The 135th meeting: Tokyo Conference, Spring 2020
Date Wednesday and Thursday, March 11-12, 2020.
Cancelled.
The 134th meeting jointly organized with International Public Policy Seminar
Date Friday, January 10, 2020 13:30 to 16:40
Place Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University. http://www.osipp.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/about-osipp/where-we-are/
Conference Room , 6th floor, Osaka School of International Public Policy Building, Toyonaka Campus.
Presenters
13:30-15:00 Masahiko Shibamoto, Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration, Kobe University.
Title: “Identifying Quantitative and Qualitative Monetary Policy Shocks.”
Abstract:
This paper proposes a method for identifying quantitative and qualitative monetary policy shocks in the balance sheet operations of a central bank. The method is agnostic and flexible as it relies on no assumptions on how the size and composition of the central bank's balance sheet will respond after the bank makes a policy decision. We identify two types of policy shocks as “anticipated” shocks that best portend the current and future paths of these policy instruments in response to them. We obtain evidence that qualitative easing shocks have expansionary effects on the economy while quantitative easing shocks do not.
15:10-16:40 Yasuyuki Miyahara, Graduate School of Business Administration, Kobe University.
Title: “Finitely Repeated Games with Automatic and Optional Monitoring.”
Abstract:
We study a new class of finitely repeated games with optional monitoring, where each player automatically receives complete information about the other players' actions with some exogenously given probability. Only when the automatic information did not arrive, the player privately decides whether to exercise a costless monitoring option or not. We show that a weak decrease in the vector of the players' probabilities of automatic monitoring is a necessary and sufficient condition for any repeated game with automatic and optional monitoring to have a weakly greater sequential equilibrium payoff vector set. This result considerably strengthens our earlier result, which only compares purely optional monitoring and the standard model of purely automatic monitoring. We also provide examples where existing folk theorems hold under any automatic and optional monitoring structure but not under the standard model.
The 133rd meeting jointly organized with International Public Policy Seminar
Date Friday, December 20, 2019 13:30 to 16:40
Place Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University. http://www.osipp.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/about-osipp/where-we-are/
Conference Room , 6th floor, Osaka School of International Public Policy Building, Toyonaka Campus.
Presenters
13:30-15:00 Masanori Takashima, School of Economics, Kwansei Gakuin University.
Title: “Income disparity in Nara-period Japan.” (Presentation in Japanese)
Abstract:
This study aims to measure income disparity in ancient Japan before the onset of modern economic growth. Specifically, the analysis relies on estimating the “institutional” income of peasants and government officials under the Ritsuryō regime in Nara-period Japan from historical documents such as ancient laws and regulations. The results indicate that 30-40% of peasants’ income was collected as land tax (so), poll taxes (yō and chō) and compulsory public loans (suiko), while they earned income from the cultivated land allocated by the Ritsuryō government. In particular, the tax burden ratio of poll taxes and compulsory public loans was high. The class government officials who did not have any tax burden can be divided into upper nobles, middle and lower nobles, and general officials by their income level. The income level of the upper nobles was remarkably high, and the results indicate income disparity among government officials. The incomes of general officials were higher in the local branch offices than in the central government. A comparison between social classes does not confirm a large difference between peasants and the general officials, but does show an extremely high income disparity between peasants and upper nobles. Though the result is based not on actual income, but on institutional income, the ancient Ritsuryō regime was established based on a system that produces a very high income disparity.
15:10-16:40 Shingo Ishiguro, Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University.
Title: “Relational Contracts and Savings.”
Abstract:
In this paper we investigate relational contracts when players are allowed to save/borrow so that their wealth change over time. In contrast to the existing studies about relational contracts which have assumed no savings/borrowings, we show that efficiency of relational contracts is drastically improved by saving/borrowing opportunities; even in a finite horizon environment the lack of verifiable information causes no efficiency losses during certain periods in the beginning when agents make hidden savings which are not observed to principals. We also show that the efficiency loss vanishes as the time horizon is sufficiently long.
The 132nd meeting jointly organized with International Public Policy Seminar
Date Friday, November 15, 2019 13:30 to 16:40
Place Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University. http://www.osipp.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/about-osipp/where-we-are/
Conference Room 6th floor, Osaka School of International Public Policy Building, Toyonaka Campus.
Presenters
13:30-15:00 Masaki Nakabayashi, Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo .
Title: “Legitimate Paternalism: "Semi-feudalistic'' Tenancy Contract in Imperial Japan.”
Abstract:
What conditions do make paternalistic distribution of resources and risk-bearing, which are outside the formal market mechanism, palatable to subordinates as well as allow rulers to earn rent? Moritaro Yamada, a Japanese Marxian economist, described the mechanism in this dual structure in his book in 1934, twenty years earlier than Arthur Lewis's 1954 seminal paper. His focus was on tenancy contracts of farmers and considered the risk sharing there was paternalistic, or "semi-feudalistic.'' We first specify characteristics of the tenancy contract in modern Japan bequeathed from the Shogunate regime. Second, we build a two-sector contract model to formalize the essence of Yamada's argument. We then extend Yamada's argument, showing that the landlord's surplus increases in the risk, that the optimal degree of the risk-bearing increases in the tenant farmer's risk aversion within certain limits, but that the relationships become opposite beyond the thresholds. The paternalistic landlordism is an equilibrium under the thresholds, but the equilibrium collapses beyond them.
15:10-16:40 Hirokazu Ishise, Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University.
Title: “Nominal Exchange Rate Variability, Nominal Wage Rigidity, and the Pattern of Trade.”
Abstract:
I theoretically and empirically show that the country's level of trend inflation together with industry's average level of the nominal rigidity of input prices is a determinant of comparative advantage in the long-run. The model incorporates the standard sticky price model with trend inflation into the classical Ricardian trade model. Input price rigidity reduces an industry's effective productivity under inflation. Holding other things constant, a high inflation country is relatively more productive in the industry which faces less sticky input prices. Consequently, a low inflation country has a comparative advantage in an industry that has sticky input prices. The world trade data supports this theoretical prediction even after controlling for various other determinants of comparative advantage.
The 131st meeting jointly organized with International Public Policy Seminar
Date Friday, October 18, 2019 13:30 to 16:40
Place Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University. http://www.osipp.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/about-osipp/where-we-are/
Conference Room , Osaka School of International Public Policy Building, Toyonaka Campus.
Presenters
13:30-15:00 Susumu Cato, Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo.
Title: “Acyclicity, Anonymity, and Prefilters.” (Joint work with Walter Bossert)
Abstract:
We analyze the decisiveness structures associated with acyclical collective choice rules. In particular, we examine the consequences of adding anonymity to weak Pareto, thereby comple- menting earlier results on acyclical social choice. Both finite and countably infinite populations are considered. As established in contributions by Brown and by Banks, acyclical social choice is closely linked to prefilters in the presence of the weak Pareto principle. In the finite-population case, adding anonymity implies that the only decisive set is the set of the entire population if there are at least as many alternatives as individuals. When there are more individuals than alternatives, a different decisiveness structure emerges---namely, collections of decisive sets that are special cases of symmetric prefilters. Moving to infinite populations, we again obtain the entire population as the unique decisive set as a possibility, along with additional options. These consist of a new class of prefilters that we refer to as symmetric free Frechet prefilters. The choice of the term Frechet prefilter is motivated by the observation that they share a defining property with the well-known Frechet filter---namely, that all sets in the requisite collection are such that their complement is finite.
15:10-16:40 Ken-Ichi Shimomura, Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration, Kobe University.
Title: “A crash course in cooperative game theory II.”
Abstract:
This seminar is meant to familiarize the participants with some fundamental concepts and results in cooperative game theory. In particular, I cover theory and background of classical solutions for cooperative games with coalition structures.
The 130th meeting: Tokyo Conference, Summer 2019
Date Wednesday and Thursday, August 21-22, 2019.
Place Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo.
Conference Room (Room 549), 5th floor, Akamon General Research Building, Hongo Campus.
The 129th meeting jointly organized with International Public Policy Seminar
Date Friday, July 19, 2019.
Place Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University. https://www.osipp.osaka-u.ac.jp/index_en.html
Conference Room , 6th floor, Osaka School of International Public Policy Building, Toyonaka Campus.
Presenters
13:00-14:30 Yuzuru Kumon, University of California.
Title: “The Deep Roots of Inequality.”
Abstract:
The equality of East Asian societies relative to Western Europe has been well documented in the late 19th century. This paper shows that such regional patterns may extend back over many centuries by comparing rural wealth inequality in Japan and China to Western Europe. I first present new evidence of wealth inequality from early modern Japan, 1650-1870, using a new dataset of household landholdings across 591 villages. Two facts emerge: First, Japan was highly equal relative to Western Europe, with Gini coefficients averaging 0.5 compared to 0.7-0.9 in contemporary Western Europe. Second, Japanese equality was stable compared to Western Europe where inequality trended upwards. Further, I show evidence that ancient China and Japan adopted an equal field system which kept society equal compared to medieval Europe which was already unequal circa 1300. Finally, I show evidence that differences in demographic institutions can explain why inequality outcomes diverged across these regions.
14:40-16:10 Yasuo Takatsuki, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University.
Title: “Can Market Economy Mitigate the Influence of Climate Change? Evidence from Pre-industrial Japan (co-authored with Masahiko Shibamoto).”
Abstract:
Can market mechanism mitigate the effect of climate shocks? Results from the empirical international trade and famine literature are both ambiguous and inconclusive as regard this issue. Early modern Japan (1603-1867), characterized by (1) agricultural economy, (2) closed economy, (3) sophisticated rice market, provides us with an opportunity to delve into this old and new issue. Based on recently reconstructed paleoclimate data (rainfall and summer temperature), we found an idiosyncratic shock did not influence rice prices or cause famine, but that blanket abnormalities across the entire country did. Second we specify the VAR model to estimate the dynamic effects of the permanent and temporal climate shocks on the rice market then we found that the temporal shocks have a long-run impact on the rice market and the permanent shocks also affect the rice market, but in the short-run.
The 128th meeting jointly organized with International Public Policy Seminar
Date Friday, June 14, 2019.
Place Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University. https://www.osipp.osaka-u.ac.jp/index_en.html
Conference Room , 6th floor, Osaka School of International Public Policy Building, Toyonaka Campus.
Presenters
13:00-14:30 Takeshi Murooka, Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University.
Title: “Deception under Competitive Intermediation.”
Abstract:
This paper investigates the incentive of intermediaries, such as financial advisors, mortgage brokers, or insurance salespeople, to educate consumers who misperceive the value of products. Two types of firms sell products through competing common-agent intermediaries and pay commissions for sales. One sells a transparent product, while the other sells a deceptive product that has a hidden fee, quality, or risk. Each intermediary chooses which product to offer and whether or not to educate consumers about the hidden attribute. I show that a non-educating equilibrium exists if and only if the degree of misperception is large. In the equilibrium, intermediaries earn high commissions despite competition. Furthermore, because consumers ultimately bear the cost of such commissions, consumer welfare is lower when intermediaries can educate consumers than when they cannot. I also provide a condition to detect such welfare distortion from market data, and discuss the effects of various regulations.
14:40-16:10 Akifumi Ishihara, Insutitute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo.
Title: “Pre-emptive Production in Oligopoly with Private Information.”
Abstract:
We investigate a firm's pre-emptive behavior by comparing Cournot games and Stackelberg ones with one leader and multiple followers, where each firm has private information on stochastic demand. We show that the firm prefers pre-emptive quantity choice (Stackelberg structure) to simultaneous quantity choice (Cournot structure) if and only if the firm's signal is less informative relative to the other firms' signals. The firm's preferred choice of production timing is not preferable for the producer surplus in the industry. The firm's option of production timing is beneficial for the consumer surplus in duopoly competition, but harmful when there are many competitors in the market.
The 127th meeting jointly organized with International Public Policy Seminar
Date Friday, May 31, 2019.
Place Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University. https://www.osipp.osaka-u.ac.jp/index_en.html
Conference Room , 6th floor, Osaka School of International Public Policy Building, Toyonaka Campus.
Presenters
13:00-14:30 Takuro Yamashita, Toulouse School of Economics.
Title: “Speculators enhancing Transparency in Auction.”
Abstract:
A (pure) speculator in an auction context is a bidder who participates in an auction to make a profit but without winning, observed in practice typically in auctions with resale. Given that speculators could potentially steal some rents from ``real'' bidders possibly by upsetting allocations, it is an important policy question whether speculators should be allowed to participate in an auction. In this paper, I consider a bilateral-trade (or ``double-auction'') environment where a deficit-constrained principal (e.g., a public authority) can acquire information crucial for the efficiency of trading outcomes. I show that it is welfare-maximizing to fully acquire and disclose information in the auction with a speculator, while such full-information policy is strictly suboptimal without a speculator. Because of this information channel, allowing for a speculator can increase the expected total welfare. In this sense, the paper provides a rationale for allowing for a speculator in certain auction contexts to enhance the welfare and transparency.
14:40-16:10 Ken-Ichi Shimomura, Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration, Kobe University.
Title: “A Crash Course in Cooperative Game Theory.”
Abstract:
This seminar is meant to familiarize the participants with some fundamental concepts and results in the theory of cooperative games. In particular, I cover theory and background of classical cooperative solutions such as the core, the bargaining set, and the nucleolus.
The 126th meeting jointly organized with International Public Policy Seminar
Date Friday, April 19, 2019.
Place Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University. https://www.osipp.osaka-u.ac.jp/index_en.html
Conference Room , 6th floor, Osaka School of International Public Policy Building, Toyonaka Campus.
Presenters
13:00-14:30 Takashi Shimizu, Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University.
Title: “How to Really Open the Door: An Economic Analysis on the Risk of Voice.”
Abstract:
It has been widely reported that many employees hesitate in voice or upward communication informing about (potentially) serious problems because they perceive it would bring negative consequences for them. In this paper we consider a dynamic model in which employee's efforts and their consequences are only observable to him and his voice is necessary to regain a good state of organization. We show that efficiency wage helps to make the value of relationship internalized with the employee. We also discuss the effects of exit and loyalty on voice.
14:40-16:10 Junichiro Ishida, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
Title: “Rewarding Mediocrity? Optimal Regulation of R&D Markets with Reputation Concerns (co-authored with Chia-Hui Chen).”
Abstract:
In this paper, we consider a dynamic signaling model of an R&D market in which a researcher can choose either a safe project (exploitation) or a risky project (exploration) at each instance. We argue that there are substantial efficiency gains from rewarding minor innovations above their social value and further that it is indeed superior to rewarding major innovations directly, even when those minor innovations are intrinsically valueless in themselves. When only major innovations are rewarded, the R&D market eventually shuts down due to a version of the lemons problem. Rewarding minor innovations is actually conducive to major innovations as it induces self-sorting among researchers, which is essential in providing time and resources necessary for more productive ones to take riskier but more ambitious approaches. This result draws clear contrast to the static counterpart where such a scheme can never be optimal. Our model also exhibits reputation dynamics which capture a pervasive view in academia that “no publications are better than a few mediocre publications” at an early stage of one's career.