Price Effects on Compound Commodities

We examine the effect of simultaneous price changes on the total demand for a group of goods, which we call a compound commodity. Specifically, we consider unit and proportional cost components (e.g., taxes, transportation costs) imposed on compound commodities. If the unit cost is positive, then the proportional cost raises the relative price of the more expensive good, and thus induces substitution towards the less expensive good within this group. Then, the substitution effect of the proportional cost for a compound commodity is non‐negative if and only if the compound commodity and the other goods are, on average, not strongly substitutable.     

Appropriate assumption on cross-hauling national input–output table regionalization

Input–output tables are useful for regional economic analyses. Although scholars often regionalize national input–output tables, cost-related issues make surveying regional trade flow difficult; hence, non-survey approaches are implemented instead. While location quotient (LQ) approaches have been used widely, they ignore cross-hauling in interregional trade. Therefore, alternative non-survey approaches with different assumptions on cross-hauling are used, such as cross-hauling depends on regional size and cross-hauling is proportional to its potential determined by output or demand. This study concludes that the most appropriate assumption, as per the relative performance of non-survey approaches, is that cross-hauling is in proportion to trade volume.     

COMMODITY CONTENT IN A GENERAL INPUT–OUTPUT MODEL

This technical paper provides a definition of ‘commodity content’ in extended von Neumann–Morishima models of production. Our definition admits as special cases the classical definition of ‘labour values’ in Leontief models, as well as Morishima's definition of ‘optimal values’ in a von Neumann model. Proper joint production, heterogeneous labour, durable consumption goods, household activities and disposal processes are all allowed for. We also propose a tentative mathematical criterion for defining bads and for distinguishing between unskilled and skilled labour.     

The designing of corporate accounting law in Japan after the Second World War

After the Second World War, during the neutralization of the controlled economy of wartime Japan, a design for a Corporate Accounting Law was elaborated by the Investigation Committee on the Business Accounting System. The Investigation Committee tried to establish not only new business accounting standards but also a central and independent administrative organ of corporate accounting regulation on the basis of the Corporate Accounting Law. The Corporate Accounting Law was expected to lay the legal foundation of the new corporate accounting regulation regime in Japan. Nevertheless, even though the original design of the fundamental accounting law was never realized, it should be considered the starting point for our understanding of external accounting history in post-war Japan.     

Technical Changes and the Rate of Profit in Models with Joint Production and Externalities: A Duality Approach

This paper generalizes a result due to Okishio: the rate of profit increases as a result of cost reducing technical changes. The generalization is carried out first in a model of joint production which allows for new processes and commodities to be introduced or some of the old ones to be discarded. Then we consider nonlinear models incorporating external and internal (dis)economies     

Competition and termination of the alliances between asymmetric partners: The case of Japanese department stores

To enrich the literature on alliance termination, we recognize that the dynamics of individual alliances are subject to the structural characteristics of the alliance portfolios in which they are embedded. We anchor our study in the context of large industry leaders partnering with multiple small partners, the latter of which can be viewed as competing for access to the formers’ resources. We expect that a small partner’s relative capability in relation to peer partners within a leader’s alliance portfolio is negatively related to the likelihood of alliance termination, since the leader acknowledges that partners with inferior capability do not deserve to be supported. Furthermore, this relationship would be moderated by alliance portfolio size, market overlap with peer partners, and with industry leaders. Using a unique dataset of 145 alliances between leading and small department stores in Japan in the period 1977-93, we found general support for the hypothesized relationships.     

Optimal privatization policy with asymmetry among private firms

We revisit the relationship between the optimal privatization policy and market competition indexes such as the Hirschman–Herfindahl index. It is affected by the number of the firms and asymmetry among the sizes of the firms; the smaller the number of firms and the more asymmetry among firms, the higher the market concentration index. The literature on mixed oligopolies suggested that the optimal degree of privatization increases with the number of private firms, and thus, decreases with the market competition index, assuming that all private firms are homogeneous. We investigate how asymmetry among private firms affects the optimal degree of privatization. We propose the simplest and natural model formulation to discuss asymmetry among private firms. We find that the optimal degree of privatization is either nonmonotone or monotonically increasing, and thus never monotonically decreasing, in asymmetry among private firms.