DO DEPOSITORS RESPOND RATIONALLY TO BANK RISKS? EVIDENCE FROM JAPANESE BANKS DURING CRISES

This paper empirically examines depositors' ability to distinguish healthy banks from problematic banks, a necessary condition for depositors to impose discipline on banking institutions. We analyzed a large panel of 784 deposit‐taking institutions in Japan during the period from the 1992 financial year to the 2002 financial year. Our estimates indicate that depositors rightly appreciated the difference between healthy banks and risky banks, and that depositors of larger institutions are more sensitive to the bank risks than those of smaller institutions. We further argue that the estimated risk sensitivities of depositors are large enough to discipline the deposit‐taking institutions.     

Implementation issues in a grid-based multi-agent simulation system used for increasing labor supply

This paper describes issues of implementation for a Grid-based multi-agent simulation used to support decision-makers in making their decisions. Recently, social scientists including sociologists, economists, and social psychologists, have become interested in large- scale multi-agent simulation. However, users who are not familiar with operating large-scale computing resources may have a difficult time implementing these simulations. Therefore, the authors have developed a computing environment with a task-control support framework for a day care center allocation problem. In addition, we show how to implement the Grid-based multi-agent simulation system. In this paper, we examine the effectiveness of the proposed system using experiments with human subjects. By using the proposed prototype system, decision-makers were able to find near optimal solutions without examining all possible tasks.     

Benchmarking therapists: furthering the benchmarking method in its application to clinical practice

Psychotherapy research has been interested in understanding the variability observed among therapists with regard to their treatment effectiveness. An important initial step towards understanding the source of the differences is to reliably identify therapists that are effective. The current paper thus proposes a method for benchmarking therapists against predetermined criteria of effectiveness which could be conducted using any standard statistical package. Basic steps include (a) creating benchmark(s), (b) determining a prior the numerical criteria that constitute as ??effective?? based on the benchmark(s), (c) calculating pre-post effect sizes as an indicator of effectiveness at the case level using statistical adjustments so as to best match clinical (and other) differences among cases, and (d) statistically benchmarking the therapists using a random-effects hierarchical linear modeling. An example is provided that highlights the number of therapists who would be classified as effective based on various numerical criteria and confidence levels.