Abstract: Fossil fuel subsidies are widespread in developing countries, and reform efforts are often derailed by disputes over the likely distribution of gains and losses.Subsidy reform is transmitted to households through changes in energy prices and prices of other goods and services, but also factor earnings. Most empirical studies focus on consumer expenditures alone, and computable general equilibrium analyses typically report only total effects without decomposing them by source. Meanwhile, analytical models neglect important open-economy characteristics relevant to developing countries. In this paper we develop an analytical model of a small open economy with a pre-existing fossil fuel subsidy and identify direct and indirect impacts of subsidy reform on real household incomes. Our results, illustrated with data from Viet Nam, highlight two important drivers of distributional change: the mix of tradable and nontradable goods, reflecting the structure of a trade-dependent economy, and household heterogeneity in sources of factor income.

場所：2号館11階経済学部会議室B

Venue: 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Meeting Room B

幹事/Organizer：堀江哲也/Tetsuya Horie

言語/Language：英語/English

Abstract: When evaluating well-being distributions in an anonymous (and replication invariant) manner, one faces a dilemma between (i)assigning dictatorship to a single worst-off person, thus succumbing to a tyranny of non-aggregation and (ii)assigning dictatorship to (unboundedly) many better-off persons, thus succumbing to a tyranny of aggregation. We show how this corresponds to a population-ethical dilemma in the variable population setting between, on the one hand, a reversed repugnant conclusion (prefferring a very small population with high well-being) and, on the other hand, a repugnant conclusion (preferring a sufficiently large population with lives barely worth living to a population with good lives) or very sadistic conclusion (not preferring a large population with lives worth living to a population with terrible lives). The dilemma can be resolved by relaxing replication invariance and thus allowing that evaluation in the fixed population setting might change with population size even though the relative distributions of well-being remain unchanged. Rank-dependent criteria are evaluation criteria that resolve this dilemma but fails replication invariance. We provide conditions under which rank-dependent criteria are the only way out of the dilemma. Furthermore, we discuss the following consequence of relaxing replication invariance: It becomes essential to take into account the existence and utility of non-affected people when evaluating population policies with limited scope.

場所：2号館11階経済学部会議室B

Venue: 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Meeting Room B

幹事/Organizer：釜賀浩平/Kohei Kamaga

言語/Language：英語/English

Abstract: The goal of this paper is to examine the impact of rising world temperatures on the incidence of civil armed conflicts, focusing on a specific mechanism: the interaction between variations in annual temperatures and variations in agricultural potential. We assemble a dataset from various sources for 181 countries from 1946 till 2014. Agricultural potential is based on the Food and Agricultural Organization’s definition of a country land suitability for growing crops. Annual temperature data come from the Climate Unit of the University of East Anglia. Data on civil armed conflicts is from the Uppsala Conflict Data Project. Using a fixed-effect panel approach, we find that a low agricultural potential exacerbates the effect of temperature on the incidence of armed conflicts. More precisely, we find that an increase of 1% in annual temperature in a country with low agricultural potential could see the incidence of conflicts on its territory increase by 3%. The results are tested against numerous robustness checks.

場所：2号館11階経済学部会議室B

Venue: 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Meeting Room B

言語/Language：英語/English

Extended Abstract: In an election, a population of individuals (the voters) express their

preferences over the list of available alternatives (the candidates), and a voting rule is a

mechanism that assigns chosen candidates to these preference profiles. A prominent example is the plurality rule which proceeds by counting, for each candidate, the number of voters who place her or him in the top position of their respective ordering. The candidates with the highest number of first-place positions are then elected.

The formal analysis of voting rules can be traced back at least two centuries. Among the

most fundamental early contributions are those of Bentham (1776) and Borda (1781). We

examine some proposals that appear in these classics, hoping to be able to shed further light

on the proposed election methods and their properties.

There are various possibilities of defining a voting rule. One consists of assigning a

set of chosen alternatives (that is, elected candidates) to each profile of individual voters’

preferences. A second option is to establish a social ordering of the candidates based on the

preference orderings expressed by the voters. Either of these methods can be employed for

the purposes of our project; we choose the latter for ease of exposition. That is, in Arrow’s

(1951/1963/2012) terms, we examine voting rules in the form of social welfare functions.

The plurality rule and the Borda (1781) rule are special cases of the class of positionalist

voting rules. These are election procedures that can be defined solely on the basis of the

positions in which each candidate appears in each voter’s preference ordering. We propose a

general definition of positionalist rules that encompasses those that are currently available

in the literature, and we illustrate how our definition distinguishes itself from these earlier

approaches. See Bossert and Suzumura (2018; in preparation) for details.

As argued in Bossert and Suzumura (2016/2017a, 2017b), Bentham’s (1776) principle

of the greatest happiness of the greatest number can be given an ordinal interpretation, in

which case it is equivalent to the plurality rule. We also examine a natural counterpart, the

principle of the greatest unhappiness of the least number, a proposal that focuses on the

voters whose bottom-ranked candidates are chosen. This alternative principle is tantamount

to the inverse plurality rule. Both of these principles allow for lexicographic extensions. We

discuss these extensions in the context of our definition of positionalist rules.

場所：2号館11階経済学部会議室B

Venue: 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Meeting Room B

幹事/Organizer：釜賀浩平/Kohei Kamaga

言語/Language：英語/English

Abstract: This paper develops revealed preference tests for choices under limited consideration, allowing a partially observed data set. Our tests are based on a common structure of various limited consideration models, and cover leading theories in the literature including the limited attention model, the rationalization model, the categorize-then-choose model, and the rational shortlist model. While tests involve combinatorial calculation, by applying the backtracking method, we perform simulations to numerically compare observable restrictions of various models. As a result, we find remarkable differences in observable restrictions across models.

場所：2号館11階経済学部会議室B

Venue: 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Meeting Room B

幹事/Organizer：釜賀浩平/Kohei Kamaga

言語/Language：日本語/Japanese

Abstract: We use information on probabilistic expectations elicited from the individuals in rural India through interactive elicitation method using visual aids, to investigate how the individuals’ expectations of becoming sick with physical symptoms related to indoor air pollution, may affect the individuals’ cooking fuel usage pattern. In addition, we also explore the indirect impact of individuals’ probabilistic expectations of becoming sick on their health status through its impact on cooking fuel usage pattern. Subjective probabilistic expectations about becoming sick play an important role in determining the share of days of dirty fuel usage in the households but their impact is limited. There is a positive and significant impact of share of days of fuel usage on the health status of the individuals. However, the indirect impact of probabilistic expectations on health is observed to be insignificant. Using the estimated coefficients, we simulate the impacts of various hypothetical policies on the cooking fuel usage pattern and the health of the individuals. We find that an information campaign about dirty cooking fuel decreases the share of days of dirty fuel usage by influencing the probabilistic expectations but a similar campaign about clean cooking fuel has no effect on fuel usage pattern. Information campaign about clean cooking fuels lowers the probability of being sick while the effect of a similar program on dirty cooking fuels is insignificant on the health status of the individuals. Additionally, we observe that, policies about changing income (short-term policy) and changing the level of education (long-term policy) result in a decrease in the share of days of dirty fuel usage but do not significantly affect the health status of the individuals.

場所：2号館11階経済学部会議室B

Venue: 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Meeting Room B

幹事/Organizer：堀江哲也/Tetsuya Horie

言語/Language：英語/English

Abstract: 本研究では、日本における1978年から2016年の死亡率のデータを用いて景気変動が健康に与える影響を分析した。分析の結果、これまで先進国のデータを用いて繰り返し報告されてきた景気後退が死亡率に与える正の影響は、日本では見られないことが示された。この理由として、男女別、死因別、年齢別に景気変動が死亡率に与える定性的な影響が異なり、正の影響と負の影響が相殺されていることが示された。男性においては、勤労世代において景気非循環的な影響がみられ、各国の先行研究で指摘されていた景気後退期に労働時間が減少することにより健康状態が改善する影響は平均的に検出されなかった。これらの結果は、景気変動は健康に対して個人の属性により多様なメカニズムを通じて異質な影響を与えるという知見を補強するもでのある。

場所：2号館11階経済学部会議室B

Venue: 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Meeting Room B

幹事/Organizer：長谷部拓也/Takuya Hasebe

言語/Language：日本語/Japanese

Abstract: This research evaluates performances of Japan's inpatient prospective payment system (PPS) in terms of the impacts on medical payment, operational efficiency, and healthcare quality. We focus on a group of hospitals enrolled mandatorily into the program in 2003, for which the change in reimbursement method is an exogenous shock. Applying difference-in-difference approach to a set of nationally representative datasets, we find evidence that the PPS does not contain the medical costs as expected, because the program is adopted only to part of procedures in inpatient care and has no interference with those in outpatient care. The hospitals could respond in a "real" fashionーreduce volume of the procedures paid PPS to avoid deficit; or in a "nominal" fashionーassign the procedures paid PPS from inpatient care to outpatient care. We also find a decline of length of stay (LOS) among the hospitals enrolled in the program, indicating an improvement on operational efficiency. The reduction is larger at upper quantiles of the LOS. Finally, we confirm a moderate deterioration in healthcare quality. Following the program adoption, the hospitals become more likely to discharge patients with symptoms lightened or uncharged, rather than being fully cured.

場所：2号館11階経済学部会議室B

Venue: 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Meeting Room B

幹事/Organizer：長谷部拓也/Takuya Hasebe

言語/Language：英語/English

Abstract

場所：2号館4階2-415

Venue: 4th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Room 415

言語/Language：英語/English