This paper aims to take stock of four years of ESP forecast experience since its launch in 2004. The consensus performs well, compared to individual forecasters, which is confirmed probably for the first time in Japan. It satisfies the average form of rational expectations hypothesis defined in...

The third paper aims to estimate the aggregate monetary size of giving and volunteering in Japan for 2002. Firstly, it aims to estimate the total sum of individual and corporate donations to the Japanese non-profit sector, and break down and classify it by International Classification of...

The 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) took note of the Copenhagen Accord inDecember 2009, in which each country was requested to provide her target of reductionin greenhouse gas emissions for 2020 to the United Nations Framework Convention onClimate Change (UNFCC). Japanese Government was...

In this paper, a new applied general equilibrium model is presented, where monopolistic competition under the economy of increasing return to scale is explicitly implemented. The equilibrium data sets are compiled from the 2000 Input-Output Tables released in 2004. Implementing monopolistic...

Substantial improvement in health conditions during 35 years from 1970 to 2005 has made Japan one of the top countries for longevity in the world. This paper tries to quantify value of the improvement by willingness-to-pay (WTP) for a decline in death rate during the period, following Murphy and...

Economists unanimously agree that economic agents' expectations are crucially important in determining macroeconomic outcomes. However, mainstream macroeconomists usually simply assume that expectations are rational, leaving unexamined the fundamental question whether individual agents' actual...

This paper conducts a survey asking economists, but not specialists of forecasting, to submit their forecasts of real GDP growth and CPI inflation rates for 2007Q4, 2008Q1 and FY 2009, and compares the responses with the corresponding results of the ESP forecasts, a monthly survey of...

This paper examines forecast data of the ESP Forecast (hereafter ESPF), the monthly survey of forecasts for the Japanese economy, for 4 variable -- three quarterly figures of real GDP growth rates, year-on-year CPI growth rate and unemployment rate, and fiscal year real GDP growth rate -- in FY...

This paper statistically examines regional distributions of foreign workers based on municipal data, and estimates their effects on regional economies. The distribution of the ratios of foreign to Japanese workers is approximately log-normal, and their joint distribution of 2000 and 2003 shows a...

This paper surveys and reexamines Fiscal Theory of Price Level's (FTPL, hereafter) theoretical framework as well as empirical and policy implications. A simple theoretical model, which unifies various models and notations scattered in the literature, is presented and reexamined through changes...