Can margin traders predict future stock returns in Japan?

A growing body of literature suggests that investor sentiment affects stock prices both at the firm level and at the market level. This study examines the relationship between investor behavior and stock returns focusing on Japanese margin transactions using weekly data from 1994 to 2003. Margin trading is dominated by individual investors in Japan. In analysis at the firm level, we find a significant cross-sectional relationship between margin buying and stock returns. Both market-level and firm-level analyses show that margin buying traders follow herding behavior. They seem to follow positive feedback trading behavior for small-firm stocks and negative feedback trading behavior for large firm stocks. Our results show that information about margin buying helps predict future stock returns, especially for small-firm stocks at short horizons. The predictive power does not diminish even after controlling for firm size and liquidity.     

Encoding of high-frequency order information and prediction of short-term stock price by deep learning

Predicting the price trends of stocks based on deep learning and high-frequency data has been studied intensively in recent years. Especially, the limit order book which describes supply-demand balance of a market is used as the feature of a neural network; however these methods do not utilize the properties of market orders. On the other hand, the order-encoding method of our prior work can take advantage of these properties. In this paper, we apply some types of convolutional neural network architectures to order-based features to predict the direction of mid-price trends. The results show that smoothing filters which we propose to employ rather than embedding features of orders improve accuracy. Furthermore, inspection of the embedding layer and investment simulation are conducted to demonstrate the practicality and effectiveness of our model.     

Impact of New Public Management on the Efficiency of Japanese Museums*

The aim of the present paper was to determine how small government policies have changed the management of Japanese prefectural museums since 2006. To reconstruct the budget positions of local governments, the Koizumi Government advocated a policy of ‘small’ government and cuts in the costs of public facilities. One example is the introduction of the designated manager system (DMS) into museums. The DMS is a form of new public management, enabling private managers to manage public facilities. Using stochastic frontier analysis, this paper investigates the impact of the introduction of the DMS on the efficiency of museums.     

An exact solution approach for vehicle routing and scheduling problems with soft time windows

A new column generation based exact optimization approach for the vehicle routing and scheduling problem with semi soft time windows (VRPSSTW) is presented. Elementary shortest path problem with resource constraints and late arrival penalties is solved as a subproblem, which rises from the Dantzig–Wolfe decomposition method. Exact solutions of VRPSSTW and hard time windows variant are compared on Solomon’s benchmark instances as well as on an instance based on Tokyo road network. It was found that the VRPSSTW solution results in fewer routes thus overall costs are reduced and late arrival penalties contribute only a small fraction to total cost.     

A characterization of quasi-concave functions

This paper provides a simple and short proof that the following two properties are equivalent under ▽f(x) ≠ 0: (A) ▽f(x) h = 0 implies h^T▽²f(x) h ? 0 for any x; (B) f(x¹) ? f(x⁰) implies f(tx¹ + (1?t)x⁰) ?f(x⁰) for 0? t ? 1.     

北方半干旱区氮肥不同配施方式对小南瓜产量的影响

小南瓜是北方半干旱区增加经济产值的适生作物之一。研究选用日本赤甘栗品种,采用田间小区试验,研究了在两种灌溉方式(灌溉、灌溉施肥)和四个牛粪氮添加水平(25、50、75、100 kg N/hm~2)处理下氮肥不同配施方式对小南瓜产量的影响。结果表明,在小南瓜生长前期,滴灌施肥方式可有效促进叶绿素的积累及叶片的复壮,有利于植株生长。单施有机肥组,随着牛粪氮添加水平的增加小南瓜产量未见明显增加,平均产量为10 t/hm~2;有机肥结合灌溉施肥组,随着牛粪氮添加水平的增加小南瓜产量显著增加,最高达到21.5 t/hm~2。当总氮添加量为100~140 kg/hm~2,有机无机肥配比为3:7~5:5时,小南瓜产量比单施牛粪肥增产60%,平均达到16 t/hm~2。     

Important attributes of lodgings to gain repeat business: A comparison between individual travels and group travels

The purpose of this study is to investigate the attributes of the satisfaction that are related to the lodging-guests’ tendency to revisit the lodgings and to compare these attributes among the different travel styles, such as individual travel, travel with friends or as a couple, and travel with family. We examine 6351 guest evaluations from a highly popular travel reservations website. Multinomial logistic regression analyses are performed and they show that the important attributes for lodgings to gain repeat business vary among their guest's travel styles.     

A Pacific free trade area

Great Britain's desire to join the Common Market has given a fresh impetus to the plans of a Pacific-Asiatic free trade area. Members of PAFTA are to be Japan, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. By means of an economic integration of these nations, particularly Japan is interested in stabilising its position in the world economy and not to stand completely outside regional unions. Already last year, INTERECONOMICS published a critical comment to the PAFTA plans written by the Australian professor, H. W. Arndt. In view of the manifold problems and the economic disadvantages to be anticipated, he declared against an Australian participation in this project. In the following article, Professor Kojima, the initiator of the Pacific integration plans, takes a different point of view.