In this paper, I will show that the quadratic shape of the Engel curve for alcohol can be explained by preference heterogeneity between drinkers and abstainers. The main findings here are; i) the shape of the Engel curve of drinkers for alcohol was linear and negatively sloping; ii) the share of...

We use the result from a survey of Japanese firms in manufacturing and service to investigate the choice of wage and employment adjustments when they needed to reduce substantially the total labor cost. Our regression analysis indicates that the large size reduction favors the layoffs of the...

This paper analyzes monetary policy implication in an endogenous growth model in which the average growth rate is inefficiently low and in which the capital accumulation technology is concave. This paper does two exercises. First, we derive the utility-based welfare criterion of the model. The...

We provide necessary and sufficient conditions on an individual's expected utility function under which any zero-mean idiosyncratic risk increases cautiousness (the derivative of the reciprocal of the absolute risk aversion), which is the key determinant for this individual's demand for options...

This paper presents an overview of recent development in the new economic geography (NEG), and discusses possible directions of its future development. Since there already exist several surveys on this topic, we focus on the selected features of the NEG which are important yet have attracted...

This paper presents a new mixing condition for dynamic economies with a Markov structure. The mixing condition is stated in terms of order, and generalizes a number of wellknown conditions used to establish stability of monotone dynamic models. By generalizing the key insights of the original...

This paper studies repeated games with private monitoring where players make optimal decisions with respect to costly monitoring activities, just as they do with respect to stage-game actions. We consider the case where each player can observe other players' current-period actions accurately...

The spatial distribution of industries and population is quite lumpy, and this lumpiness varies across industries. Nevertheless, we show using Japanese data for metropolitan areas that the locations of both industries and population are linked by surprisingly simple and persistent patterns. In...

Migrants from rural to urban areas in dvelopong countries are mostly young workers in their teens and twenties. Earlier migration is rational because migration involves investment in human capital. This study particularly addresses learning own ability. When one's own ability is unknown, larger...