Effects of Pregnancy and Birth on Smoking and Drinking Behaviours: A Comparative Study Between Men and Women

Using panel data obtained from monthly surveys for 3 years, we examined how the effects of life events on smoking and drinking behaviours differ between men and women. The key findings were that: (i) consumption of alcohol and cigarettes by men and women were lower during pregnancy and after childbirth than before pregnancy; (ii) pregnancy and childbirth led women to stop drinking and led men to reduce their alcohol consumption but not to stop drinking; and (iii) marriage, pregnancy and childbirth led women to stop smoking and marriage and birth led men to stop smoking but the effects of pregnancy on men are unclear.     

Influence of body image in urbanized areas: differences in long-term changes in teenage body mass index between boys and girls in Japan

Japanese prefecture level panel data for the period 1986?C2003 was used to analyze and compare the determinants of teenage body mass index (BMI) by sex. Major findings through random effects estimation were as follows: BMI was not influenced by the degree of population density in males and younger females. However, the BMI of 16-year-old females was markedly lower in more densely populated residential areas. These findings suggest that girls who reach adolescence are more likely to diet and that this tendency is more distinct in more urbanized areas.     

Asymptotic properties of the efficient estimators for cointegrating regression models with serially dependent errors

In this paper, we analytically investigate three efficient estimators for cointegrating regression models: Phillips and Hansen’s [Phillips, P.C.B., Hansen, B.E., 1990. Statistical inference in instrumental variables regression with I(1) processes. Review of Economic Studies 57, 99–125] fully modified OLS estimator, Park’s [Park, J.Y., 1992. Canonical cointegrating regressions. Econometrica 60, 119–143] canonical cointegrating regression estimator, and Saikkonen’s [Saikkonen, P., 1991. Asymptotically efficient estimation of cointegration regressions. Econometric Theory 7, 1–21] dynamic OLS estimator. We consider the case where the regression errors are moderately serially correlated and the AR coefficient in the regression errors approaches 1 at a rate slower than 1/T$1/T$, where T$T$ represents the sample size. We derive the limiting distributions of the efficient estimators under this system and find that they depend on the approaching rate of the AR coefficient. If the rate is slow enough, efficiency is established for the three estimators; however, if the approaching rate is relatively faster, the estimators will have the same limiting distribution as the OLS estimator. For the intermediate case, the second-order bias of the OLS estimator is partially eliminated by the efficient methods. This result explains why, in finite samples, the effect of the efficient methods diminishes as the serial correlation in the regression errors becomes stronger. We also propose to modify the existing efficient estimators in order to eliminate the second-order bias, which possibly remains in the efficient estimators. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we demonstrate that our modification is effective when the regression errors are moderately serially correlated and the simultaneous correlation is relatively strong.     

Recycling and Landfilling in a Dynamic Sraffian Model: Application of the Corn–guano Model to a Waste Treatment problem

Landfill sites may be regarded as input for a waste treatment process. Considering landfill as an exhaustible resource, we apply a basic corn–guano model to a waste treatment problem. We show how dynamic substitution between landfilling and recycling occurs. Namely, in an early stage, landfill disposal is adopted as waste treatment and a recycling process is not activated. Once an economy faces exhaustion of landfill, a recycling process is activated as a backstop technology. We refer to the possibility that an economy may be unstable after exhaustion of landfill, even if it enjoys stable growth at the early stage.     

Dynamics of social trust and human capital in the learning process: The case of the Japan garment cluster in the period 1968–2005

This paper examined the ways and the extent to which human capital and social trust are associated with the learning process of a manager in making operations decisions through experience. To this end, using a data set originally and purposively constructed by the author, I investigated the development and transformation of the garment industry cluster region of Kojima, Japan. The major findings through statistical estimations are as follows. (1) In the cluster development stage, the social trust of an enterprise and its manager's experiences in firm operations could be regarded as forming a complementary association. (2) In the stage following cluster development, however, a manager's human capital as accumulated through schooling and personal experience, instead of social trust, become complementary.     

Influence of a Wife's Working Status on Her Husband's Accumulation of Human Capital

Japanese household‐level data consisting of husband's earnings, wife's working status and their schooling levels are used to test three hypotheses, with particular consideration given to the time‐consuming process of human capital accumulation within marriages. The empirical results supports the following hypotheses: (i) a non‐working wife's schooling has a greater positive effect on her husband's earnings than a working wife's schooling; and (ii) the effect of a non‐working wife's schooling increases with the length of marriage, whereas the effect of a working wife's schooling does not change over the course of marriage.     

Public sector corruption and the probability of technological disasters

A growing number of studies have explored the influence of institution on the outcomes of disasters and accidents from the viewpoint of political economy. This paper focuses on the probability of the occurrence of disasters rather than disaster outcomes. Using panel data from 98 countries, this paper examines how public sector corruption is associated with the probability of technological disasters. It was found that public sector corruption raises the probability of technological disasters. This result is robust when endogeneity bias is controlled.     

Vulnerability of households to health shocks: an Indonesian study

We examine the effect of illness and injury shocks on work hours and household consumption in Indonesia. Using indices of activities of daily living to measure health shocks, we find that both labour hours and household consumption are influenced by health shocks to household heads. Further, farm households seem to be more seriously affected than non-farm households by health shocks. However, the magnitude of the health effect on household consumption is small, implying that even farm households are well protected on average by the presence of formal and informal risk-coping mechanisms.     

Trust in government and its effect on preferences for income redistribution and perceived tax burden

This paper explores how trust in government shared by neighbors is associated with individual preferences for income redistribution and individual perceptions regarding income tax burden. Using individual-level data from Japan, a nation with shared homogenous racial and cultural backgrounds, this paper controls for unobservable heterogeneity among Japan’s population, thus reducing estimation bias. Three measures for trust in government are used: “trust in ministries and government agencies”, “trust in diet members”, and “trust in members of municipal councils”. After controlling for individual characteristics, the key findings are: (1) people are more likely to express preferences for income redistribution when trust in government in their residential area is high; (2) people are more likely to perceive their tax burden as low when trust in government in their residential area is high; and (3) when the sample is divided into people with above average income and those with below average income, these results are only clearly observed for people with above average income and not those with below average income.