東北大学現代経済学研究会
2017年度記録
2017年4月20日(木)　16:20-17:50　第21演習室（文科系総合研究棟10階）
Language: English, 応用統計計量ワークショップとの共催

Chung-Fang Chiang 氏 (National Taiwan University)

Title: What do voters learn from foreign news? Experimental Evidence on PTA diffusion in Japan and Taiwan

Abstract: What are the effect of foreign news exposure on voter policy preferences? The proportion of news reports about foreign government actions, relative to domestic government actions, has increased dramatically during the past decades. This paper tests three hypotheses on what voters learn from foreign news in forming their opinions on a forthcoming trade agreement: self-interests, socio-tropic inference and the extraction of government competence signal. We designed and conducted two-waves of coordinated survey experiments in Japan and Taiwan in 2015, which randomly assigned different but factual news reports of their neighboring countries (Korea and China) signing a trade agreement, and solicit support for their own government signing an agreement with China. The results suggest that exposure to foreign news increases opposition to PTA with China around 7% points in Japan and decreases opposition by 6%-7% points in Taiwan.? In both countries, socio-tropic inference shapes respondent attitudes and respondents did not seem to learn self-interests or sectoral distributional implications from the foreign news reports. The findings shed new lights on the voter-based mechanisms underlying diffusion of economic policies across countries.?


2017年4月27日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室（文科系総合研究棟4階）

鈴木慶春 氏 (千葉大学)

Title: Competition, Patent Protection, and Innovation in an Endogenous Market Structure

Abstract: This study revisits the relationship between competition and innovation by incorporating an endogenous market structure in a dynamic general equilibrium model. We consider a free-entry model that the leader engages in Cournot competition with both non-innovative and innovative followers in each industry. A competition-enhancing policy, which reduces entry cost, can stimulate the entry of innovative followers when the entry cost is high. However, when the entry cost is sufficiently low, the entry of non-innovative followers crowds out innovative followers from the market. As a result, there is a non-monotonic relationship (inverted-V shape) between competition and innovation. Furthermore, we show that, while strengthening patent protection positively affects innovation when competition is sufficiently intense, the effect may be negative under milder competition. This suggests that a competition policy could complement a patent policy.


2017年5月25日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室（文科系総合研究棟4階）

稲葉大 氏 (関西大学)

Title: Regional Business Cycle and Growth Features of Japan

Abstract: We study the features of regional business cycles and growth in Japan. We find evidence of unconditional convergence over the 1955-2008 period. For the 1975-2008 period, we find evidence of convergence conditional on TFP gap, population growth, private investment rate and TFP growth. We also find that the consumption-output correlation puzzle exists, which implies that the idiosyncratic income shocks are not shared among prefectures and regions. Our analysis implies that frictions in financial markets are responsible for the low consumption risk-sharing among prefectures.


2017年6月1日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室（文科系総合研究棟4階）

奴田原健悟 氏 (専修大学)

Title: Can the Laffer curve for consumption tax be hump-shaped?

Abstract: This paper characterizes the shape of the Laffer curve for consumption tax analytically. The Laffer curve for consumption tax can be hump-shaped if the utility function is an additively separable one in consumption and labor supply. Conversely, it cannot be hump-shaped if the utility function is the one employed by previous researchers. The difference in the utility functions has quantitatively significant effects on the peak tax rates of the Laffer curves for labor and capital income taxes.


2017年6月15日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室（文科系総合研究棟4階）

堀健夫 氏 (東京工業大学)

Title: Monetary Policy, Financial Frictions, and Heterogeneous R&D Firms in an Endogenous Growth Model

Abstract: Motivated by the empirical facts, we construct an endogenous growth model in which heterogeneous R&D firms are financially constrained and use cash to finance R&D investments. The interaction between financial constraints and heterogeneity is an important determinant of the optimality of the Friedman rule. If there are no financial frictions, the presence of heterogeneity does not affect the optimality of the Friedman rule. If there are severe financial frictions, however, heterogeneity has an important effect. Without heterogeneity, the Friedman rule is optimal. However, with heterogeneity among R&D firms, deviating from the Friedman rule improves social welfare under a plausible condition.


2017年6月29日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室（文科系総合研究棟4階）

松島法明 氏 (大阪大学)

Title: Naked Exclusion under Exclusive-offer Competition

Abstract: This study constructs a model of anticompetitive exclusive-offer competition between two existing suppliers. Although previous studies assume that one of the suppliers is a potential entrant, which cannot make an exclusive offer, we assume that all suppliers are existing firms. When suppliers compete imperfectly, the exclusive-offer competition reduces the supplier’s profit for the case where it fails to exclude the rival supplier, which induces each supplier to make a better exclusive offer. We point out that this leads to an exclusion of the existing supplier even when there is no exclusion of the potential entrant.


2017年7月6日(木)　14:40-16:10　第21演習室（文科系総合研究棟10階）
応用統計計量ワークショップとの共催：いつもと会場と時刻が異なります．

井深陽子 氏 (慶應義塾大学)

Title: Regional Variations in Access to Healthcare among Japanese Individuals Over 50 Years Old: An analysis using JSTAR

Abstract: Studies have repeatedly reported regional variations in health conditions within a country, but the reason behind such disparities is still under debate. In this study, among the contributors to health disparities, we focus on healthcare-seeking behavior. We examine how regional characteristics affect such behavior of individuals over 50 years old regarding screening and controlling common chronic conditions such as hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and diabetes. Our analysis using the Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement (JSTAR) shows that there are differences of at least three to 10 percentage points in the proportion of those who seek care across 10 areas covered. On applying a multilevel regression framework, we find that the vast majorities of these differences are due to composition effects, namely, the difference in the distribution of health risk at the individual level. We also find that regional characteristics do not play a major role in explaining the difference in healthcare-seeking activities. However, the concentration of healthcare resources in a region is found to be correlated with the decision to seek healthcare for certain chronic conditions, suggesting that the role of healthcare resources could differ by chronic condition.


2017年7月24日(月)　16:40-18:10　第21演習室（文科系総合研究棟10階）
いつもと曜日、時刻、会場が異なります．

濱秋純哉 氏 (法政大学)

Title: The effect of inheritance receipt on health: A longitudinal analysis of Japanese young women

Abstract: The current study aims to estimate the causal effect of a wealth shock on individual health, focusing on inheritance receipt. A challenge when examining this causality is to overcome a potential endogeneity of inheritances. To deal with this problem, the novel approach we employed here is to examine the effect of inheritances from respondents' spouse' s parents, instead of respondents' own parents, on the health of respondents themselves. We try to estimate the short-term and long-term impacts of spousal inheritance receipt on the respondents’health. As for the short-term impact, we examine the dynamics of health outcomes during years immediately before and after the inheritance receipt in an event study framework. When assessing the long-term impact, we estimate the effects on health of the cumulative amount of inheritance received from spousal parents by the current survey wave. Our findings are summarized as follows. Starting with the short-term impact, while the asset shock does not affect respondents' mental health, it would improve their self-rated health when the spousal inheritance is not expected beforehand. By contrast, as for the long-term impact, no significant change is found for either type of health measures.


2017年7月27日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室（文科系総合研究棟4階）

荒戸寛樹 氏 (首都大学東京)

Title: A model of negative interest rates

Abstract: This paper builds a simple general equilibrium model which realizes the nominal interest rate on reserve deposit below zero. In this model, banks hold cash and reserve deposits to create lending and credit services. If reserve deposit holdings can create both lending and credit services but cash holdings can create only lending services, the lower bound of the nominal interest rate on reserve deposit can be negative. The lower bound of the reserve rate is endogenous, which depends on the quantity of high-powered money.


2017年8月3日(木)　16:20-17:50　第21演習室（文科系総合研究棟10階）

図斎大 氏 (Temple University)

Title: Distributional stability and equilibrium selection (abstract)

TBA


2017年9月22日(金)　15:00-16:30　大会議室（経済学部棟4階）
いつもと曜日、時間、場所が異なります。応用統計計量ワークショップとの共催

栗田高光 氏 (福岡大学)

Title: Testing parameter constancy in I(2) cointegrated VAR models

Abstract: This paper explores a set of likelihood-based tests for parameter constancy in I(2) cointegrated vector autoregressive (CVAR) models. A new class of test statistics for parameter stability is introduced in the I(2) CVAR framework. This study then proves that their asymptotic distributions are non-standard but free of any nuisance parameters, so it is feasible to approximate the distributions by simulation. Selected quantiles of the approximate distributions are presented as statistical tables for applied use. Monte Carlo experiments are also conducted to investigate empirical finite-sample properties of the stability tests. These experiments provide evidence for the practicality of the proposed tests in applied research on I(2) data.


2017年10月5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 (一橋大学)

Title: Identifying Neighborhood Effects among Firms: Evidence from Location Lotteries of the Tokyo Tsukiji Fish Market

Abstract: Firms may benefit from the clustering of neighboring firms with certain characteristics because such clustering allows buyers to reduce their trip and search costs. This idea, known as shopping externality, is central to the theory of the formation of market places and to many branches of the agglomeration theory. A fundamental challenge in investigating such mechanisms arises from economic agents' self-selection into locations. We overcome this challenge by analyzing neighborhood effects among intermediate wholesalers located in the Tokyo Tsukiji Fish Market and by exploiting a unique feature of their shop locations within the market; their locations are determined every 4-10 years by relocation lotteries. First, we confirm that these intermediate wholesalers' shop locations are indeed randomly distributed. Then, we find that the characteristics of the neighboring firms significantly affect firm performance. Specically, the diversity of the types of neighboring firms as well as the fraction of neighboring firms selling similar products positively affect the performance of small-sized and specialized firms. We find no effect of the characteristics of close neighbors not facing the same corridor and thus not sharing the flow of buyers, which provides evidence that our results are not due to factors other than buyer flow sharing, such as technology spillovers. Our results provide the first randomization-based evidence of shopping externality.


2017年10月19日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室（文科系総合研究棟4階）
Language: English

Chongwoo Choe 氏 (Monash University and ISER, Osaka University)

Title: Competitive Personalized Pricing with Sophisticated Consumers

Abstract: Personalized pricing, a limiting case of price discrimination as the number of targeted consumer segments increases, becomes increasingly common due to the availability of vast amount of individual-level data. This paper studies personalized pricing in a Hotelling setting when each firm has a given target segment and consumers can be sophisticated. Sophisticated consumers can overcome the hurdles for price discrimination and have access to the price offered to non-targeted consumers, which naive consumers cannot. When all consumers are naive, personalized pricing leads to intense competition and total industry profit lower than that under the Hotelling equilibrium. But market is always fully covered. Sophisticated consumers raise the firm's cost of serving non-targeted consumers, hence discourage firms from poaching the rival's targeted customers. This softens competition. When firms have sufficiently large and non-overlapping target segments, consumer sophistication allows firms to extract full surplus from their targeted customers through perfect price discrimination. Consumers are strictly worse-off under competitive personalized pricing, a result in contrast to the common view in the literature. With sophisticated consumers, firms also choose not to serve the entire market when the commonly non-targeted market segment is small. Thus consumer sophistication can lead to lower consumer surplus and lower social welfare. We also discuss the implications for the regulation of the use of customer data by firms.


2017年10月26日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室（文科系総合研究棟4階）

田中隆一 氏 (東京大学)

Title: Do Teachers Matter for Academic Achievement of Students? Evidence from Administrative Panel Data

Abstract: This paper examines empirically the effect of teachers on students' academic outcomes. Using large administrative panel data of reading and math test scores of students in public elementary schools in a municipality in Japan, we estimate the distribution of teacher fixed effects controlling for student, school, and year fixed effects. Our results show that teacher fixed effects are substantial: improvement of teacher fixed effect by one standard deviation raises student's z-score by 0.23 standard deviation for reading and by 0.32 standard deviation for math. Our estimates show that both teacher's experience and class size matter for students' achievement of both reading and math. The magnitude of the teacher effect is equal to the class size effect with reduction of 2.8 students for reading z-score and 5.2 students for math z-score.


2017年11月30日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室（文科系総合研究棟4階）
応用統計計量ワークショップとの共催

大塚芳宏 氏 (東北学院大学)

Title: Measuring spatial correlated volatilities in regional economic data

Abstract: We extend the stochastic volatility model with spatial correlation (Spatially correlated stochastic volatility model-SSV model). We explore the volatility spillover effect in regional economic data using the SSV model with the Markov chain Monte Carlo method. Proposed model is applied for the regional productivities in Japan. Empirical results show that there are high persistences of volatility and spatial correlation in region data. Moreover, volatilities of Hokkaido, Kanto, Chubu near the Tohoku region at the Great East Japan Earthquake are higher than those at the Great recession.


2017年12月21日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室（文科系総合研究棟4階）

海老名剛 氏 (明治大学)

Title: Demand Uncertainty, Product Differentiation, and Entry Timing Under Spatial Competition

Abstract: We investigate the entry timing and location decisions under market-size uncertainty with Brownian motions in a continuous-time spatial competition duopoly model a la d'Aspremont et al. (1979). Under a sequential equilibrium, the threshold of the follower non-monotonically increases in volatility, which is in stark contrast to the extant results in the real options literature. Also, although the follower's entry timing tends to be late as the volatility becomes amplified, the leader is more likely to increase the degree of product differentiation as the volatility gets higher. Finally, we compare the equilibrium entry decisions with the second-best ones.


2018年1月25日(木)　16:50-18:20　第401演習室（文科系総合研究棟4階）
Language: English

Yong-Seung Jung 氏 (Kyung Hee University)

Title: Public Debt, Monetary Policy, and Redistribution in a Small Open Economy with Borrowing Constraints

Abstract: This paper sets up a small open two agents new Keynesian (TANK) economy model with Ricardian (unconstrained) households and Keynesian (constrained) households and addresses the effect of redistribution policy on the economy. The paper shows that Ricardian equivalence does not hold in the small open economy with two agents, irrespective of the degree of nominal price rigidities, contrasting to Bilbiie et al. (2013). The effects of both the pure redistribution policy from Ricardian households to Keynesian households and debt fi?nanced uniform tax cuts critically depend on the type of monetary policy. Under a Taylor rule reacting to expected future in?flation, the real exchange rate does not respond to a pure temporary redistribution policy, while it depreciates to debt-?financed uniform tax cuts, if debt stabilization is not scheduled into far future.


2018年2月1日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室（文科系総合研究棟4階）

直井道生 氏 (慶應義塾大学)

Title: Natural Hazard Information and Migration across Cities: Evidence from the Nankai Trough Earthquake

Abstract: This paper examines the causal effect of the predicted seismic movements and their resulting tsunami on human migration across 251 coastal and their 179 neighboring municipalities in Japan. Using the difference-in-differences method, we find that an increase in predicted tsunami height is significantly associated with a reduction in net migration. We also find that an increase in predicted tsunami height has a persistent negative impact on the in-migration throughout our sample period, whereas it has only a temporal impact on the out-migration. An increase in predicted seismic movement, on the other hand, is significantly associated with a reduction in in-migration only for the year immediately after the dissemination of updated hazard information. Our empirical findings suggest that, after the dissemination of updated tsunami predictions, people are likely to move to less risky areas.


2018年2月22日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室（文科系総合研究棟4階）

楡井誠 氏 (東京大学)

Title: Endogenous inflation fluctuations and optimal inflation target

Abstract: I present a state-dependent pricing model that generates inflation fluctuations from idiosyncratic shocks on firms. In the model, the fluctuations are caused by complementary repricing behavior of imperfectly competing firms. I show that inflation volatility depends on the density of firms at repricing threshold. When the long-term inflation level is high, the stationary density at threshold is high, which causes high volatility in short-term inflation rates. Numerical analysis shows that the model with reasonably calibrated parameters can explain the positive relationship between inflation level and volatility that has been observed empirically. The model points to a possible source of welfare loss caused by high inflation levels.


2018年3月8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 (帝京大学)

Title: Observable Actions

Abstract: We consider a game with meta-players who observe each others actions before actual play. This observability exerts an effect similar to repeated games without discounting. This analysis is novel in that it makes mimic strategies possible; meta-players are allowed to take the same actions as opponents would take. Such mimic strategies have been excluded from strategy sets as a cause of an indeterminacy problem inherent in meta-game settings in the existing literature. We resolve the problem by introducing beliefs about actions that opponents are taking. 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.


2018年3月12日(月)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室（文科系総合研究棟4階）
Language: English, いつもと曜日が異なります。

Corbett Grainger 氏 (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Title: Do Regulators Strategically Avoid Pollution Hotspots when Siting Monitors? Evidence from Remote Sensing of Air Pollution

Abstract: Ambient air pollution is tracked through a network of in situ monitors, and these data are used extensively in regulatory settings, research, and determining air quality indices to protect human health. Although the locations are typically treated as exogenous by researchers, we argue that there may be incentives for the local regulator to avoid siting monitors near pollution hotspots. In the United States, the design and maintenance of monitoring networks is delegated to state or sub-state agencies. A state's monitors then determine compliance with federal National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). We develop an analytical model to study the local regulator's incentives in this federalist arrangement. For marginal counties (i.e. those still designated as attainment, but potentially ``close'' to the NAAQS threshold), the regulator has an incentive to avoid siting new pollution monitors near pollution hotspots. On the other hand, for counties already in nonattainment, the local regulator's ability to avoid pollution may be diminished due to increased federal scrutiny. To test for strategic behavior in monitor siting, we employ monitoring data and satellite-derived pollution estimates to characterize pollution at non-monitored locations. We find that, on average, local regulators in marginal counties avoid pollution relative to nonattainment counties; moreover, this result is especially pronounced for monitors specifically designated to target areas of high pollution concentrations. Our results suggest that monitoring data in marginal counties may systematically understate pollution, and the resulting regulatory targeting may be less efficient than previously believed.


2018年3月13日(火)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室（文科系総合研究棟4階）
いつもと曜日が異なります。

岡本千草 氏 (東京大学)

Title: The impacts of high-speed rail way construction on urban agglomerations: Evidence from Kyusyu in Japan

Abstract: Construction of high speed rail integrates regions and can possibly have significant impacts on the distribution of economic activities. Using the opening and extensions of high speed rail, Shinkansen, in Kyusyu, Japan, we examine the effects on the distribution of economic activities across urban agglomerations. We focus on changes in land price and estimate hedonic price equations to conduct the Differerence-In-Difference analysis. We find that the large metropolitan areas gained from it by experiencing increases in land price whereas small metropolitan areas locating between them lost by experiencing decreases in it. However, such positive effects are shown to be limited to areas close to the Shinkansen stations.


2018年3月16日(金)　15:00-18:00　第401演習室（文科系総合研究棟4階）
Joint Seminar: いつもと曜日、時間が異なります。
Language: English

樽井礼 氏 (University of Hawaii)

Title: Understanding Price Response by Commercial and Industrial (C&I) Customers : Does Rate Schedule Change Make Customers More Price-Elastic?

Abstract: This paper studies how electricity consumption by firms in Hawaii's commercial and industrial sectors responds to changes in electric rates when the firms are subject to different volumetric rates and demand charges depending on the history of monthly peak and total consumption levels. To investigate how facing a higher demand charge affects the firms' electricity usage while taking into account their endogenous switching to different rate schedules, we use a group of firms that are exempt from the rate switching as a control group. Our estimation, with data on monthly electric bills and weather customized for each customer's billing cycle, demonstrates that the customers who experience switching to a rate with a higher demand charge are more responsive to volumetric prices (with a point elasticity estimate of -0.39) compared to those who are exempt from rate switching (with an estimate of -0.13). The results support a hypothesis that customers who face higher demand charges tend to be more price-responsive. These findings contribute to the literature on commercial and industrial demand modeling and forecasting. Moreover, the findings could assist decision makers in targeting potential customers for demand response programs.

Kimberly Burnett 氏 (University of Hawaii)

Title: Economic Valuation of Watershed Conservation Activities in Hawaii

Abstract: Native forest conservation provides multiple benefits, including biodiversity, cultural values, and a suite of watershed ecosystem services. Here we focus on quantifying groundwater recharge benefits of conservation activities carried out by The Nature Conservancy in the nearly 9000 acre Waikamoi preserve on the island of Maui. Conservation activities in Waikamoi include fencing, ungulate removal, invasive species control, and monitoring all of which serve to remove and prevent the spread of invasive plants and animals. We 1) projected the potential invasive forest spread over a long time horizon in the absence of these conservation efforts; 2) modeled how these changes in forest type would affect evapotranspiration and groundwater recharge using publicly available data sets; and 3) translated groundwater recharge benefits into monetary value based on the cost of obtaining potable water from more expensive sources when demand exceeds sustainable yield limits.

Heuy-Lin Lee 氏 (National Chengchi University)

Title: Global Warming and its Impact on the Agricultural Sector

Abstract: Global warming is likely to affect agricultural sectors. The previous studies focus on the direct impact of the temperature rise on the production or crop yields but don't consider the indirect impact on the agricultural sector via change in trade and industrial structure due to change in comparative advantage resulting from the temperature rise. In this study, firstly we explore how temperature affect the land productivity (crop yield) in the agricultural sector by estimating the land productivity function and simulate the impact of temperature rise in 2050. Secondly, we investigate how change in productivity due to temperature change affects the agricultural sector and GDP of each country/region via change in trade and the industrial structure using the GTAP model. Our main findings are (1) temperature rise is likely to increase the land productivity in the cold and cool-temperate zone. Some countries receive larger total impact than the direct impact, while the other countries does not, (2) In the temperate zone, temperature rise is likely to increase the land productivity of the countries with average temperature lower than 18 °C but to decrease that of the countries with average temperature higher than 18 °C. The countries with the negative direct impact and some countries even with the positive direct impact suffer a loss in total impact. (3) In the tropical zone, temperature rise is likely to decrease the land productivity, but the negative magnitude depends on the level of agricultural technology. Total negative impact on agricultural sector will become larger than the direct impact, since net import is increased in these countries due to loss of comparative advantage.


2018年3月22日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室（文科系総合研究棟4階）

橋本和彦 氏 (大阪経済大学)

Title: Strategy-Proofness and Efficiency of Probabilistic Mechanisms for Excludable Public Good

Abstract: We study strategy-proof probabilistic mechanisms in a binary excludable public good model. We construct a new class of probabilistic mechanisms satisfying strategy-proofness, called α-mechanisms. We first show that the α-mechanisms are second-best efficient. Next, we identify the optimal α-mechanism with respect to the supremal welfare loss, and show that it improves the inefficiency of the equal cost sharing with maximal participation mechanism [Moulin (1994)] and the anonymous augmented serial mechanisms [Ohseto (2005)].


2018年3月29日(木)　16:20-17:50　第401演習室（文科系総合研究棟4階）

松尾美和 氏 (神戸大学)

Title: Automobility Disparity and Gender Gaps of Hispanic Households in the U.S.

Abstract: Literature reports immobility of Hispanic immigrants, and they are known to carpool when solo-driving is difficult. Although carpooling has social advantages, it includes practical and other disadvantages, particularly for carpool-dependent passengers. This paper explores the gender gap in personal-level automobility among Hispanics, with explicit consideration to drivers' access to household vehicles and non-drivers' access to household carpooling. The research finds that Hispanic females, particularly immigrants, are low in automobility, both in the probability of being a driver and in access to household vehicles. The gender gap is specific to Hispanics, and not found for non-Hispanic Whites or Blacks. The gap decreases, but persists, as immigrant Hispanics stay longer in the U.S., gain or maintain employment, or become college-educated. Surprisingly, the gender gap in personal-level automobility exists even among U.S. native Hispanics.