Children's perception of dinner conversation with parents in Japan

The children's perception of dinner and dinner conversation with their parents was surveyed for sixth‐grade students of elementary school in Japan. The data were analysed from the gender of children and attending parents. The children had dinner and dinner conversation more frequently with their mother than with their father. With father attendance, girls and boys had the same frequency of dinner and dinner conversation, although, with mother attendance, girls had dinner conversation more frequently than boys. Most of the children felt happy when they had dinner with their parents. However, a lower percentage of children felt happy when having dinner conversation with their parents, thought that they were important to their parents and thought dinner conversation was useful. More children felt happy during dinner and dinner conversation with their mother than with their father. However, there was no perceived difference in the usefulness of the conversation based on the father or the mother attending. The contents of conversation were greatly affected by which parent was attending. Subjects concerning children's manners were talked about more frequently in conversation with mothers than with fathers. Children had more frequent conversations with their father about ‘social issues’ and the ‘parents’ surroundings’ than with their mother. Girls had more frequent conversations on a wider variety of subjects with their mothers than boys. Girls could more easily share in their mothers’ knowledge or sense of values through dinner conversation. Boys were, for the most part, excluded from this process in conversation with either parent.     

Looking to the future: a new career education programme

A new programme of general family and consumer science for all high school students that can contribute to career education was proposed. The programme had three sessions: ‘single life’, ‘family life’ and ‘retired life’ from the typical three main life stages. Students were challenged to think about their future with regard to real life issues such as housing, location, budgeting time and finances, and family issues. Students were able to consider their future life concretely and specifically from various viewpoints after taking part in this programme. Students also found value in home economics education in developing life skills and knowledge, in considering their actual life and in considering their future life.     

Stability of international climate coalitions — A comparison of transfer schemes

This paper studies the impact of pragmatic and optimal transfer schemes on the incentives for regions to join international climate agreements. With an applied model that comprises twelve world regions we investigate: (i) a benchmark without transfers, (ii) scenarios with allocation-based rules where coalition members receive tradable emission permits proportional to initial or future emissions, (iii) scenarios with outcome-based rules where the coalition surplus is distributed proportional to emissions, and (iv) a scenario based on an optimal sharing rule where the coalition surplus is distributed proportional to outside option payoffs.We find that well-designed transfer schemes can stabilise larger coalitions and increase global abatement levels. In our applied setting we find that for allocation-based and outcome-based rules only small coalitions are stable, and, in the case of grandfathered emission permits, there is no stable coalition at all. Some obstacles associated with grandfathered emission permits can be overcome by incorporating the expected growth of emissions in developing countries in the distribution of emission permits. For the optimal transfer scheme we find that larger coalitions, which include key players such as the United States and China, can be stable, but no transfer scheme is capable of stabilising the Grand Coalition.     

Addressing the paradox – the divergence between smallholders’ preference and actual adoption of agricultural innovations

Experiences in smallholder contexts indicate frequent mismatches between technologies introduced and needs of farmers who must make complex decisions in reallocating their limited resources under highly risky ecological and market contexts. This study proposes a cost- and time-effective, easy-to-implement approach to identify farmers’ priorities and critical intervention areas, and presents its application in guiding an agroforestry strategy in Rwanda. It was found that different tree species have distinctive enabling vs. constraining conditions under different agroecological contexts in the perspective of smallholder farmers. Tree species preferred by farmers were not necessarily widely adopted if multitudes of conditions were not enabling. The essential conditions for sustainable adoption include: quality materials/inputs are available; technologies are compatible with existing local farming systems; they are resilient to climate risks/resistant to pests-diseases; management is not complicated; and, there is guaranteed access to markets. The results show that there will not be a silver bullet national strategy to scale up agroforestry. Instead a matrix kind of strategies -to promote enabling conditions and address constraining conditions for priority species in specific agroecologies- will be required. The proposed concept should be further refined for wider agricultural technology transfer debates to break the myths of low uptakes by smallholders.     

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.     

INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE AGREEMENTS UNDER INDUCED TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

We examine the impact of technological change on the stability of climate coalitions and explore how international cooperation on abatement affects the incentives of signatories to invest in R&D to reduce emissions. We compare the case of no technological change with exogenous technological change and induced technological change. In the latter case R&D investments are endogenous. We find that the highest equilibrium pay‐offs are achieved in the case of induced technological change. Furthermore, the formation of a climate coalition boosts R&D investments in carbon abatement technologies in signatory countries.     

Dynamics of the Relationship Between the Terms of Trade and the Trade Balance in Developing Countries of Asia,Africa and Latin America

The objectives of this study are to examine the relationship between the terms of trade and trade balance to GDP ratios for a large number of developing economies using data on barter terms of trade, real exchange rate and trade balances. The literature on the subject postulates J-curve or S-curve between terms of trade and trade balance and we examine whether there is any evidence of a J-curve or S-curve relationship in time series data over the period 1970–1999. We find that for a few economies in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the existence of a S-curve is supported. However, for a large number of countries, neither a strict J-curve nor S-curve relationship holds.