Ever since Sen (1993) criticized the notion of internal consistency of choice, there exists a widespread perception that the standard rationalizability approach to the theory of choice has difficulties in coping with the existence of external norms. We introduce a concept of norm-conditional...

This paper examined the effects of restrictions on both the demand and supply sides of the health sector in Japan over a certain time period. Because the effect of supply side restrictions could not be taken into account in previous studies, we employed econometric time series techniques to...

The Pension Reform 2004 in Japan has fixed the schedule of contribution hike until 2017 and incorporated a, mechanism of maintaining the financial sustainability of pension funds to some extent. However, there still, remain a lot of problems including unequal burden-sharing, unqualified...

We first show that quality of consumption is an important determinant of fertility and labor supply. Taking this observation into account and using a general equilibrium model with vertical quality differentiation and heterogeneous labor, we show how low fertility may persist. This occurs...

This paper investigates how a firm's borrowing cost evolves as it ages. Using a new data set of more than 200,000 bank-dependent small firms for 1997-2002, we find the following. First, the distribution of borrowing costs tends to become less skewed to the right over time, which can be partially...

This paper explores in what circumstances patent owners can be expected to join unilaterally a patent pool. We develop a simple model in which owners of patents reading on a standard grant licences to competing manufacturers. Manufacturers must sink a fixed cost to enter the market for standard...