Japan's Sector Research Articles

Increasing the "Productivity" of the Academic Sector and Ensuring Cooperation with the Large Corporate Sector in Japan

Purpose:the main purpose of this article is to review the Japanese policy to promote cooperation between the academic and large corporate sectors in the field of science and technology, and to analyze its role in the formation of the innovation system in Japan.Methods:this article is based on the analysis of scientific and analytical materials on the problem of research. The factual basis is the framework documents of the Cabinet of Japan.Results:the article provides a brief retrospective review on the support policy for universities and large corporate sector cooperation, identifies the key factors for the establishment of intersectoral cooperation; identifies the problem areas of the implemented policy that hinder the achievement of the set goals. The relative failure of the applied measures in the sphere of venture business support, commercialization of technologies and other instruments was noted. The hypothesis is put forward about the insufficiency of government efforts to monitor and analyze the activities already implemented, the lack of practice of taking into account failures in the formation of new programs and projects. Also revealed contradictions between the support programs implemented through various government agencies, which also leads to the inefficiency of scientific and technological projects and the establishment of dialogue with the corporate sector, including the need to resolve bureaucratic disagreements. It is also necessary to emphasize, that Japanese experience in implementing of science and technology and innovation policy is very important for Russian economic development. In particular, special attention is paid to study foreign experience in creating an effective mechanism of academic and private sectors interaction, where the key-supporting role is played by government in case of Japan. No doubt, it is not justified to try to copy any foreign institutional system, but the analysis of the negative and positive effects of foreign economic system cases is very valuable for self-institutional mechanisms development.Conclusions and Relevance:the analysis leads to the conclusion that Japan has not yet completed the transformation to a modern model of the national innovation system, the current problem is the weakness of relations between the academic and corporate sectors. At the same time, there is an excessive, "paternalistic" role of the state in the organization of intersectoral interactions, in the absence of attention to the optimization of conditions and incentives for this kind of dialogue. The Japanese government actively supports and tries to develop the practice of "open innovation" business model, but due to the obsolescence of existing institutional structures, as well as their unpreparedness to the development and perception of radically new business models, has not yet been able to achieve concrete sustainable results.

Spatial crowding-out and crowding-in effects of government spending on the private sector in Japan

Motivated by cross-jurisdictional private activities, this study proposes a fiscal spillover channel to investigate the spatial crowding-out and crowding-in effects of government spending on the private sector in Japan. We demonstrate that there are spatial autocorrelations in private economic variables, intensifying the crowding-out effects of government consumption. On the contrary, when such spatial spillovers are controlled for, the crowding-out effects of public investment are shown to be negligible. Furthermore, our subsample analysis reveals some noticeable regional differences between urban and rural areas, such as the partial crowding-in effects of government consumption on private consumption for Kanto (the Tokyo metropolitan area) and those of public investment on private consumption for Shikoku (a rural island). Our findings imply that policymakers should take into account spatial spillovers and regional differences to rejuvenate the regional economy by stimulating private demand.

The Statistical Analysis of Information on Japanese Oil Painters: Consideration of Development of Reusable Data Infrastructure for the Art Sector in Japan.

The Statistical Analysis of Information on Japanese Oil Painters: Consideration of Development of Reusable Data Infrastructure for the Art Sector in Japan.

The Insurance Sector in Japan: An Overview and Environmental Analysis

Insurance is a sector which affects the public interest. The sustainable development of the insurance sector is directly related to the stability of the national financial system and has an impact on the political stability of the country. Although the bursting of Japanese economic bubble and insurance liberalization had a serious impact on the Japanese insurance sector in the 1990s, it is getting back to the right track in recent years. Under the loose monetary and low interest rate policies in Japan at present, what is the current competitive environment? And could the Japan’s insurance sector has a steady growth continually? This article based on Porter‘s Five Force Model and PEST Model to analyze the micro-environment and macro-environment of the Japan’s insurance sector and reveals its current situation and potential challenges. Findings portray the competition in Japanese insurance sector is assessed as moderate and mainly comes from industry rivalry. In both policy and economic level, the current situation has a negative impact on the Japanese insurance sector. Moreover, the interest rate sensitivity of non-life insurance is generally lower than that of life insurance. So the negative interest rate policy in Japan will seriously affect the development of the life insurance sector, while the non-life insurance sector has little influence.

Trade policy preferences and cross-regional differences: Evidence from individual-level data of Japan

This study examines the determinants of trade policy preferences, using individual-level data of Japan. We focus on the role of regional factors, considering the fact that there is a significant difference in preferences among regions. The results reveal that people residing in a region with a high share of agricultural workers are likely to support import restrictions even if they do not engage in agriculture, which is the most protected sector in Japan. It is also found that the effect of agricultural workers share is significant for some people not considering migration, suggesting that inter-regional immobility affects their trade policy preferences.

Estimating price elasticity of demand for electricity: the case of Japanese manufacturing industry

Many papers have estimated the residential and/or industrial price elasticity of demand for electricity. Most papers that study industrial elasticities analyze the elasticity for the whole industrial sector. Only a few studies have estimated elasticities for individual sectors, but even then, sectors are classified by broad divisions (alphabetical-letter industrial classification) such as agriculture, manufacturing, and services. Studies that classify sectors by major groups (two-digit industrial classification) such as food, chemicals or iron are rare. Companies that require large amounts of electricity will likely be influenced by an increase in the electricity price. After the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, activities at all nuclear power plants were halted. Electric power companies switched to generating electric power using thermal power plants instead of nuclear plants. This increased the electricity price because thermal power plants use expensive fossil fuels such as coal, petroleum, and liquefied natural gas (LNG). The increase in the electricity price imposed a heavy burden on manufacturing companies that consume a large amount of electricity. Some papers have discussed the fact that certain domestic manufacturing companies faced disadvantages and accelerated off-shoring when electricity prices increased. Hosoe (Appl Econ 46(17):2010–2020, 2014) simulated the effects of the power crisis on Japanese industrial sectors using a CGE (Computable General Equilibrium) model. The simulation indicated that the power crisis would decrease domestic output of the wood, paper and printing, pottery, steel and nonferrous metal, and food sectors in Japan, and would accelerate their foreign direct investment. For this paper we estimated the price elasticity of the electricity demand for each industry (major groups) in manufacturing, using the partial adjustment model and the Kalman filter model. In the partial adjustment model, the elasticity of electricity demand of manufacturing in aggregate is − 0.400. Other studies showed that the elasticities of electricity demand including different industrial sectors range from − 0.034 to − 0.300. We found that demand in the manufacturing sector is more elastic than in the aggregate of industrial sectors. They also found that elasticities differ greatly between sectors (major groups) in manufacturing. Sectors with more elastic electricity demand than the aggregate of manufacturing include textile mill products (− 0.775) followed by plastic, rubber and leather products (− 0.701), ceramic, stone and clay products (− 0.701), pulp, paper and paper products (− 0.570), printing and allied industries (− 0.530), machinery (− 0.485), food, beverages, tobacco and feed (− 0.468), miscellaneous manufacturing industries (− 0.413), and lumber and wood products (− 0.403). On the other hand, the less elastic sector is iron, steel, non-ferrous metals and products (− 0.251). The chemical and allied products (− 0.147) sector is not statistically significant at 5% level. In general, less elastic industries need electricity more. In other words, electricity is a necessary good for inelastic industries. The low elasticity implies that these industries cannot reduce electricity consumption even when electricity prices increase. This implies that a high electricity price is a heavy burden on these companies. Inelastic industries can move their operations overseas to access cheaper electricity or they can stop their operations when the price of electricity increases. We believe that policy makers should consider the elasticity of electricity demand because an increase in electricity price has the real possibility of aggravating de-industrialization and/or raising the unemployment rate.

An empirical contribution to Minsky’s financial fragility: evidence from non-financial sectors in Japan

This study presents an empirical analysis to detect Minsky’s financial fragility and its determinants in the non- financial sectors in Japan, with particular attention paid to differences between sectors and sizes. While Minsky developed theoretical analyses of financial fragility for use in economic growth models, its empirical application is limited. Based on the financial fragility indices derived from a cash flow accounting framework and Minsky’s margins of safety, I detect the overall configuration and evolution of financial fragility (hedge, speculative, and Ponzi) in Japan. Then, the factors that determine the probability of being Ponzi finance are detected by using panel logistic regression. In doing so, this study reveals that although speculative finance is dominant in many sectors, the evolution of financial fragility is diversified and its determinants differ according to sector and size in Japan.

Policy implications from revealing consumption-based carbon footprint of major economic sectors in Japan

In Japan, the Great East Earthquake caused numerous casualties and the subsequent suspension of operations at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant continues to have an adverse impact on the national energy supply chain. The structural changes in energy supply have served to reinforce the importance of national emissions accounting in promoting overall CO2 reduction policies. However, traditional approaches for evaluating industrial emissions have been criticized for their production-based perspective, which fails to consider emissions embodied in sectoral indirect consumption. The purpose of this study is therefore to understand the sectoral emission transfer. By applying economic input-output tables, detailed sectoral economic interactions can be usefully identified. It was found that the emissions embodied in final consumption generated largely by households. Besides, although emission intensity of manufacturing sector is extremely high in direct emission, agriculture sector is found to exceed other sectors in indirect emission intensities. From the consumption-side, these findings strongly suggest that a high priority be given to mitigation efforts aimed at reducing residential consumption, whist policy priorities are expected to be located on agriculture-related sectors from production-side. The study hence provides insights into how we can better allocate emissions responsibility and set reduction priorities among major economic sectors.

Comparative analysis on the socioeconomic drivers of industrial air-pollutant emissions between Japan and China: Insights for the further-abatement period based on the LMDI method

Abstract Japan has achieved the decoupling of economic growth from air-pollutant emissions since the rapid decrease in air-pollutant emissions in the 1970s and the further-abatement period. Air-pollutant emissions also decreased in China recently. We analyzed the factors driving the changes in air-pollutant emission, which enabled us to identify each factor's contribution and compare the further-abatement period in Japan with the primary reduction stage in China. This study performed the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index analysis to decompose the industrial-emission changes (SO2 and NOx) in Japan and China into the socioeconomic factors that drive these changes. Results showed that changes in these factors, especially energy intensity and economic level, contributed differently to the emission reduction in Japan and China because the two countries differed in emission-reduction periods. The decline in emission coefficient, measured by emissions per unit of energy consumption, was the most important contributor to emission reduction in Japan. The other factors did not exert considerable influence. However, energy intensity decrease in China significantly contributed to emission reduction besides emission coefficient, and economic growth had a substantial negative impact on emission reduction. Differences also appeared in contributions from the industrial and economic structure between the two countries. Some factors may have reached their limitation after the rapid reduction period and thus contributed less significantly in the further-abatement period. A tendency toward a similar condition to Japan was also observed in some factorial contributions in China. From a sectoral perspective, emission change was distributed evenly among sectors in Japan than in China. Based on the comparison between the two countries and the “new normal” that China is experiencing, we provided insights for China for further abating industrial air-pollutant emissions in succeeding years.

Employment conditions and emerging labour movements of non‐regular workers in Japan

The Abe administration has declared ‘equal work for equal pay’ a high priority in its policy agenda. To this end, the administration has been putting forward a ‘guideline’ showing concrete examples of ‘unfair wage disparities’, and specifying conditions under which employers could reasonably offer different pay for regular and non‐regular workers. Among those who consider that one should be paid the same regardless of employment contract, trade union movements have been quite active, and especially in the higher education sector in Japan. The General Union of University part‐time lecturers have recently received an exceptionally high wage increase as a result of collective bargaining at some renowned private universities. This paper focuses on the current conditions of non‐regular workers in Japan, as well as their active workers’ movements in view of ‘equal work for equal pay’ policy which the Abe administration has increasingly promoted.

English-medium Instruction and the Information Technology Parallel in Japanese Higher Education

As English-medium instruction expands in the higher education sector in Japan, stakeholders are experiencing frustration. However, these are not new problems; we have seen these roadblocks before in the implementation of information technology in the 1990s.

English-medium Instruction and the Information Technology Parallel in Japanese Higher Education

As English-medium instruction expands in the higher education sector in Japan, stakeholders are experiencing frustration. However, these are not new problems; we have seen these roadblocks before in the implementation of information technology in the 1990s.

小作争議の府県パネルデータ分析 : 1915～29年日本の労働市場と農業再編

小作争議の府県パネルデータ分析 : 1915～29年日本の労働市場と農業再編

Analysis of the impact of regional temperature pattern on the energy consumption in the commercial sector in Japan

We conducted this study to clarify the impact of regional climatic conditions on the energy consumption in the commercial sector, in Japan. For this research, we utilized the Database for the Energy Consumption of Commercial Buildings (DECC), which provided data on the individual buildings. The existing energy consumption pattern derived from the individual building data seems to have large variations depending on climatic conditions. Therefore, in this research, connections were made between the seasonal fluctuations in energy consumption as well as the seasonal temperature changes, in order to extract the components of variation due to temperature, and make a regional comparison. In addition, we prepared estimating equations for the energy consumption based on temperature. By applying the regional temperature data to these equations, the impact of temperature alone was extracted for comparison. The results showed that, for the types of buildings addressed in this research, even though there is a regionality to the ratio of increments during summer and winter with regard to heating and cooling, it is offset by summing them up. In this research, we were able to roughly determine the level of fluctuations in the energy consumption as an impact of temperature.

Impact of Hydrogen fuel for CO 2 Emission Reduction in Power Generation Sector in Japan

Abstract Japan's energy consumption derives mostly from fossil fuels, which are un-secure and release a much greenhouse gas emissions. To meet goals of reducing GHG, hydrogen gas can be utilized in power generation in hydrogen fired and firing / co-combustion power plants. This paper analyses the impact of hydrogen in the power generation sector using the MARKAL-TIMES Japan optimization model framework. Two models are used: a base scenario without hydrogen and hydrogen scenario in which hydrogen is supplied from 2020 onwards. In the hydrogen scenario, other processes which are normally supplied by natural gas are reduced because the gas is instead used to generate power. Adding hydrogen to the energy supply leads to a decrease in projected use of fossil fuels. The hydrogen scenario produces fewer emissions than the base scenario; by 2050, the hydrogen scenario's estimated 388 metric tons of CO 2 emissions is over 250 tons less than the base scenario's emissions of 588 metric tons.

8-10.産業部門の業種別エネルギーフロー((3)ライフスタイル・産業構造,Session 8 エネルギー評価・経済)

8-10.産業部門の業種別エネルギーフロー((3)ライフスタイル・産業構造,Session 8 エネルギー評価・経済)

9-3.産業部門のエネルギー消費の比較((1)エネルギー消費,Session 9 エネルギー評価・経済)

9-3.産業部門のエネルギー消費の比較((1)エネルギー消費,Session 9 エネルギー評価・経済)

Dynamic analysis of global warming impact of the household refrigerator sector in Japan from 1952 to 2030

The household refrigerators consume large amounts of energy and emit vast refrigerants which contribute to global warming indirectly and directly. The intervention of energy efficiency standard, aging process, and refrigerants substitution result in the performance of the household refrigerator sector varying with time. The present study analyzed dynamic global warming impact of the household refrigerator sector in Japan from the 1950s to 2030 taking into account both the energy effect and chemical effect. The energy effect modelling integrated energy efficiency improvement over year and energy efficiency deterioration over age. The chemical effect modelling involved substitution of three generations of refrigerants on the basis of the flow and stock model. The results showed that the global warming impact of the household refrigerator sector peaked at 25,104 kt CO2 eq. in 1990 and then decreased to 6506 kt CO2 eq. in 2030. The energy effect accounted for at least 91% and this ratio would be much higher in the future. Both implementation of minimum energy efficiency programs and substitution of refrigerants reduced the global warming impact significantly. This dynamic analysis could provide a holistic picture of the global warming impact of the household refrigerator sector both retrospectively and prospectively from accessing to the market, through rapid growth, to saturation.

The Dynamics of the Wagyu Beef Cow-Calf Sector in Japan: Calf Shortage and the Possibility of Foreign “Wagyu” Import

The Dynamics of the Wagyu Beef Cow-Calf Sector in Japan: Calf Shortage and the Possibility of Foreign “Wagyu” Import

Erratum to: Understanding of economic spillover mechanism by structural path analysis: a case study of interregional social accounting matrix focused on institutional sectors in Japan

Erratum to: Understanding of economic spillover mechanism by structural path analysis: a case study of interregional social accounting matrix focused on institutional sectors in Japan