risk (VaR) as the amount of an operational risk. The most popular method to satisfy the AMA standards requires the evaluation of aggregate (compound) loss distribution, which is called the loss distribution approach (LDA). The Monte Carlo (MC) method is a well known method for calculating VaR under the LDA. However, when using the MC method to calculate VaR, the statistical error of VaR for the fat-tailed distribution increases and the computation time increases in proportion to the expected value of frequency distribution. Since the MC method has these problems, this paper presents a new methodology to compute VaR under the LDA using fast wavelet expansion techniques. The key features of our algorithm are follows: (1) Scale transformation technique for loss distributions, (2) Double exponential transformation for oscillatory integrals, (3) Finite series expansion of the wavelet scaling coefficients, (4) Wynn’s epsilon algorithm to accelerate the convergence of those series, (5) Efficient cubic spline interpolation method to calculate the moment generating function. We illustrate the effectiveness of our algorithms through numerical examples.     

A quantitative analysis of unemployment benefit extensions

Extensions of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits have been implemented in response to the Great Recession. This paper measures the effect of these extensions on the unemployment rate using a calibrated structural model featuring job search and consumption-saving decisions, skill depreciation, and UI eligibility. The ongoing UI benefit extensions are found to have raised the unemployment rate by 1.4 percentage points, which is about 30% of the observed increase since 2007. Moreover, the contribution of the UI benefit extensions to the elevated unemployment rate increased during 2009–2011; while the number of vacancies recovered, the successive extensions kept search intensity down.     

Why do only the G7+2 countries among United Nations members discuss about international public goods? A simulation study

This article investigates why only the Group of 7 plus China and Russia (G7 + 2 countries) among 194 United Nations members discuss about international public goods? By simulating the heterogeneity of income, prices and preference parameters on the total provisions and the number of free riders, we find that the number of contributors for international public goods is 15 under the 194 member countries, while the others are free riders. In addition, the contributors are the top 15 powerful countries with largest dropout value over the world. Then, the discussion with only 15 countries for public goods is meaningful. As large as the heterogeneity of parameters is, the number of contributors becomes closer to G7 + 2.     

Sunspot Fluctuations in Asset Prices and Business Cycles in Japan Over 1986–1999

If individuals receive utility directly from the value of their wealth, equilibrium may be indeterminate so that sunspot equilibria may exist. In such an equilibrium, the price of an asset may fluctuate stochastically, as a result of spontaneous revisions of agents' expectations. A neoclassical growth model with such a utility function is used to show that those fluctuations in asset prices can generate co-movement among output, consumption and investment, even without assuming non-convex technology. In particular, numerical results show that the model can replicate well the business cycles in Japan over the period 1986–1999.     

The price of education and inequality

Constructing a simple model that includes the price of education, this paper shows that the educational expenditure of rich households could prevent poor households from escaping poverty. The paper offers an explanation for persistent inequality.     

Equilibrium pricing of commodity spot and forward under incomplete markets with implications on convenience yield

Annals of Finance - This paper analyzes the relation between commodity spot, forward prices, and convenience yield under incomplete markets. Since production is a necessary process for commodity...     

Monetary policy with sticky prices and segmented markets

Summary. We consider a sticky-price model with segmented asset markets, and examine its implications for monetary policy. Our finding is, first, that the response of the money supply growth rate to a money demand shock required to stabilize inflation is not affected by the existence of a liquidity effect, but the response of the nominal interest rate is. Second, when the monetary authority adopts a Taylor rule, whether or not it should be active to obtain local determinacy of equilibria depends on the existence of a liquidity effect. Our results suggest that the monetary authority should be careful about the existence and the degree of a liquidity effect particularly when the nominal interest rate is used as the policy instrument.Received: 11 February 2004, Revised: 1 November 2004 JEL Classification Numbers: E3, E4, E5.     

Money and Prices Under Uncertainty

We study whether monetary economies display nominal indeterminacy: equivalently, whether monetary policy determines the path of prices under uncertainty. In a simple, stochastic, cash-in-advance economy, we find that indeterminacy arises and is characterized by the initial price level and a probability measure associated with state-contingent nominal bonds: equivalently, monetary policy determines an average, but not the distribution of inflation across realizations of uncertainty. The result does not derive from the stability of the deterministic steady state and is not affected essentially by price stickiness. Nominal indeterminacy may affect real allocations in cases we identify. Our characterization applies to stochastic monetary models in general, and it permits a unified treatment of the determinants of paths of inflation.