A Simple Multi-Regional Input–Output Account for Waste Analysis

The present paper provides a simple multiregional input–output model for waste analysis with which to estimate intraregional and interregional effects of industrial wastes embodied in regional final consumptions. The empirical analyses using 1995 nine-regions input–output tables reveals the regional properties of the interregional linkage effects. The Kanto and Kinki regions remarkably control the industrial waste emissions and waste landfills within their own regions by importing waste-intensive intermediate goods and services from the other regions. The Chugoku and Shikoku regions greatly contributed to the production of the waste-intensive goods and services for the other regions, considering the waste emissions and waste landfills relative to the commodity production levels. We also find that the household consumption behaviour in other regions indirectly plays a more important role in waste emissions than the municipal waste disposal behaviour in the region in question at least in 1995.     

Habit Formation And The Transfer Paradox

Using a two-country model with habit-forming consumers, we show that the transfer paradox can occur in a free-trade, dynamically stable economy. When the debtor is more in the habit of consuming than the creditor, an income transfer from the creditor to the debtor raises the interest rate in transition through changes in time preference. With sufficiently low elasticities of intertemporal substitution and/or sufficiently large stocks of the creditor's assets, the intertemporal terms-of-trade effect immiserizes the recipient and enriches the donor. This possibility cannot be excluded by the correspondence principle ( à la Burmeister and Long) as the dynamics are saddlepoint-stable.     

Factors determining residents’ preparedness for floods in modern megalopolises: the case of the Tokai flood disaster in Japan

This study examines how flood risk perception and home ownership affect residents’ preparedness for floods, focusing specifically on the case of the Tokai flood disaster in Nagoya City, one of Japan’s biggest metropolises, in 2000. The greatest rainfall ever recorded in Nagoya City (566.5 mm) occurred on 11–12 September 2000; as a result, a local river burst its banks and flooded the city. A survey was conducted of residents of the affected area in Nagoya City and its adjacent region. The respondents were asked to rate the extent of their experience with, anticipation of, and preparedness for floods before and after the Tokai disaster in terms of taking special measures against floods. The results showed that the degree of preparedness for floods was determined by the level of fear of floods and the amount of damage sustained during the Tokai flood, especially for homeowners. However, the residents’ preparedness did not depend on their anticipation of floods. These findings show that preparedness for floods depends on ownership of a home, fear of flooding, and the amount of damage from previous floods rather than on previous experience with and anticipation of floods.     

Rational bubbles and non-risk neutral investors in Japan

This paper presents a sufficient condition for not observing rational bubbles in real stock prices when investors are not risk neutral and both the real interest rate and the risk premium are time varying. If the risk premium and the real interest rate are stationary, the stationarity of the first differences of real stock prices is a sufficient condition for the absence of rational bubbles. Testing this condition with data on Japanese stock prices, we find that the hypothesis that rational bubbles existed is rejected.     

Endogenous Growth Cycles

This paper uses a variety expansion growth model to show that an economy with a time lag between innovation and widespread use of the new product can experience growth cycles. By allowing the diffusion of innovation, the economy can exhibit period-by-period indeterminacy of expectations. If agents expect that high investment and rapid growth will take place in the future, the economy actually grows faster, and if not, the economy grows slowly.