Child Benefit Payments and Household Wealth Accumulation

Using the life‐cycle/permanent income hypothesis, we theoretically and empirically assess the impact of child benefit payments on household wealth accumulation. Consistent with the predictions of the model, we find that higher cumulative benefits received increase current assets, higher future benefit payments lower asset holding, and that these effects systematically vary over the life cycle. We find different wealth responses to child benefit payments for liquidity constrained and unconstrained households, as predicted by the model.     

Integrating business modeling and roadmapping methods - The Innovation Support Technology (IST) approach

The purpose of this paper is to report the integration studies of business modeling and roadmapping methods for the “Innovation Support Technology (IST)” and the IST's practical application to real-world cases. The IST is conducted for the purpose of offering a convenient tool for engineers and researchers in order to enhance corporate value from R&D outputs. “Japan's lost decade” has forced companies to change R&D management and R&D operation style, especially regional industries. We propose the framework for revitalization of regional industries by using the Strategic Technology Roadmap made by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI-TRM) with business modeling. We applied this IST method to several real-world cases to show its effectiveness. This study represents the result of over four years (fall 2002) of work with the value creation framework of the business modeling method for R&D outputs, done by a group of researchers from JATES (Japan Techno-Economics Society).     

Interim efficient allocations under uncertainty

This paper considers an exchange economy under uncertainty with asymmetric information. Uncertainty is represented by multiple priors and posteriors of agents who have either Bewley's incomplete preferences or Gilboa-Schmeidler's maximin expected utility preferences. The main results characterize interim efficient allocations under uncertainty; that is, they provide conditions on the sets of posteriors, thus implicitly on the way how agents update the sets of priors, for non-existence of a trade which makes all agents better off at any realization of private information. For agents with the incomplete preferences, the condition is necessary and sufficient, but for agents with the maximin expected utility preferences, the condition is sufficient only. A couple of necessary conditions for the latter case are provided.     

日本岛根分收林制度及对中国杨树产业化的借鉴

运用制度分析的方法从组织模式、利益分配与制度保障上对日本岛根的分收林制度进行剖析的结果表明:日本岛根在保证生态环境不受损害的前提下,持续地为林业产业提供可靠的林木产品。具有相似经营条件的中国杨树产业由于经营目标不明确,经营模式粗放、经营规模小导致木材供应不足、质量低下。由此指出杨树产业化应借鉴日本分收林的制度安排,并提出加强对林业产业链的有效控制、建立稳定的利益分配机制、确立合理的组织形式等政策建议。     

Time Spent on Beneficial Leisure Activities Among Elder Caregivers in Their Third Age

The Third Age is an emerging postretirement life stage characterized by better health and greater independence than previous cohorts have experienced, and recognized as an ideal time for personal growth and leisure. Yet the same demographic force that is partially responsible for this new life stage—population aging—is also driving an increased need for long-term services and supports, and Third Agers often find themselves fulfilling these caregiving roles. Thus, data from the 2013 American Time Use survey were analyzed to assess elder-caregiving-related barriers to leisure among Third Agers. While, caregivers were found to report more total leisure time and social activities, they reported less time on physical activities than noncaregivers. Results were found to differ by weekday or weekend status. Future research needs to consider specific types of leisure time use, as well as timing of leisure activities, to promote quality of life among caregivers in their Third Age.     

The Perceptual Gaps Between Companies’ and University Students’ Views on Fundamental Competencies

This study examines the gap between the competencies that companies expect of university students and those that university students believe companies are seeking. We find that a gap exists between companies’ and students’ evaluations of the competencies required in the workplace. Surprisingly, companies’ and students’ priorities related to competencies are different. Our results show that both companies and students highly value versatile personal competencies as essential skills for employees. Teamwork skills are not a top priority for companies although students value them highest of the various attributes. Gaps also exist between the two groups regarding their evaluation of personality traits. These findings contribute to the development of appropriate curricula for universities and career education.     

Can everyone benefit from economic integration?

There is no Pareto efficient allocation rule which always encourages economic integration. Further, for any efficient rule treating indistinguishable agents identically in welfare terms, there is an economy in which a third of the agents are hurt upon integration.     

Increasing marginal impatience and intertemporal substitution

For infinite-horizon models with recursive preferences the condition known as increasing marginal impatience is often adopted, but the condition is not fully understood in the literature. This paper shows that increasing marginal impatience is equivalent to the intuitive property that the substitutability between the consumption levels in two different periods is a decreasing function of the distance between the periods.     

Modeling Bank Runs in Financial Crises

In recent years, financial crises have occurred frequently in each region, and banks are facing harsh management environments. Bank runs of customers during a financial crisis are one of a bank’s most serious risks. This research aims to build a bank run model for financial crises, use that model to estimate the amount of deposit funds which flow out, and propose a framework for financial crisis risk management. The model proposed in this paper enables understanding of the factors which have the largest impacts on bank runs, providing valuable information for banks to cope with such risks. The model uses survey data, and clarified that bank runs have differences which depend on customer characteristics and branch location. We understood that during a financial crisis, an appropriate branch strategy must be adopted depending on the location and customer characteristics of each bank branch.