Defect Detection Using Unanimous Vote Among Mahalanobis Classifiers for Each Color Component

In manufacturing industries, product inspection is automated and the use of image data is increasingly being employed for defect detection. A manufacturing company in Japan produces an item and inspects the produced products using image data. Reducing the error rate is important in product inspection because poor inspection of products might lead to the delivery of defective products to consumers (consumer’s risk) and strict inspection increases production cost (producer’s risk). To reduce the error rate, we highlighted fault points using a two-dimensional moving range filter and discriminated defect production through a unanimous vote among Mahalanobis classifiers for each color component. For results, we achieved a lower error rate than the current system. This research is an empirical study of how to use image data in defect detection.     

Persistent income gaps in an occupational choice model with multi‐goods

In this study, we propose a theory to explain why income gaps persist. We model a simple overlapping‐generations economy with three consumption goods and two types of workers. We find that high‐skilled workers have comparative advantage in skill‐intensive jobs and low‐skilled workers in less skill‐intensive jobs. This pattern of comparative advantage determines occupational choices by workers. Combined with human capital accumulation, the occupational choices widen income gaps between families. At the same time, the relative price of skill‐intensive goods declines owing to productivity improvement. The decline holds back income gaps from exploding. The implications of skill‐biased technological change are also examined.     

Exit from Rent‐Seeking Contests

The object of this paper is to investigate the long‐run behaviour of rent‐seekers in a situation where they incur negative expected payoffs due to increasing returns to rent‐seeking expenditures. To this end, we embed the one‐shot rent‐seeking game presented by Tullock (1980) in the war‐of‐attrition framework. In this multi‐period setting, each player not only determines his or her rent‐seeking expenditure but also chooses a mixed strategy on whether to stay in or exit from rent‐seeking competition in each period. JEL Classification Numbers: D72, C72, L12     

Non-bidding equilibrium in an ascending core-selecting auction

This paper investigates the perfect Bayesian equilibrium in an ascending-price core-selecting auction, which is recently used in some countries? spectrum license auctions. We suppose that there are two identical items, two small bidders, and one large bidder. The small bidders demand only one unit of the item, whereas the large bidder wants both units. Package bidding ensures that the large bidder faces no exposure problem and behaves truthfully. However, one of the small bidders stops bidding at the beginning in the equilibrium. Although small bidders generally face the free-rider problem and have incentives to underbid, once a bidder is the only small one remaining, he bids truthfully. Stopping early induces the remaining bidder to behave truthfully. Hence, each small bidder wants to be the first to stop bidding. The free-rider problem is considerably mitigated when there are many small bidders.     

Global Competitive Pressures,Labour Market and Employment Issues in the Japanese Service Sector

Global competition of products and services leads to rapid changes in the economy, industry and management. Judging from the industrial employment structure in Japan, the lower prices of foreign goods and services will drive the unemployment rate up in the long run. The Japanese economy urgently requires the growth of business and job opportunities, and therefore the role of employment protection legislation should be re-examined from the viewpoint of encouraging business activities. Analysis of the case study shows that managers in the growing service sector have positive attitudes towards employment growth and the expansion of business activities if the following measures are introduced: the deregulation of redundancy dismissals, the introduction of arbitrary work with performance pay, and legislative enforcement against age discrimination for hiring and firing.     

Macroscopic and microscopic statistical properties observed in blog entries

We observe the statistical properties of blogs that are expected to reflect social human interaction. Firstly, we introduce a basic normalization preprocess that enables us to evaluate the genuine word frequency in blogs that are independent of external factors such as spam blogs, server-breakdowns, increase in the population of bloggers, and periodic weekly behaviors. After this process, we can confirm that small frequency words clearly follow an independent Poisson process as theoretically expected. Secondly, we focus on each blogger’s basic behaviors. It is found that there are two kinds of behaviors of bloggers. Further, Zipf’s law on word frequency is confirmed to be universally independent of individual activity types.     

Framing adaptive capacity through a history–futures lens: Lessons from the South East Queensland Climate Adaptation Research Initiative

This paper explores how the history–futures interface can inform a set of concrete adaptation options to climate change for stakeholders in South East Queensland, Australia. It is based on research undertaken as part of the Commonwealth funded South East Queensland Climate Adaptation Research Initiative (SEQ-CARI) that profiled 33 historical case studies to identify common themes in the ways societies responded to stress. The case studies are intended to provide a context for thinking about adaptive capacity with stakeholders in the four areas of human settlement and health; energy; agriculture, forestry and fisheries; and ecosystems and biodiversity. The case studies demonstrate that adaptive capacity varies with context and is affected by the complexity, technology, leadership, institutions and imaginative resources inherent to the social system examined. To increase the possibilities for reflection by stakeholders, the case studies were used to create a set of historical scenarios that explore some of the key features of human responses to challenges such as climate change. This paper draws on this work to suggest a set of ‘practical’ lessons for those engaged with climate change today and into the future.     

Optimal Bond Portfolio for Investors with Long Time Horizons

We study the optimal bond portfolio for an investor with long time horizonusing Japanese interest rate data. A simple one-factor term structure modelis used for our numerical example. The optimal portfolio is computed using thetechnique of stochastic flows and Monte Carlo simulation. The hedgingportfolio is not negligible and the mean variance portfolio is very sensitiveto parameter values. The optimal portfolio is highly leveraged for a typicalparameter value. The investor holds a zero-coupon bond because of the lowerbound restriction on investor's wealth. The lower bound constraint may makethe optimal portfolio more realistic.     

私法与公法的协动形式

私法与公法的不断交融使得传统的公法私法二元论不断受到冲击。并非完全二元对立的私法与公法在法律规范层面存在不同种类的协动形式,私法公法协动论可以有效解释公法私法的新关系。私法与公法的协动既存在于利益层面,也存在于主体层面。利益层面的私法公法协动论主要包括公法规范和私法规范的重叠型适用、冲突调节型适用和协同型适用三类。重叠型适用主要出于保护特定利益的需要;冲突调节型适用则需要基于适当性、必要性和均衡性调节有冲突的利益关系;协同型适用本质是对利益的双重连续性衡量过程,可以分为差异化协同、竞合协同和组合协同等不同情况。而主体层面的私法公法协动论主要包括公私协动和私行政法等内容。     

Who explores further? Evidence on R&D outsourcing from the survey of research and development

Building off the resource‐based view and the knowledge‐based view, our study aims to examine determinants of firms’ R&D outsourcing, using annually‐conducted firm‐level survey data of Japanese R&D companies from 1984–2012. This survey allows us to measure strategic R&D outsourcing, isolated from those more for cost‐reducing, such as prototyping, testing and inspecting. The results corroborate the argument of complementarity in scale between internal R&D and R&D outsourcing. We also find that firms employing more doctorate holders and diversifying in knowledge spaces tend to make more use of R&D outsourcing. This study sheds light on firms’ absorptive capacity, associated both with higher‐order R&D human capital and diversified knowledge spaces, as determinants of R&D outsourcing.