Implications of the minimum access rice import on supply and demand balance of rice in Japan

The recent development of rice policies in Japan are summarized. The impact of the minimum access (MA) import on the supply and demand balance of rice, and the rice diversion areas in the future is also predicted.     

Vertical intra-industry trade and foreign direct investment in East Asia

As economic integration in East Asia progresses, trade patterns within the region are displaying an ever-greater complexity: Though inter-industry trade still accounts for the majority, its share in overall trade is declining. Instead, intra-industry trade (IIT), which can be further divided into horizontal IIT (HIIT) and vertical IIT (VIIT), is growing in importance.In this paper, we set out to measure and examine vertical intra-industry trade patterns in the East Asian region and compare these with the results of previous studies focusing on the EU, to which such analyses so far have been confined. Based on the supposition that VIIT is closely related to offshore production by multinational enterprises, we then develop a model to capture the main determinants of VIIT that explicitly includes the role of FDI. The model is tested empirically using data from the electrical machinery industry. The findings support our hypothesis, showing that FDI plays a significant role in the rapid increase in VIIT in East Asia seen in recent years. J. Japanese Int. Economies 17 (4) (2003) 468–506.     

Modelling exchange of probabilistic opinions

Summary. This paper studies how communication or exchange of opinions influences correlation of beliefs. The paper focuses on a situation in which agents communicate with each other infinitely many times without observing data. It is an extension to the ‘Expert Problem’ in Bayesian theory, where the informational flow is asymmetric. Moreover, this paper generalizes the existing literature of communication that employs the common prior assumption (CPA) by allowing for heterogeneous beliefs. Some basic convergence results are shown in contrast with the results obtained under the CPA. Furthermore, several economic implications of the basic results are provided. Received: August 27, 2001; revised version: April 16, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" The results presented in this paper are taken from my Ph.D. thesis at Stanford University. I gratefully acknowledge the inspiration obtained from innumerable discussions with Mordecai Kurz about this subject. Also, I appreciate comments from Kenneth J. Arrow, Peter J. Hammond, Maurizio Motolese, Carsten K. Nielsen, Ho-Mou Wu and the anonymous referee.     

On the Relationship between Japanese Manufacturing Firms and their Domestic Subsidiaries

Much past research on ownership policy has dealt with foreign subsidiaries. In this paper, we study the ownership relationship between Japanese firms and their publicly-traded domestic subsidiaries. Using a transaction cost framework, we find that benefiting from high subsidiary profitability is not the sole motivation behind parent firms' decisions regarding equity control of their subsidiaries. Our results indicate that different policies are adopted by Japanese firms with respect to domestic and foreign subsidiaries.     

Agriculture–nutrition linkages with heterogeneous,unobserved returns and costs: Insights from Tajikistan

Agriculture–nutrition linkages (ANLs) have been increasingly investigated in the literature. However, nutritional returns and costs of household agricultural production practices (APPs) in semisubsistence settings are poorly understood. We fill these knowledge gaps using pooled cross-section data sets in Tajikistan, where semisubsistence farming and undernutrition coexist despite relatively good agricultural infrastructure and education systems. Agricultural diversification, yield enhancement, production expansion are positively associated with various nutritional outcomes, particularly in areas with poor food market access. Decomposition exercises suggest that nutritional returns and costs of these APPs vary across households, and the adoption of APPs is driven by the expected nutritional returns. In Tajikistan, improving nutrition through household ANLs requires growing the smallholder agricultural sector in multiple dimensions, including diversification, intensification, and expansion, while also understanding better the pathways of ANLs and addressing bottlenecks at appropriate stages of such pathways.