2008年度
日時: 2008年5月17日(土)
場所: 政策研究大学院大学 4階 会議室B
地図: http://www.grips.ac.jp/jp/docs/map.pdf
14:00-15:50
講演者: 濱秋純哉氏 (東京大学大学院)
題目: The effect of the 1999 pension reform on the household asset accumulation in Japan: A test for the Life-Cycle Hypothesis
概要: This paper tests for the Life-Cycle Hypothesis (LCH), based on a household-level data, by utilizing a change in net pension benefits deriving from the 1999 pension reform in Japan. This exogenous change enables me to identify the substitution effect between the pension and household assets, which can be observed if LCH holds, separately from the inherent positive correlation between them. In this paper, this effect is found particularly for the middle-aged households; moreover, their magnitude is fairly reasonable. Also, findings reveal that less altruistic households behave more consistently with LCH than altruistic households, implying that the estimates of substitutability correctly reflect the variation in household assets in response to the pension reform.
16:10-18:00
講演者: 原野啓氏 (日本住宅総合センター)
題目: 国立景観訴訟にみる高さ規制条例の経済学的妥当性
概要: 2004年6月に景観緑三法が成立したことからも分かるように、景観に対する社会的な関心が急速に高まってきている。
国立景観訴訟では、国立市にある学園通り沿いの並木よりも、高さが大幅に上回るマンションの建築により、良好な景観が損なわれたとして、周辺住民が訴訟を起こし、最高裁まで争われた。結果的には、マンション建設は認められ、現在もマンションは存在している。他方、国立市では当該マンションの工事が着工された直後に「高さ20ｍを超える建築物」の建設を規制する条例を施行した。このような国立市の条例は、経済学的に見て妥当なものなのだろうか。
国立市が導入した高さ規制を経済学的に解釈するなら、マンション建設によって生じるかもしれない景観悪化という負の外部性を、規制によって内部化する試みであると考えられる。しかし、こうしたマンション建設規制は良好な景観の維持に役立つと考えられると同時に、新規の住宅供給を制限することで消費者が不利益をうけるとも考えられる。
そこで、本研究では、マンションの建設によって景観価値がどの程度毀損されたかに着目し、景観価値を実証的に測定し、国立市が行った条例の妥当性を検証したい。京都市景観規制に見られるように、今後も景観に関する規制を伴った条例は施工されるものと考えられる。その際、景観を重要視するばかりではなく、同時に失われる社会的余剰を考慮することも重要である。しばしば後者の利益は無視されがちであり、この意味で景観規制や条例の意義を批判的に検討することはきわめて重要であると考えられる。
日時: 2008年6月21日(土)
場所: 政策研究大学院大学 4階 会議室B
地図: http://www.grips.ac.jp/jp/docs/map.pdf
14:00-15:50
講演者: 村田安寧氏 (日本大学)
題目: Trade, firm selection, and the 'toughness of competition': General equilibrium theory with applications
概要: We present a general equilibrium model of international trade with heterogeneous firms in which trade integration affects wages and aggregate productivity by forcing the least efficient firms to leave the market. We then estimate the theory-based gravity equations for Canada-US trade under general equilibrium constraints, and decompose the border effects into: (i) 'pure' border effects; (ii) relative and absolute wage effects; and (iii) selection effects. Using the estimated parameters of our model, we finally conduct various counterfactuals on the impacts of trade integration on wages, productivity, markups, the share of exporters, the mass of varieties consumed and produced as well as welfare.
16:10-18:00
講演者: 川元康一氏 (京都大学大学院)
題目: Social Status, Human Capital Externalities, and Optimal Education Policy
概要: The existence of human capital externalities is typically considered as one of rationales for government interventions into education. However, the necessity for education policies would vary with cultures in societies, since people may evaluate social esteem as a return to investment in human capital. This paper introduces preferences for social status based on human capital holdings into the Uzawa-Lucas model, and investigates the relationship between status desire and positive human capital externalities. The existence of status desire stimulates growth of the economy. However, it may induce excessively fast accumulation of human capital. The value and sign of the optimal rate of subsidy to education, which represent the needs for education policies, depend on the strength of status desire. It is also shown that, in the presence of status desire, flat rate wage income taxes are no longer neutral to the equilibrium allocation.
日時: 2008年7月22日(火)
場所: 政策研究大学院大学 4階 会議室4B
地図: http://www.grips.ac.jp/jp/docs/map.pdf
14:00-15:50
講演者: 吉田二郎氏 (東京大学)
題目: "Technology Shocks and Asset Price Dynamics: The Role of Housing in General Equilibrium"
概要: A general equilibrium model, that incorporates endogenous production and local housing markets, is developed in order to explain the price relationship among human capital, housing, and stocks, and to uncover the role of housing in asset pricing. Housing serves as an asset as well as a durable consumption good. It is shown that housing market conditions critically affect asset price correlations and risk premia. The first result is that the covariation of housing prices and stock prices can be negative if land supply is elastic. Data from OECD countries roughly support the model's predictions on the relationship among land supply elasticity, asset price correlations, and households' equity holdings. The second result is that housing rent growth serves as a risk factor in the pricing kernel. The risk premium becomes higher as land supply becomes inelastic and as housing services become more complementary with other goods. Finally, the housing component in the pricing kernel is shown to mitigate the equity premium puzzle and the risk-free rate puzzle.
16:10-18:00
講演者: 堀健夫氏 (大阪大学大学院)
題目: "Educational Gender Inequality and Inverted U-Shaped Fertility Dynamics"
概要: In this article, we examine the dynamic interactions between narrowing educational gender inequality and inverted U-shaped fertility dynamics by constructing a two-period overlapping generations model that includes both sexes. In the early stage of development, neither males nor females are educated. At some period, males begin to be educated, whereas females remain uneducated. At this stage, the males' education levels, as well as the fertility, gradually increase over time. Fertility achieves a peak just before the onset of the female's education. Subsequently, fertility steadily decreases over time. Gender inequality in education also decreases during periods of fertility decline.
日時: 2008年8月27日(水)
場所: 政策研究大学院大学 4階 会議室4B
地図: http://www.grips.ac.jp/jp/docs/map.pdf
14:00-15:50
講演者: 花木伸行氏 (筑波大学)
題目: Born Under a Lucky Star? (Joint project with Alan Kirman and Matteo Marsili)
概要: This paper suggests that people can learn to behave in a way which makes them unlucky or lucky. Learning from experience will lead them to make choices which may lead to ``luckier'' outcomes than others. By so doing they may reinforce the choices of those who find themselves with unlucky outcomes. People have reasonably learned to behave as they do and that their behaviour is consistent with their experience. The lucky ones were not ``born under a lucky star'' they learned to be lucky.
16:10-18:00
講演者: 吉田素教氏 (大阪府立大学)
題目: Efficiency Evaluation on Each Industry of Regional Economies in Japan
概要: We consider the tasks on the Japanese economy in details. First, we estimate the production function of each industry with prefectural panel data. Then, we select “Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)” model from the Returns-to- scale of each industry by this estimation's results. Finally, we implement DEA to evaluate the production efficiency by industry and prefecture in the economic center areas. The empirical results show that all economic activities with high added value have concentrated in only Tokyo; because of the redundancy reaching around 8-9% of total input amount, we have to reform regional economies and social security policies.
日時: 2008年9月27日(土)
場所: 政策研究大学院大学4 階 会議室4B
地図: http://www.grips.ac.jp/jp/docs/map.pdf
14:00-15:50
講演者: 安田洋祐氏 (政策研究大学院大学)
題目: Expanding "Choice" in School Choice (joint with Atila Abdulkadiroglu and Yeon-Koo Che)
概要: Truthful revelation of preferences has emerged as a desideratum in the design of student assignment mechanisms in school choice programs. Gale-Shapley's deferred acceptance mechanism is strategy-proof for students but limits their ability to communicate their preference intensities. This results in ex-ante inefficiency when ties at school preferences are broken randomly. We propose a practical deferred acceptance mechanism which allows students, via signaling their preference intensities, to influence how they are treated in ties. It maintains truthful revelation of ordinal preferences and supports a greater scope of efficiency, a new notion that helps us to compare mechanisms on the efficiency ground.
16:10-18:00
講演者: 石田潤一郎氏 (大阪大学)
題目: When Market Competition Benefits Firms (with Toshihiro Matsumura and Noriaki Matsushima)
概要: A conventional wisdom in economics posits that more intense market competition, measured in almost any way, reduces firm profit. In this paper, we challenge this conventional wisdom in a simple Cournot model with strategic R&D investments wherein an efficient firm (dominant firm) competes against less efficient firms (fringe firms). We find that an increase in the number of fringe firms can stimulate R&D by the dominant firm, while it always reduces R&D by each of the fringe firms. More importantly, this force can be strong enough to compensate for the loss that arises from more intense market competition: the dominant firm's profit may indeed increase with the number of fringe firms, quite contrary to the conventional wisdom. An implication of this result is far-reaching, as it gives dominant firms to help, rather than harm, fringe competitors. We relate this implication to a practice known as open knowledge disclosure, especially Ford's strategy of disclosing its know-how publicly and extensively at the beginning of the 20th century.
日時: 2008年11月1日(土)
場所: 政策研究大学院大学 4階 会議室4B
地図: http://www.grips.ac.jp/jp/docs/map.pdf
14:00-15:50
講演者: 安藤至大氏 (日本大学)
題目: Reputation Management and Seniority Systems in Firms
概要: This paper studies the role of a seniority based profit and task allocation system in a firm. The firm chooses either a farsighted or a shortsighted action in each period. The former corresponds to keeping or rebuilding a good reputation, while the latter to cheating consumers. We assume that even if the firm chooses the farsighted (shortsighted) action, it may get a bad (good) reputation with positive probability. In this situation, we show that an effcient seniority system helps to maintain a good reputation in the sense that the farsighted action profile is sustainable in equilibrium.
16:10-18:00
講演者: 清田耕造氏 (横浜国立大学)
題目: Trade Liberalization, Economic Growth, and Income Distribution in A Multiple-cone Neoclassical Growth Model
概要: The empirical literature on trade liberalization reflects two puzzles. First, the effect of trade liberalization on economic growth is ambiguous. Second, the effect of trade liberalization by developing countries on their income distribution is also ambiguous. This paper attempts to explain these two puzzles at the same time, based on a multiple-cone neoclassical growth model. The model shows that countries that are labor abundant in a global sense may see a rise in income inequality and a decline in per-capita GDP and per-capita consumption with liberalization if they are capital abundant in a local sense. The results suggest that two puzzles can be explained by the existence of global and local factor abundances.
日時: 2008年11月29日(土)
場所: 政策研究大学院大学 4階 会議室4B
地図: http://www.grips.ac.jp/jp/docs/map.pdf
14:00-15:50
講演者: 田中隆一氏 (東京工業大学)
題目: Are Contingent Jobs Dead Ends or Stepping Stones to Regular Jobs? Evidence from a Structural Estimation (with Julen Esteban-Pretel (University of Tokyo) and Ryo Nakajima (University of Tsukuba))
概要: The proportion of part-time, dispatch and temporary workers has increased in many developed economies in recent years. These workers receive lower average wage and benefits and are subject to lower employment stability. This paper analyzes the effects of initially taking such jobs on the employment career of young workers. We build an on-and-off-the-job search model, use Japanese data to perform a structural estimation of the model parameters and simulate career paths to study the effect of the initial choice of employment on the probability of having a regular job in the future and on the welfare of the worker. We find that although contingent jobs are neither stepping stones towards regular employment, nor dead ends, starting a worker's career in a contingent job has a lasting effect in terms of the welfare of the individual in Japan.
16:10-18:00
講演者: 佐々木勝氏 (大阪大学)
題目: Unemployment and Workplace Safety in a Search and Matching Model
概要: This paper develops a model with search to examine the determinants of the amount of capital purchased by a firm for workplace safety and investigates a relationship between unemployment and the incidence of work-related injury or illness. Productivity improvement encourages firms' entry and therefore lowers the unemployment rate but instead raises the employment rate, including the fraction of absent workers (scale effect). On the other hand, productivity improvement encourages firms to buy more capital for workplace safety (capital effect). This biases the distribution of employed workers toward non-injured workers, lowering the fraction of absent workers. These two effects determines the relationship between unemployment and the incidence of work-related injuries or illnesses. The empirical exercises confirm that the scale effect had been dominant over the capital effect over the sample period in the US; that is, the unemployment rate and the flow rate of work-related injured workers moved in the opposite direction, but that a movement in the same direction is observed only from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s, so called the period of economic slowdown after the burst of "Bubble Economy" in Japan.
日時: 2008年12月13日(土)
場所: 政策研究大学院大学 4階 会議室4B
地図: http://www.grips.ac.jp/jp/docs/map.pdf
14:00-15:50
講演者: 岡本亮介氏 (政策研究大学院大学)
題目: Firm Heterogeneity in Communication Behavior and the Patterns of Agglomeration
概要: This paper analyzes the locations of heterogeneous firms, which are differentiated by indices in [0, N], when communication externalities generate agglomeration economies. The benefit of a communication decreases as the cognitive distance between two firms increases. An interregional communication requires travel costs while no cost for intraregional communications. There are also agglomeration diseconomies arising from rise in wage rate. We categorize the solutions into four configurations: unique equilibrium of agglomeration, unique equilibrium of partial agglomeration, unique equilibrium of dispersion, and multiple equilibria of agglomeration and dispersion. Agglomeration is likely to occur when the communication benefit and the travel cost are large.
16:10-18:00
講演者: 春山鉄源氏 (神戸大学)
題目: Innovators and Imitators in a World Economy
概要: This paper develops a dynamic general equilibrium model of North- South trade and economic growth in a world economy with a continuum of countries. Countries are different in research productivity. Innovation, imitation and the relative wage between countries are endogenously determined as well as the number of countries that are specialized in innovative and imitative R&D. We investigate how equilibrium is affected by globalization, intellectual property right protection, industrial policy, competition and migration. The model is also extended to introduce foreign direct investment.
注: 以下の報告は取りやめになりました。
講演者: 増田宗人氏 (日本銀行)
題目: Do Durable Goods Matter?-Effect on the Welfare Cost of Business Cycle-
日時: 2009年1月24日(土)
場所: 政策研究大学院大学 4階 会議室4B
地図: http://www.grips.ac.jp/jp/docs/map.pdf
14:00-15:50
講演者: 佐々木彈氏 (東京大学)
題目: Supply of rare goods (稀少財の供給)
概要: Rarity can refer to two distinct meanings. On one hand, it refers to prestige associated with rarity value. Goods with such premia are traded as if they were differentiated products even when they are functionally not much different from their non-rarity substitutes. On the other hand, rarity can simply mean infrequency without extra prestige. In the presentation, these two alternative contexts are discussed in respective thought-experimental models considering (i) Rarity with prestige and (ii) Rarity without prestige.
16:10-18:00
講演者: 前川聡子氏 (関西大学)
題目: Tax projections and economic forecasts by government bureaucrats: Hidden maneuverings for fiscal reconstruction in Japan (Joint with Mototsugu Fukushige)
概要: This paper investigates how tax projections and economic growth forecasts are affected by the maneuverings of government bureaucrats who take account of the increasing government fiscal deficit and debt in Japan. The empirical results suggest that income tax projections are an unbiased predictor of actual tax revenue given certain economic growth forecasts. On the other hand, we reveal that corporate and consumption tax projections are underestimated based on the accumulated government debt and fiscal deficit. We also analyze the maneuverings of the bureaucrats on economic growth forecasts and find that the government forecasts economic growth rates using the scale of the fiscal deficit.