A cost-effectiveness analysis of revaccination and catch-up strategies with the 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (PPV23) in older adults in Japan

Objective: In Japan, the National Immunization Program (NIP) includes PPV23 as the primary vaccination for adults and catch-up cohorts. The Japanese Association for Infectious Diseases recommends revaccination for older adults who received primary vaccination ≥5 years earlier. The cost-effectiveness of adding revaccination and/or continuing catch-up vaccination in the NIP was evaluated from the public payer perspective in Japan.

Methods: The Markov model included five health states: no pneumococcal disease, invasive pneumococcal diseases (IPD), non-bacteremic pneumococcal pneumonia (NBPP), post-meningitis sequelae, and death. Cohorts of adults aged 65–95 were followed until age 100 or death: 2014 cohort (aged 65–95, vaccinated: 2014); 2019 cohort (aged 65: 2019); and 2019 catch-up cohort (aged 70–100: 2019, unvaccinated: 2014). Strategies included: (1) vaccinate 2014 and 2019 cohorts; (2) vaccinate 2014 and 2019 cohorts and revaccinate both; (3) strategy 1 and vaccinate 2019 catch-up cohort; (4) strategy 2 and vaccinate 2019 catch-up cohort; and (5) strategy 4 and revaccinate 2019 catch-up cohort. Parameters were retrieved from global and Japanese sources, costs and QALYs discounted at 2%, and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) estimated.

Results: Strategy 1 had the highest number of IPD and NBPP cases, and strategy 5 the lowest. Strategies 3–5 dominated strategy 1 and strategy 2 was cost-effective compared to strategy 1 (ICER: ¥1,622,153 per QALY gained). At a willingness-to-pay threshold of ¥5 million per QALY gained, strategy 2 was cost-effective and strategies 3–5 were cost-saving compared to strategy 1.

Conclusions: Strategies including revaccination, catch-up, or both were cost-effective or cost-saving in comparison to no revaccination and no catch-up. Results can inform future vaccine policies and programs in Japan.     

Consumer Inventory and Demand for Storable Goods: New Evidence from a Consumer Survey

In this study, I provide new evidence on consumer inventory from a unique survey on the purchase and inventory of a storable product. I confirm that the predictions regarding the correlations between the key variables of purchase probability, purchase quantity and inventory derived from the standard dynamic models of consumer inventory are consistent with the data. Furthermore, I find that the amount of daily consumption varies within a household across time and depends on inventory holding. The evidence does not conform to a constant consumption rate, which studies often assume for tractability.     

The impact of designated market makers on security prices

This paper is divided into two distinct parts. Part I, Empirical Evidence, tests a previously formulated variance, thinness relationship for security returns. First quarter 1972 daily returns variance is regressed on market value of shares, share price, trading activity, sales variance, and institutional holdings for 178 firms selected by stratified random sampling from AMEX and NYSE (specialist exchanges), and from Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro (non-specialist exchanges). The principal finding is that returns variance and market value are inversely related on non-specialist exchanges, but not on specialist exchanges; this difference is attributed to specialists' impact. Part II, Policy Proposals, discusses the manner in which designated market makers may be effectively incorporated into a continuous auction exchange. Issues discussed include: desirability of price stabilization, transfers implicit in the existing U.S. specialist system, consolidation and public availability of the limit order book, number of designated market makers for a security, competitive bidding, and compensation for performing the price stabilization function. Stabilization is modeled as an external economy, and specific policy proposals for internalizing it are advanced.     

Market Price Response of World Rice Research

Using the total number of research publications as a proxy, the output of rice research in the world is estimated to be highly responsive in the short run to price fluctuations in the international rice market. The results suggest a danger of the inducement mechanism of public investment in the agricultural production infrastructure being misguided by cyclical price changes, thereby leading to recurrent food shortages and oversupplies in a cobweb-like manner.     

Empirical Analysis of Brands: A Survey

In this paper, we survey the empirical analysis of brands. The difficulty in this area of research is that even though a brand is easily identifiable, its economic roles are not directly observable. We first discuss methods where the effect of a brand is measured as the unobservable component of sales or price of a product, which researchers recover as a residual of the sales or price regression. We then describe the approaches to estimate the various roles of brands, such as providing information and increasing the utility of consumption. Finally, we provide examples of research that highlight the role of brands in exploiting the irrationality of consumers for profit.     

Estimating Cost Functions of Malaysian Commercial Banks: The Differential Effects of Size,Location, and Ownership*

Bank integration and competition policies are a core part of current financial reforms intended to strengthen the financial sector in Malaysia. This paper intends to clarify the production technology employed in Malaysian banks and indicate important policy implications for current bank consolidation policy. While it is essential to conduct a microeconomic analysis of the banking sector to appraise financial reform policy, Katib and Mathews (2000) is the only formal study in this area that uses micro level data on Malaysian banks. Our analysis expands on Katib and Mathews’ study in three aspects. Firstly, while Katib and Mathews employed Data Envelopment Analysis, we use estimation analysis based on a parametric approach. Secondly, we examine technological differences among Malaysian banks according to the size of operations, location of branches and ownership structure. Thirdly, we also explicitly incorporate the existence of hidden bad loans in estimating cost functions. According to our estimation analysis, there is a difference in production technology between large‐sized banks and small or medium‐sized banks. While economies of scale are observed for large‐sized banks, no economies of scope and technological progress are observed for any banks. The results of our analysis suggest that, while the current reform policy is basically appropriate, serious problems remain regarding bank consolidation and the lack of market competition.     

Core allocations and the dimension of the cone of efficiency price vectors

Let (R₁,…,R_k) be an arbitrary partition of the grand coalition in an atomless exchange economy with k “large enough.” We prove that an optimal allocation x belongs to the core if and only if x cannot be improved upon by any coalition that includes at least one of the R_i's. K is “large enough” if k ? r + 1, where r is the linear dimension of the cone P of the efficiency price vectors for x. Recall that it is always true that r ? n, when n is the number of commodities in the market, and that under differentiability and interiority r = 1; thus k can be chosen to be 2 (i.e., for any coalition R, an allocation x belongs to the core of the market if and only if x is not blocked by any coalition that either contains R or contains its complement).     

Stock price responses to the eco-points programme for electrical household appliances: evidence from Japan

This article examines the Japanese government’s ‘Project for Green Consumer Electronics to Promote Business through the Use of Eco-points’ and its economic impact on consumer electronics firms’ stock prices. There has been little research on the economic effect of this project. In order to achieve our aim, we employ event study methodology. Our results show that stock prices responded positively to programme adoption, thereby indicating that the programme had positive effects on the related firms’ performance. The results also show that the programme’s economic effects gradually decreased over each subsequent programme extension. This probably occurred because the programme targeted durable goods, which consumers do not replace frequently.     

The Relationship Between Bank Risk and Earnings Management: Evidence from Japan

Using stock price data drawn from the 1990s in Japan, this paper empirically shows that bank risk is negatively associated with discretionary accruals, indicating that investors misinterpreted high reported earnings as favorable information about bank financial health. We also show that the negative relationship was very powerful prior to the major bank failures in late 1997 and 1998, but it diminished subsequent to the failures. We conclude that investors started to anticipate potential manipulation of financial reports by bank managers more rationally after the major bank failures.     

Determinants of Operational Efficiency and Total Factor Productivity Change of Major Cambodian Financial Institutions: A Data Envelopment Analysis During 2006–13

We examine the determinants of efficiency and the total factor productivity (TFP) change of major financial institutions in Cambodia using data envelopment analysis (DEA). We apply two-stage bootstrapping estimation method to a panel data of twenty-seven financial institutions in the period of 2006–13. The empirical results reveal that the size and ownership structure of financial institutions are significantly correlated with the efficiency and TFP growth of banks. The efficiency of domestic institutions is found to be better than that of their foreign counterpart, and there is no significant difference in TFP growth between domestic and foreign institutions.