When most populous nations like China and India become industrialized and globalized it will potentially open a new chapter in the human history. Under this major trend in the 21st century, there need foresights flexible enough to embrace non-linear changes and discontinued progress to depict...

1. Theme of the Paper and Problems Setup The changes in the world economy, especially the impacts of China's full entry into the international economic system are expected to be substantial. However, the disagreements about the scale of these changes are divided into two groups: the first argues...

When measured in the purchasing power parity (PPP), China and India are largest economies in the world. They also registered high growth rates these years, combination of the two facts creates significant implications for the future economic relations: The Chinese economy will surpass the U.S....

This paper evaluates density forecasts using micro data from the ESP forecast (ESPF), a monthly survey of Japanese professional forecasters. The ESPF has collected individual density forecasts since June 2008. We employ two approaches, Probability Integral Transform (PIT) and Ranked Probability...

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 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...

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...