The development of the group accounts disclosure system in Japan

The Japanese disclosure system of consolidated statements was introduced in 1977 and extensively revised in 1997. The role of the bureaucracy has been significant in these developments and seems to be part of Japan's closed culture. However, other explanations could also be applied. In particular, although Japanese firms opposed such disclosures on the basis of preparation costs, the Japanese government had to modernize the disclosure system, including consolidation, in order to develop the securities market regardless of an individual company's interests.     

CONVEX RISK MEASURES FOR GOOD DEAL BOUNDS

We study convex risk measures describing the upper and lower bounds of a good deal bound, which is a subinterval of a no‐arbitrage pricing bound. We call such a convex risk measure a good deal valuation and give a set of equivalent conditions for its existence in terms of market. A good deal valuation is characterized by several equivalent properties and in particular, we see that a convex risk measure is a good deal valuation only if it is given as a risk indifference price. An application to shortfall risk measure is given. In addition, we show that the no‐free‐lunch (NFL) condition is equivalent to the existence of a relevant convex risk measure, which is a good deal valuation. The relevance turns out to be a condition for a good deal valuation to be reasonable. Further, we investigate conditions under which any good deal valuation is relevant.     

The Relations between Minimal Martingale Measure and Minimal Entropy Martingale Measure

We consider incomplete markets, where each risky asset fluctuation is a continuous semimartingale, and study a subset of Equivalent Local Martingale Measures in which Minimal Martingale Measure minimizes relative entropy.We also discuss, as special cases, some models with the risky assetfluctuation represented as a solution of some stochastic differential equations.Finally, we mention that the predictable representation property is essentialin order that Minimal Martingale Measure coincides with Minimal Entropy Martingale Measure.     

Preferences for Educational Status,Human Capital Accumulation,and Growth

Using an overlapping generations model in which human capital accumulation has positive external effects on the production of the human capital of future generations, this paper analyzes implications of agents’ having preferences for educational status, represented by human capital holdings relative to the social average. Examining the value and sign of the optimal distortionary tax in the optimal taxation scheme, we analyze the efficiency of the level of human capital accumulation in a decentralized economy. The desire for educational status can compensate for insufficient accumulation of human capital stemming from human capital externalities directed toward future generations.     

Visual communication technology : Priorities for the 1980s

The author considers a strategy for the study of visual communications in the 1980s. To establish a basis for this strategy, market research was carried out to ascertain major visual communications needs in leading business organizations. The systems found to have greatest potential were video conferencing, interactive information retrieval, facsimile, document processing, and office automation (integrating all four systems). In the light of these requirements, the author describes a study programme for the 1980s and shows which technologies should be developed.     

An extension of mean-variance hedging to the discontinuous case

Our goal in this paper is to give a representation of the mean-variance hedging strategy for models whose asset price process is discontinuous as an extension of Gouriéroux, Laurent and Pham (1998) and Rheinländer and Schweizer (1997). However, we have to impose some additional assumptions related to the variance-optimal martingale measure.Received: April 2004, Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 91B28, 60G48, 60H05JEL Classification: G10I would like to express my gratitude to Martin Schweizer and referees for their much valuable advice. I also would like to express my gratitude to Tsukasa Fujiwara, Hideo Nagai and Jun Sekine for many helpful comments.     

Disorderly adjustments to the misalignments in the Korean won

This paper estimates the equilibrium exchange rates for Korea'sreal effective rates using Clark and MacDonald's (1999) behaviouralequilibrium exchange rate (BEER) approach. The estimation resultsuggests that the real exchange rate was substantially overvaluedduring the period prior to the currency crisis of 1997–98.The subsequent adjustment, however, was disorderly in the sensethat the real exchange rate overshot its long-run equilibriumvalue. There was also a large deviation from the BEER, indicatingthat the sharp depreciation was not an equilibrium phenomenon.     

Asymmetric technological distance measure based on language model

This article introduces a novel technological distance measure between companies based on their patent portfolios. We describe the technological position or characteristics of companies by applying the framework of language modelling technique in information retrieval on their patent portfolios. The proposed novel approach is an asymmetric measure and better captures the technological characteristic of a company and hence is a more accurate distance measure.     

Status-seeking behavior,the evolution of income inequality,and growth

Using an overlapping generations model, this paper investigates the implications of status-seeking behavior, induced by preferences for relative income, for the evolution of income inequality. When average income rises, an individual’s marginal utility of their own income may increase (keeping up with the Joneses, or KUJ), or decrease (running away from the Joneses, or RAJ). It is shown that income inequality is shrinking over time in the KUJ economy, whereas it is expanding in the RAJ economy. We also explore the implications for long-run growth and inequality, in the existence of both KUJ and RAJ agents. I am truly grateful to Koichi Futagami for his encouragement and guidance in writing this paper. I have benefitted from comments by an anonymous referee, Been-Lon Chen, Giacomo Corneo, Akiomi Kitagawa, Kazuo Mino, Kazuhiro Yuki, and seminar participants at Osaka University, the 2006 Japanese Economic Association Autumn Meeting at Osaka City University, the Far Eastern Meeting of Econometric Society 2007 at Taipei, SER Conference 2007 at Singapore, and the European Meeting of Econometric Society 2007 at Budapest. All remaining errors are, of course, my own. The financial support from JSPS Research Fellowships for Young Scientists is greatly acknowledged.     

An exploratory analysis of relationships between socioeconomic,land use,activity participation variables and travel patterns

This paper aims to find relations between the socioeconomic characteristics, activity participation, land use patterns and travel behavior of the residents in the São Paulo Metropolitan Area (SPMA) by using Exploratory Multivariate Data Analysis (EMDA) techniques. The variables influencing travel pattern choices are investigated using: (a) Cluster Analysis (CA), grouping and characterizing the Traffic Zones (TZ), proposing the independent variable called Origin Cluster and, (b) Decision Tree (DT) to find a priori unknown relations among socioeconomic characteristics, land use attributes of the origin TZ and destination choices. The analysis was based on the origin–destination home-interview survey carried out in SPMA in 1997. The DT application revealed the variables of greatest influence on the travel pattern choice. The most important independent variable considered by DT is car ownership, followed by the Use of Transportation “credits” for Transit tariff, and, finally, activity participation variables and Origin Cluster. With these results, it was possible to analyze the influence of a family income, car ownership, position of the individual in the family, use of transportation “credits” for transit tariff (mainly for travel mode sequence choice), activities participation (activity sequence choice) and Origin Cluster (destination/travel distance choice).