東北大学現代経済学研究会
2011年度記録 (第107-126回)
5月26日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

中島 大輔 氏 (University of Michigan)

"Revealed Attention" ( abstract )

The standard revealed preference argument relies on an implicit assumption that a decision maker considers all feasible alternatives. However, the marketing and psychology literatures provide well-established evidence that consumers do not consider all brands in a given market before making a purchase (Limited Attention). In this paper, we illustrate how one can deduce both the decision maker's preference and the alternatives to which she pays attention and inattention from the observed behavior. We illustrate how seemingly compelling welfare judgements without specifying the underlying choice procedure are misleading. Further, we provide a choice theoretical foundation for maximizing a single preference relation under limited attention.


6月16日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

中島 賢太郎 氏 (東北大学)

"Transactions as a Source of Agglomeration Economies: Buyer-Seller Matching in the Japanese Manufacturing Industry" ( abstract )

This paper empirically examines whether the geographical proximity of transaction partners improve firms' profits by using the actual microdata on inter-firm transactions. I model the formation of transaction partners between newly entering firms and existing firms as a two-sided many-to-many matching game with transferable utility and estimate the structural parameters of the model. In the results, I find that average distance to the transaction partners negatively affects firms' profits. This strongly suggests that the existence of agglomeration economies result from inter-firm transactions that occur between geographically close firms. Furthermore, this effect is larger for entrant firms than existing firms.


6月23日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

石井 良輔 氏 (愛知淑徳大学)

"Observable Actions" ( abstract )

We consider a game with "meta-players" who observe each other's actions before actual play. The observability exerts an effect like repeated games without discounting. The game has Nash equilibria with any individually rational payoff profiles. In addition, the outcomes that satisfy a modified version of evolutionary stability lead to Pareto efficiency in coordination games.


6月30日(木)　15:00-17:00　第21演習室(文科系総合研究棟10階)
＊このセミナーは、地域企業特別演習とのジョイントで開催いたします。

清水 剛 氏 (東京大学)

"組織の自律性と株主の制禦―株式会社制度の組織分析―"



7月14日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

堀井 亮 氏 (東北大学)

"Natural Disasters in a Two-Sector Model of Endogenous Growth: An Extension to Non-Insurable Risks" ( abstract )

Using an endogenous growth model with physical and human capital accumulation,　this paper considers the sustainability of economic growth when the use of a polluting input (e.g., fossil fuels) intensifies the risk of capital destruction through natural disasters. We find that growth is sustainable only if the tax rate on the polluting input increases over time. The long-term rate of economic growth follows an inverted V-shaped curve relative to the growth rate of the environmental tax, and it is maximized by the least aggressive tax policy from among those that asymptotically eliminate the use of polluting inputs. Moreover, welfare is maximized under a milder environmental tax policy, especially when the pollutants accumulate gradually.
As an extension, we consider the case where the disaster damage to human capital cannot be diversified by insurances. In this case, the non-insurable risk creates precautionary savings effect, which promotes overall investment, but it also creates the risk premium effect, which discourages households to accumulate human capital. We found that if the value of human capital in the total asset of household is relatively small, the risk premium effect dominates, which lowers both the growth maximizing rate of environmental tax increase and also the maximized (achievable) growth rate. The opposite holds when the human capital constitutes a large portion in the household asset.


7月21日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

石田 潤一郎 氏 (大阪大学)

"Asking One Too Many? Why a Leader Needs to be Decisive" ( abstract )

It is often touted that decisiveness is one of the most important qualities to be possessed by leaders, broadly defined. To see how and why decisiveness can be a valuable asset in organizations, we construct a model of strategic information transmission where: (i) a decision maker solicits opinions sequentially from experts; (ii) how many experts to solicit opinions from is the decision maker's endogenous choice. We show that communication is less efficient when the decision maker is indecisive and cannot resist the temptation to ask for a second opinion. This result also implies that a decision maker can be made better off by committing herself to taking an action immediately, if such a commitment is ever feasible. We also discuss the relationship between decisiveness and personal traits such as fairness, open-mindedness, and selfishness and derive some implications for organizational design.


7月28日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

阿部 修人 氏 (一橋大学)

"Who Faces Higher Prices?" ( abstract )

On the basis of household-level scanner data (homescan) for Japan over a three-year period, we construct a household-level price index, and we investigate the causes of the differences in prices across households. As noted by Aguiar and Hurst (2007), large price differentials across households are observed. The differences across age and income groups, however, are small. In addition, we find that elderly people face higher prices than younger people, which is opposite of the results of Aguiar and Hurst (2007). The most important determinant of the price level is the reliance on bargain sales; an increase in the purchase at bargain sales by one standard deviation decreases the price level by more than 0.9%, while the shopping frequency has only limited effects on the price level.


8月4日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

陣内 了 氏 (Texas A&M University)

"Intrafirm Knowledge Spillover and Asset Prices in a Macroeconomic Model" ( abstract )

This study examines the implications of intrafirm knowledge spillover in a macroeconomic model. Using in-house ideas as a private resource for knowledge production, a firm with more ideas produces new ideas more efficiently. The stock market and aggregate productivity show interesting timing differences because the former reflects expected future innovations, whereas the latter is affected by past innovations. Three notable implications are the following: (i) the stock market is followed by measured total factor productivity (the Solow residual); (ii) with a recursive utility, the equity premium becomes significantly larger than in the standard models; and (iii) the risk-free rate becomes smaller than in the standard models. The first implication is related to news shock, and the second and the third implications are related to the long-run risk.


10月6日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

西山 慎一 氏 (東北大学)

"How Bad was Lehman Shock?: Estimating a DSGE model with Firm and Bank Balance Sheets in a Data-Rich Environment" ( abstract )

Recent financial crisis in the U.S. which was precipitated by so-called 'Lehman Shock' has clearly exemplified that a deterioration of the balance sheet condition, especially those of the financial sector, can cause a deep and long-lasting recession of the economy. In modeling Lehman Shock, this paper embeds both corporate sector and banking sector balance sheets to the stylized DSGE model. We follow Bernanke, Gertler, and Gilchrist (1999) in embedding the corporate sector balance sheet, while we follow Gertler and Kiyotaki (2010) in embedding the banking sector balance sheet to the model. In our empirical analysis, we focus on the identification and estimation of the banking sector net worth shock, which is regarded as a proxy for Lehman Shock in the paper. In order to assess the impact of Lehman Shock reliably, we estimate the model using Data-Rich estimation method proposed by Boivin and Giannoni (2006). According to our pre- liminary estimation results, Lehman Shock turned out to be the worst banking sector net worth shock in past 25 years. However, the shock seems to have been successfully countered by TARP and the recessionary effect directly caused by Lehman Shock seems to be over.


10月14日(金)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

岩壷 健太郎 氏 (神戸大学)

"The Information Improving Channel of Exchange Rate Intervention: How Do Official Announcements Work?" ( abstract )

This paper studies the relationship between official announcements and the effectiveness of foreign exchange interventions in a noisy rational expectations equilibrium model. We show that when heterogeneously informed traders have inaccurate information, an exchange rate is likely to be misaligned from its fundamental value in the presence of noise trades. Then the central bank uses the disclosure of public information to improve the accuracy of private agents’ information and encourage risk-arbitrage thereby enhancing the informativeness of the exchange rate. This effect holds, even when the central bank does not possess superior information to traders, as long as public information is not perfectly correlated with the information of traders. We provide evidence that announced interventions are more effective in periods of high implied volatility, consistent with the theoretical prediction that the implied volatility of the exchange rate is positively correlated with the information inaccuracy of traders and the degree of an exchange rate misalignment.


10月21日(金)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

祝迫 達郎 氏 (大阪大学)

"Product Cycles and Growth Cycles" ( abstract )

This paper explores the equilibrium path of endogenous product cycle in North-South overlapping generation economy with international knowledge spillover. We show that an increase in imitation in the South reduces the total stock values of the Northern firms, which directs larger proportion of saving to R&D however, this results in an increase in the total stock values of the Northern firms, which in turn crowds out R\&D at the next period. Due to this process, the equilibrium path of this North-South two country economy exhibits perpetual fluctuation including period-2 cycle, even if the setting of preferences and production are typical; e.g. utility of Cobb-Douglas form. When the equilibrium path exhibits perpetual fluctuation, the economy grows while the growth rate continues to fluctuate. The result shows that product cycle can be one of sources of endogenous economic fluctuation.


10月27日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

藤本 淳一 氏 (東京大学)

"Life-cycle Labor Search with Stochastic Match Quality" ( abstract )

Unemployment, job fi nding, and job separation rates exhibit patterns of decline as worker age increases in the U.S. We build and numerically simulate a search and matching model of the labor market that incorporates a life-cycle structure to account for these empirical facts. The model features random match quality, which, with positive probability, is not revealed until production takes place. The model, calibrated to U.S. data, reproduces the empirical patterns of unemployment and job transition rates over the life-cycle. Both decreasing distance to retirement as a worker ages, and ex ante unknown match quality, are essential in delivering these results. We also find that the differences between the market and planner allocations are small.


11月2日(水)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

寺島 康生 氏 (Bank of Canada)

"Inflation, Demand for Liquidity, and Welfare" ( abstract )

Money holding differs significantly over income and age groups at the household level. The money-consumption ratio decreases as consumption (or income) increases; and it increases with the age conditional on consumption. This paper quantifies welfare gains of reducing the long-run inflation rate, taking into account the age differences regarding these money holding patterns. We calibrate a life-cycle model of money holding and find that inflation has significantly different impacts across household groups due to their heterogeneity in money holding. Poorer and younger households are more sensitive to inflation than richer and older ones, while the latter tend to gain little from reduced inflation.


11月4日(金)　16:20-17:50　国際文化研究科　小会議室(国際文化研究科棟1階)
*国際文化研究科とのジョイント・セミナーです。通常と会場が異なりますのでご注意ください( アクセス )。

中西 訓嗣 氏 (神戸大学)

"Farsightedly Stable FTA Structures" ( abstract )

Taking account of the farsightedness of the countries and adopting the von Neumann-Morgenstern (vNM) stable set as the solution concept, we examine an FTA network formation game. FTA networks are represented by undirected graphs with their vertex sets being identified with the set of the countries. Each country’s welfare depends upon the shape of the graph and its location in that graph. We examine two extreme cases: one in which the pre-agreement tariffs are very high and the other in which they are sufficiently low. In the former, the farsighted vNM stable set only supports global free trade, implying that bilateral FTAs are building blocks for achieving global free trade. In the latter, the farsighted vNM stable set does not support global free trade, instead it supports some ineffcient FTA networks, implying that bilateral FTAs are stumbling blocks against achieving global free trade


11月17日(水)　16:30-18:00　国際文化研究科　小会議室(国際文化研究科棟1階)
*国際文化研究科とのジョイント・セミナーです。通常と会場が異なりますのでご注意ください( アクセス )。

上東 貴志 氏 (神戸大学)

"Asset Bubbles in a Small Open Economy" ( abstract )

This paper examines the possibility of rational asset price bubbles in small open economies. Our model is similar to the Lucas asset price model except that the economy may be partially or completely open. There are good, asset, and loan markets, and we consider all possible cases depending on whether each market is open or closed. We show that bubbles are possible if and only if the good market and at least one of the asset and loan markets is open. We characterize the response of an economy with a positive bubble to an unanticipated introduction of a restriction on loan repayment or foreign asset ownership.


11月24日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

齊藤 誠 氏 (一橋大学)

"Can Radiation-contaminated Food be Marketed?" ( abstract )

This paper constructs a simple theoretical model to explain consistently heterogeneous patterns in consumers’ valuation on radiation-contaminated milk by explicitly incorporating a strong preference for zero radiation risks. In particular, it establishes a rigorous condition under which contaminated milk is still traded at discounted prices even when contamination levels are relatively high. Using an internet-based questionnaire survey consisting of 7,600 respondents, we empirically explore whether the above condition holds. According to estimation results, as milk contains more radiation, a contaminated milk market disappears quickly among those who originally perceive their own cancer risks to be rather low. Conversely, radioactive milk is still traded at discounted prices among those who are regarded as having already carried considerable cancer risks.


12月9日(金)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

安井 大真 氏 (神戸大学)

"Adult Longevity and Growth Takeoff" ( abstract )

This paper develops an overlapping generations model in which agents make educational and fertility decisions under life-cycle considerations, and retirement from work is distinguished from death. This model sheds light on a novel mechanism that links life expectancy, retirement, education, fertility, and growth. Gains in adult longevity induce agents to save more for retirement, reduce fertility, invest in education, and achieve sustained growth. In contrast to the prediction of the conventional Ben-Porath mechanism, even if the length of working life is shortened by early retirement, our mechanism works as long as adult longevity increases sufficiently. Our model reconciles the theory that gains in life expectancy trigger a growth takeoff by increasing education with the observation that the length of working life is not prolonged because of retirement. This study provides a framework for considering the joint determination of education, fertility, and retirement.


12月15日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

宮本 拓郎 氏 (東北大学)

"Intra-Industry Spillover Effects of ISO 14001 Adoption in Japan" ( abstract )

Employing an extensive dataset of Japanese production facilities across a large number of industries during 2001, this paper examines the determinants of ISO 14001 adoption and the existence of intra-industry spillovers. To control for and estimate the spillovers, we employ a spatial autoregressive (SAR) probit model. We find that range of ISO 14001 adoption spillovers is likely to be narrow. Particularly, we find that there are positive spillovers between facilities with similar sale in the same industry. Confirming results from previous studies on ISO 14001 adoption, plant size (as captured by the number of workers in a facility) has a significantly positive eects on ISO 14001 adoption.


1月19日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

安達 貴教 氏 (名古屋大学)

"Political Accountability, Electoral Control, and Media Bias" ( abstract )

Are anti-establishment mass media really useful in preventing politicians from behaving dishonestly? This paper proposes a voting model for analyz- ing how differences in the direction of media bias affect politicians' behavior. In particular, the probability of corruption by an incumbent is higher (than that in the case of no media bias) if and only if the mass media have some degree of "anti-incumbent" bias (i.e., information favorable to the incumbent is converted into unfavorable news about him or her with a positive proba- bility), provided that the incumbent is less likely to be opportunistic than a challenger. This result holds irrespective of the degree of "pro-incumbent" bias (i.e., information unfavorable to the incumbent is converted into impres- sive news about him or her with a positive probability). We also show that media bias never increases voter welfare. Our results thus suggest that soci- ety should make an effort to eliminate media bias per se rather than promote antagonistic media.


3月8日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)
*IPEM FD Seminar

Eric Weese 氏 (Yale University)

"Inefficient Boundaries" ( abstract )

The equilibrium size of political jurisdictions may be too small if there are efficiencies of scale in providing public services and mergers require majority approval from all the jurisdictions involved. In the case of Japanese municipalities, estimates of efficiences of scale are available in central government data. By applying a moment inequalities approach to survey data on stated merger preferences from a recent set of decentralized municipal mergers in Japan, we estimate that the inefficiency from the resulting “too small” jurisdictions is approximately $200 per capita per year.


3月20日(火)　9:50-17:40　第１演習室(経済学部研究棟１階)

実証応用経済ワークショップ

10:00-11:00 萩原里紗 氏 (慶應義塾大学)
"The Utility of Children and Labor Supply of Married Women"
11:10-12:10 鶴見哲也 氏 (南山大学)
"Long-Run Discount Rate: Empirical Analysis for Biodiversity Conservation"
12:10-13:00     昼食
13:00-14:00 近藤絢子 氏 (法政大学)
"Effects of Universal Health Insurance on Health Care Utilization, Supply-Side Responses and Mortality Rates: Evidence from Japan"
14:10-15:10 牛島光一 氏 (東京大学)
「母親の教育水準と子供の病気のアセスメント」
15:20-16:20 鈴木通雄 氏 (東京大学)
"Investment and Borrowing Constraints: Evidence from Japanese Firms"
16:30-17:30 近藤恵介 氏 (神戸大学)
"Structural Estimation and Interregional Labour Migration: Evidence from Japan"

プログラム詳細(pdf)

共催：

  • 基盤研究A「日本経済の持続的な経済成長のための企業動学に関する包括的な研究」（日本大学）
  • 慶応京都連携グローバルCOEプログラム国際班
  • 東アジア長期持続的成長の経済システム科学（東北大学）



3月28日(水)　16:20-19:30　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

第1セッション：　16:20-17:50

森本 脩平 氏 (大阪大学)

"A Characterization of Simultaneous Ascending Rule: Strategy-proofness and Efficiency with Nonquasi-linear Preferences" ( abstract )

We consider the problem of allocating several heterogeneous objects among a group of agents and how much they should pay. Each agent receives at most one object and has nonquasi-linear preferences. Nonquasi-linear preferences describe the environments where the large scale of auction payments changes agents’ abilities to utilize objects or benefits from them. The purpose of this article is to identify the class of allocation rules that yield a desirable outcome in such environments. The “simultaneous ascending rule” is the rule which assigns the outcome of the simultaneous ascending auction introduced by Demange, Gale, and Sotomayor (1986, Journal of Political Economy 94: 863-872) to each preference profile. In this article, we establish that the simultaneous ascending rule is a unique rule that satisfies strategy-proofness, Pareto-efficiency, individual rationality, and nonnegative payment on the domain including nonquasi-linear preferences.

第2セッション：　18:00-19:30

渡部 和孝 氏 (慶應義塾大学)

"Public Capital, the Deposit Insurance and the Risk-Shifting Incentive: Evidence from the Regulatory Responses to the Financial Crisis in Japan" ( abstract )

Using option pricing based models, we computed the actuarially fair deposit insurance premium and the market value of assets and asset volatility for Japanese banks as implied by their stock prices. The findings based on these variables suggest that banks shift risks to the deposit insurer who charges them risk insensitive premiums. Well-designed regulatory policies in response to the crisis, however, effectively restrained banks’ risk-shifting. Not only did the introduction of the prompt corrective action discipline the insured banks, but also large-scale public capital infusions successfully deleveraged poorly capitalized banks that tended to increase risk-taking, which then mitigated their risk-shifting.