Success factors for continuous supply chain process improvement: evidence from Japanese manufacturers

This study explores how firms can realise ‘continuous’ supply chain process improvement. Specifically, this study proposes the success factors of routinised activities (also called ‘repeated activities’) in the supply chain process improvement. Eight Japanese manufacturers are selected for the case studies. These firms are selected based on their supply chain process operation capabilities. From the case studies, we find that the planning of supply chain process improvement depends on the existing stage of the firm’s Supply Chain Management reform. In addition, even firms with high scores for supply chain process operation capabilities do not have supply chain performance systems. Furthermore, quite surprisingly, many Japanese manufacturers tend to improve their supply chain processes in the absence of such systems.     

Welfare gain from quality and price development in the Japan’s LCD TV market

We estimate the welfare gain from innovations in the LCD TVs that prevailed during the period 2005–2007 in Japan, via consumer surplus that we measure with the aid of discrete choice methods, using market data obtained from an internet price comparison service (Kakaku.com). Further, by the measured implicit values of attributes, we evaluate in monetary terms, the qualitative transition embedded in the attributes through the iso-consumer surplus planes. We thereby disaggregate the welfare gain into the qualitative and the budgetary components, which we call the quality gain, and the budget gain, respectively. The estimates show, along with the evolved process of innovation, that the quality gain was in the order of 381 KJPY, while the budget gain was 94 KJPY negative, which gives about 287 KJPY of overall welfare gain per consumer, during the period.     

Did Japan's shopping coupon program increase spending?

In March 1999, 31 million “shopping coupons” worth 20,000 yen each were distributed to Japanese families with children and to the elderly. The coupons expired after six months and could only be used within the recipient's local community. We use variation in the number of children across families and in the number of recipients across prefectures to measure the effect of the coupons on spending. We find that coupons had a positive effect on spending on semi-durables, but no effect on spending on nondurables or services. The marginal propensity to consume on semi-durables was 0.1–0.2 when the coupons were distributed in March. The results using regional variation provide stronger evidence that spending did not fall after the coupons had been redeemed.     

PRODUCTIVITY ANALYSIS WITH CO2 EMISSIONS IN JAPAN

This article measures Japanese prefectures' productivity from 1991 to 2002, taking CO₂ emissions into consideration, and examines the factors that impact on productivity. We use the data envelopment analysis and measure the Luenberger productivity indicator, incorporating CO₂ emissions in the analysis. Our results show that productivity was decreasing during the period of investigation. According to the results of the generalized method of moment estimation, the operations rate, the share of the energy intensive industries and social capital significantly impact on productivity.     

The influence of indoor air on personal exposure to volatile organic compounds and its risk estimation

This paper summarizes the results of personal exposure monitoring and estimates the risk from exposure to 18 volatile organic compounds compared with health criteria set by the US Environmental Protection Agency. In study 1, personal exposure levels and outdoor air concentrations were compared, and in study 2, personal exposure levels and the corresponding indoor air concentrations were compared. From these studies, it was concluded that personal exposure to volatile organic compounds depended markedly on indoor air quality and that handling of compounds increased personal exposure markedly. Risk estimations indicated that chloroform in tap water, benzene from cigarette smoke and p -dichlorobenzene from household insecticide needed caution.     

Estimating International Interindustry Linkages: Non-survey Simulations of the Asian-Pacific Economy

This paper evaluates a recently published semi-survey international input–output table for nine East-Asian countries and the USA with four non-survey estimation alternatives. A new generalized RAS procedure is used with stepwise increasing information from both import and export statistics as optimisation constraints on the four non-survey tables. The results show that the estimated table improves when increasing information from both sources is used, despite the well known inconsistencies between import and export data in trade statistics. It is concluded that the new procedure can be useful as a critical analysis of newly published (semi-)survey international tables and/or as an early updating tool during the construction process.     

Analytical Solutions for Expected Loss and Standard Deviation of Loss with an Additional Loan

We evaluate the expected loss and the standard deviation of loss of a bank loan, considering the bank’s strategic control of the expected return on the loan. Assuming that the bank supplies an additional loan to minimize the expected loss of the total loan, we provide analytical formulations for the expected loss and the variance of loss with bivariate normal distribution functions. Using a given expected growth rate and interest rates, two thresholds for the asset/liability ratio can specify three cases. The bank supplies an additional loan to decrease the expected loss in two cases: (i) the asset/liability ratio of the firm is low, and its expected growth rate is high; and (ii) the asset/liability ratio of the firm is high, and the lending interest rate is high. The bank maintains the current loan amount when the asset/liability ratio lies between the two thresholds. Depending on the bank’s strategy, the bank can decrease the initial expected loss of the loan. Conversely, the bank would face a greater risk of the standard deviation of loss.     

Estimating the Markov-switching almost ideal demand systems: a Bayesian approach

Allias and Nichèle (Eur Rev Agric Econ, 34(4):517–538, 2007) proposed a Markov-switching almost ideal demand system (MS-AIDS) model by extending the idea of Hamilton (Econometrica, 57(2):357–384, 1989). In this paper, we propose a Bayesian estimation for MS-AIDS model and illustrate applicability of our proposed method. We then run two sets of simulation studies to confirm the validity of the proposed method. In the empirical study on the Japanese meat market, our Bayesian estimation improves the MSEs for all meat products over the ML estimation, while successfully capturing the regime shifts of meat demand coinciding with the timing of bovine spongiform encephalopathy cases in Japan and US.     

Two Types of Disagreement in Group Discussions of Japanese Undergraduates

In this study we investigated the nature of disagreement, which is a necessary component of a good discussion. We obtained 27 group discussion scenes by Japanese undergraduates that were evaluated by two ways: impression rating and ranking. As a result of factor analysis for the impression rating data, five factors were extracted: activeness, multidirection and unification of discussion, relationships of participants, development and sophistication of discussion, and sincerity of the participants, and each factor scores of each scene was simultaneously calculated. Each scene’s rank score was also calculated by relative comparisons. A significant positive correlation was found between the mean factor and the rank scores except for Factor 3 (relationships of participants). To consider the reason for the difference relating to Factor 3’s score, we scrutinized the discussion process of four scenes of the different patterns of the factor and rank scores. From the analysis of conversations, we suggested that this difference reflected ways of disagreement. By introducing a probative discourse tags for discussion (pDTD), we reasoned that the frequency of disagreement made Factor 3’s score negative and the absence of the second part of adjacency pairs made the rank score worse. The explicit speech and actions of blame such as emotional and aggressive expression, and neglect of treatment for the minor opinion made also the discussion unfair, but we think that these behaviors might erupt from the ground made by the accumulated implicit behaviors such as the absence of the second part. We finally concluded that the criticism type of disagreement increased the rank scores, and its censure type produced lower results, and the proper ways of disagreement in group discussions were discussed.     

Principles of humanistic enterprise in Japan : A new economic system of the future

The Japanese economy and management since the Second World War have been guided by the influence of Japanese cultural uniqueness. Misunderstanding of the nature of the Japanese economy stems in part from lack of a universal principle derived from the Japanese experience. The ‘Humanistic Enterprise System’ (HES) advocated by H. Itami in his latest work is one of the most useful concepts developed to date, and views the Japanese HES economy as supplying the paradigm for 21st century global economics. HES is based on a people-centred economic philosophy in which human resources are primary for economic activity, and consists of three principles—employee sovereignty, general sharing, and an organized market.