東北大学現代経済学研究会
2013年度記録
4月18日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

荒 知宏 氏 (福島大学)

"Institutions as a Source of Comparative Advantage"

Abstract: Why does the fraction of firms that export vary with countries’ comparative advantage? To address this question, I develop a general-equilibrium Ricardian model of North-South trade in which both institutional quality and firm heterogeneity play a key role in determining international trade flows. Because of contractual frictions that vary across countries and sectors, North with better institutions produces relatively more in a sector where production is more institutionally dependent. In addition, institution-induced comparative advantage makes it relatively easier for Northern heterogeneous firms to incur export costs in a more contract-dependent sector, thereby leading to a higher exporters’ percentage.


4月25日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

中林 純 氏 (大阪大学)

"Structural Estimation of the Scoring Auction Model"

Abstract: We establish a structural estimation method of the scoring auction model. We show a semi-parametric procedure to identify the joint distribution of bidders' multi-dimensional private signals from observed multi-dimensional bids in a first-score (FS) auction and demonstrate sufficient conditions for identification. A simulation experiment is also conducted to verify the consistency of our estimation procedure. The scoring auction model in our analysis allows not only the quasilinear scoring rule but also a broad class of non-quasilinear rules including price-over-quality ratio (PQR) scoring rules. An empirical analysis of multi-dimensional bidding in the Japanese public procurement auctions is provided. A series of counterfactual analyses quantify the impact of the change of auction formats and scoring rules on the utilities of both bidders and the auctioneer.


5月16日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

Giulio Seccia 氏 (University of Southampton)

"Deadline and Welfare Effects of Scheduling Information Releases"

Abstract: How should institutions convey relevant information to the public? Should they schedule their communications or release information as it becomes available? What are the welfare effects of an unanticipated information release? We model a decentralized asset market and show that a credible schedule delays trade towards the information release date and unanticipated information arrivals entail a loss of insurance opportunities. We apply these findings to the scheduling of monetary policy decisions following the Federal Open Market Committee meetings from 1995 till 2010 and study the effects on the dynamics of trade on the 30-day Federal Funds Futures market. We use the model to empirically identify periods of credible (prior to 2001) and non-credible scheduling (after 2001). Finally we measure the loss in risk-trading activity due to off schedule announcements.


5月23日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

宮本 弘曉 氏 (国際大学)

"Fiscal Stimulus in an Endogenous Job Separation Model"

Abstract: This paper re-visits effects of fiscal expansion on employment and unemployment by focusing on both hiring and firing margins. We develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with labor search frictions in which job separation is endogenously determined. We study effects of fiscal stimuli in the form of government spending and hiring subsidies. The prediction of our model is in contrast with earlier studies that assume exogenous job separation. First, our model generates a larger size of the impact of a government spending shock on labor market variables than the model without endogenous separation. Second, while an increase in hiring subsidies increases employment and reduces unemployment in the model without endogenous separation, it reduces employment and increases unemployment in our model.


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

Biswajit Mandal 氏 (Visva-Bharati University)

"Trade Reform, Corruption and Intermediation"

Abstract: We construct a general equilibrium model with a protected intermediate sector and analyze the effectiveness of trade reform for a small open economy where bureaucratic corruption arises because of trade protection. Intermediaries are employed by the producers in order to avoid paying the import tariff. We use HOSV kind of framework to prove whether trade liberalization necessarily leads to a decline in intermediation activities. We find that labor intensity of the exportable commodity which uses the intermediate good is critical in determining the extent of corruption. It is essentially a tug of war between higher tariff revenue and higher wage in the new equilibrium. Thus trade liberalization may or may not lead to les corruption.
（国際文化研究科と共催，日本学術振興会外国人招聘研究者（短期）事業）



6月27日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

中川 雅央 氏 (東北大学)

"Patience for Savouring"

Abstract: This paper investigates the effects of anticipatory feelings on patience and the resulting intertemporal choices. Anticipation of future consumption makes consumers patient. Furthermore, in general, it makes them more/less patient for near future choices than distant future choices, which causes time- inconsistency. To overcome time-inconsistency, sophisticated consumers adjust their discount factors. The resulting discount factors estimated from the optimal consumption path differ from true time preference. They can exhibit the opposite property to true time preference in the sense that estimated discount factors of future (present)-biased consumers are increasing (decreasing) in time distance. In particular, future-biased consumers tend to choose improving consumption sequences.


7月4日(木)　14:40-17:50　第24演習室(経済学研究科棟1階)

(1) 14:40-16:10

茂木 快治 氏 (ノースカロライナ大学)

"Testing for Granger Causality with Mixed Frequency Data"

Abstract: It is well known that temporal aggregation has adverse effects on Granger causality tests. Time series are often sampled at different frequencies. This is typically ignored, as data are aggregated to the common lowest frequency. We develop a set of Granger causality tests that explicitly take advantage of data sampled at different frequencies. We show that taking advantage of mixed frequency data allows us to better recover causal relationships when compared to the conventional common low frequency approach. More specifically, we show that the mixed frequency causality tests have higher local asymptotic power as well as more power in finite samples compared to conventional tests.

(2) 16:20-17:50

北川 章臣 氏 (東北大学)

"Long-run Consequences of Ranking Job Applicants by Unemployment Duration: Theoretical and Numerical Analyses"

Abstract: This paper considers long-run consequences of ranking job applicants by their unemployment durations in the framework of a simple general equilibrium model with efficiency wages, in which statistical discrimination of firms against jobless workers has a distorting effect on labor market performance. Specifically, firms believe that jobless workers who have been unemployed over the long term are not employable, and thus “rank” job applicants, by setting an admissible length of unemployment duration to qualify them for employment. Jobless work- ers, on the other hand, decide whether or not to preserve their employability, given such a ranking behavior and wages they will receive after being rehired. Theoretical and numerical analyses of that model show that, under certain conditions, this interaction between firms and jobless workers results in multiple stationary equilibria, which differ one another in allocative efficiency, and that the most inefficient one is realized by the belief of firms that all of the jobless workers have already lost their employability. Thus the government should persuade firms not to have such an extreme belief, thereby creating second chances for jobless workers. Moreover, if the government can reduce incomes of jobless workers through taxation, the multiple equilibria, in which a subset of jobless workers are given second chances, are coalesced into a more efficient one, in which every job seeker can find a new job by experiencing one period of unemployment. These policies effectively nullify the distorting effect of statistical discrimination considered here.


7月18日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

戸村 肇 氏 (北海道大学)

"Repos in the Over-the-Counter Markets"

Abstract: This paper presents a dynamic matching model featuring dealers and short-term investors in an over-the-counter bond market. The model illustrates that bilateral bargaining in an over-the-counter market results in an endogenous bond-liquidation cost for short-term investors. This cost makes short-term investors need repurchase agreements to buy long-term bonds. The cost also explains the existence of a margin specific to repurchase agreements held by short-term investors, if repurchase agreements must be renegotiation-proof. Without repurchase agreements, short-term investors do not buy long-term bonds. In this case, the bond yield rises unless dealers have enough capital to buy and hold bonds.


7月25日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

北村 周平 氏 (Stockholm University)

"Loyalty and Treason: Theory and Evidence from Occupied Japan"

Abstract: This paper studies impacts of land reform on a hierarchical structure of society and politics. Landlords had a great influence on tenants’ voting, and were politically influential before the land reform. The reform dramatically demolished the hierarchical structure and landlords’ power. In order to visualize the fall of the landlord class and the collapse of the politico-landlord affiliation, the paper investigates how vote shares in national elections have shifted due to the redistribution of land, or power, from landlords to their tenants. I first construct a model of land reform which endogenizes agents’ voting behavior. A key feature of the model is that tenant farmers are released from tenancy contracts and will be able to vote according to their political preferences after the reform. Then I test predictions using two empirical approaches, and confirm that vote share of conservative parties indeed decreased after the reform. There was no significant change in turnout. However, the first effect sustained for a relatively short period of time, which may be explained by the change of political platforms. Other theories are also discussed.


8月1日(木)　10:00-17:45　第1演習室(経済学研究科棟1階)

ワークショップ：経済のグローバルと企業行動に関する実証研究

プログラム

共催：
科学研究費(基盤研究B 22330087)　アジアの国際的生産・流通ネットワークにおける多国籍企業の役割
科学研究費(基盤研究B 22330080)　企業の国際化と生産性に関する国際比較研究
東アジア長期持続的成長の経済システム科学（東北大学）



10月31日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

森口 千晶 氏 (一橋大学)

"Taxation and Public Goods Provision in China and Japan before 1850"

Abstract: We develop a principal-agent model to study fiscal capacity in pre-modern China and Japan. Before 1850, both nations were ruled by stable dictators who relied on bureaucrats to govern their domains. We hypothesize that agency problems increase with the geographic size of a domain. In a large domain, the ruler's inability to closely monitor bureaucrats creates opportunities for the bureaucrats to exploit taxpayers. To prevent overexploitation, the ruler has to keep taxes low and government small. Our dynamic model shows that while economic expansion improves the ruler's finances in a small domain, it could lead to lower tax revenues in a large domain as it exacerbates bureaucratic expropriation. To test these implications, we assemble comparable quantitative data from primary and secondary sources. We find that the state taxed less and provided fewer local public goods per capita in China than in Japan. Furthermore, while the Tokugawa shogunate's tax revenue grew in tandem with demographic trends, Qing China underwent fiscal contraction after 1750 despite demographic expansion. We conjecture that a greater state capacity might have prepared Japan better for the arrival of the West after 1850.


10月31日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

荒渡 良 氏 (名古屋大学)

"Political Economy of Trade Openness and Government Size"

Abstract: This paper proposes a theoretical model that may provide useful insights into the relationship between trade openness and the size of government, as well as a possible explanation of the results of empirical tests of such a relationship. We develop a Hecksher-Ohlin model with public good provision, where the level of public good provision is determined in a probabilistic voting framework. In this context, we show that the start of trade may increase or decrease government size depending on the capital-labor ratio in each country.


11月7日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

中嶋 智之 氏 (京都大学)

"A macroeconomic model of liquidity crises"

Abstract: We develop a simple macroeconomic model that captures key features of a liquidity crisis. During a crisis, the supply of short-term loans vanishes, the interest rate rises sharply, and the level of economic activity declines. A crisis may be caused either by self-fulfilling beliefs or by fundamental shocks. The government's commitment to deposit guarantee reduces the likelihood of self-fulfilling crisis but increases that of fundamental crisis.


11月11日(月)　14:40-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

(1) 14:40-16:10

Shino Takayama 氏 (University of Queensland)

"A Model of Two-stage Electoral Competition"

Abstract: The paper presents a simple model of a two-stage electoral competition with two parties: an incumbent party and a challenging party, and shows that the presence of a primary election makes a more moderate policy to be selected in equilibrium and increases the probability that a candidate with a higher personal quality that all the voters commonly appreciate wins in a general election. The model resembles the U.S. presidential election and many analogues are observed in the world, but has largely escaped attention in the literature. In the model, voters are assumed to judge candidates on two aspects: policy promises and non-policy personal qualities referred to as valence. A challenging party has two potential candidates in the first-stage primary election to compete with the incumbent party’s nominee in the second-stage general election. The model is analytically tractable having a unique equilibrium, and provides a vehicle for answering normative questions about holding a primary election. Finally, our findings provide empirical predictions on primaries and the roles of valences in election.

(2) 16:20-17:50

Andy McLennan 氏 (University of Queensland)

"Some People Never Learn, Rationally"

Abstract: A Bayesian decision maker does not know which of several parameters is true. In each period she chooses an action from an open subset of Rn, observes an outcome, and updates her beliefs. There is an action a* that is uninformative in the sense that when it is chosen all parameters give the same distribution over outcomes, and consequently beliefs do not change. We give conditions under which a policy specifying an action as a function of the current belief can result in a positive probability that the sequence of beliefs converges to a belief at which a* is chosen, so that learning is asymptotically incomplete. Such a policy can be optimal even when the decision maker is not myopic and values experimentation. To prove this we develop a result of independent interest that gives conditions on a dynamic program that insure that the optimal policy is C1, with Lipschitz first derivative, and the value function is C2, with Lipschitz second derivative, for discount factors near 0.
（国際文化研究科と共催）



11月21日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

近藤 絢子 氏 (横浜国立大学)

"What prevents inter-industry labor reallocation?"

Abstract: How to encourage reallocation of labor from less productive sector to more productive sector is an important issue in Macroeconomic policies, especially under the shrinking working-age population. At the same time, however, it is widely known that inter-industry job change is often associated with a substantial reduction in earnings. This paper investigates what prevents inter-industry labor reallocation by estimating the determinants of inter-industry worker-flow and the earnings regression after job change. We find that the difference in required skills is an important reason of the reduction in earnings after inter-industry job change, and thus it is a major obstacle for inter-industry mobility. On the other hand, industry performance does not affect labor inflow significantly, implying that the lack of spontaneous labor reallocation from less productive to more productive sectors.


12月19日(木)　14:40-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

(1) 14:40-16:10

山下 直輝 氏 (La Trobe University)

"Agglomeration Effects of Inter-firm Backward and Forward Linkages: Evidence from Japanese Manufacturing Investment in China"

Abstract: This paper examines the agglomeration effects of multinational firms on the location decisions of first-time Japanese manufacturing investors in China for the period 1995-2007. This is accomplished by exploiting newly constructed measures of inter-firm backward and forward linkages formed in a home country. The conditional and mixed logit estimates reveal that agglomeration by first-tier suppliers and customers draws subsequent investment into a location. However, such agglomeration effects are not pervasive and do not extend to the second and third tiers. Instead, we find that agglomeration by third-tier suppliers generates a countervailing force, making a location relatively unattractive.

(2) 16:20-17:50

杉田 洋一 氏 (Stockholm School of Economics)

"Assortative Matching of Exporters and Importers"

Abstract: In the Mexican textile/apparel exports to the US in 2000s, we found both exporters and importers concentrate more than 80% of product-level trade volume on transaction with a single partner firm. Motivated by this new finding, we develop a one-to-one matching model of exporters and importers where the complementarity/substitutability of firm capability (productivity/quality) within matches determines the sign of sorting in matching. Facing an exogenous increase in Chinese exporters to the US at the end of the multi-fiber arrangement in 2005, Mexican exporters and US importers changed their main partners in a systematic way supporting for complementarity driven positive assortative matching but not for negative assortative matching or random matching. Our finding provides the first evidence that trade liberalization causes within industry reallocation through additional channel, improving matching of firms along global supply chains. We also theoretically demonstrate a possibility of biases in a conventional productivity measure under positive and negative assortative matching.


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

渡辺 誠 氏 (VU University Amsterdam)

"Middlemen: A Directed Search Equilibrium Approach"

Abstract: This paper studies an intermediated market operated by middlemen with high inventory holdings. I present a directed search model in which middlemen are less likely to experience a stockout because they have the advantage of inventory capacity, relative to other sellers. The model explains why popular items are sold at a larger premium by large-scaled in- termediaries. I also examine the implication of the configuration of middlemen’s market in terms of the size and the number of middlemen for the matching efficiency and the economic welfare both with and without free entry.


1月17日(金)　10:00-17:40　大会議室(経済学研究科棟4階)

2014 Tohoku Symposium on Spatial Economics

プログラム

共催：
東アジア長期持続的成長の経済システム科学（東北大学）



1月23日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

川合 慶 氏 (New York University)

"Detecting Large-Scale Collusion in Procurement Auctions"

Abstract: This paper documents wide-spread collusion among construction firms in Japan using data that account for most of the construction projects procured by the national government of Japan during 2003 to 2006. By examining rebids that occur for auctions that failed to meet the reserve price, we use ideas similar to regression discontinuity for identifying collusion. We identify about 690 firms whose conduct is inconsistent with competitive behavior. The number of projects awarded to these bidders is about 7,000, or about 1/6 of the total number of construction projects awarded by the national government during the period. The value of these auctions sums to about 8 billion, about 5-6% of which may have been saved absent collusion.


2月6日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

小島 直樹 氏 (小樽商科大学)

"Mechanism Design to the Budget Constrained Buyer: A Canonical Mechanism Approach"

Abstract: The present paper studies the problem on multi-dimensional mechanisms in which the buyer's taste and budget are his private information. The paper investigates the problem by way of a canonical mechanism in the traditional one-dimensional setting: function of one variable, the buyer's taste. In our multi-dimensional context, this is an indirect mechanism. The paper characterizes the optimal canonical mechanism and shows that this approach loses no generality with respect to the direct (multi-dimensional) mechanism.


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

松岡 多利思 氏 (首都大学東京)

"Bank Panics and Volatility of Asset Prices"

Abstract: This paper extends the Diamond and Dybvig (1983) model to study how the possibility of a bank run affects the investment decisions of banks and asset pricing. It is assumed that a bank run is triggered by extrinsic sunspot variables. The model generates two types of equilibria: a no-default equilibrium and a mixed equilibrium. In the no-default equilibrium, banks promise payments low enough to pay all depositors during bank runs and remain solvent. In the mixed equilibrium, ex ante identical banks choose different strategies, and some banks default with positive probability. The latter equilibrium exists when the probability of runs is sufficiently low.


3月6日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室(文科系総合研究棟４階)

横山 泉 氏 (一橋大学)

"Assessing the Effectiveness of Standard-Hours Reduction: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Japan"

Abstract: This paper assesses the effect of Japan's reduction of standard work hours in the 1990s on labor-market outcomes. Incorporating the fact that standard hours become discontinuous at some establishment sizes, we employ the regression discontinuity design to determine whether the reduction in standard hours led to job creation. Although monthly wages decreased along with the decrease in total hours worked, the decrease was not enough to keep labor costs per hour constant, and we did not see any evidence of job creation. Even in Japan, where wages are determined flexibly, we observed evidence similar to that in European countries such as Germany and France, where pay is largely determined through union-employer bargaining.