Humanities & Social Sciences

1 Arawatari, R.; Ono, T.
(Graduate School of Economics)
A Second Chance at Success: A Political Economy Perspective
Journal of Economic Theory, 144, 1249-1277 (2009)


2 Fujita, H.
(Center for the Study of Communication-Design)
Letters on Images: Concerning Japanese Art
International Yearbook of Aesthetics, 12, 68-90 (2008)


3 Futagami, K.; Iwaisako, T.; Ohdoi, R.
(Graduate School of Economics)
Debt Policy Rule, Productive Government Spending, and Multiple Growth Paths
Macroeconomic Dynamics, 12, 445-462 (2008)

This paper constructs an endogenous growth model with productive government spending that is financed through income tax and government debt. There is a target level of government debt relative to the size of the economy. There exist two steady states: One is associated with high growth and the other is associated with low growth. An increase in government bonds reduces the growth rate in the high-growth steady state and raises the growth rate in the low-growth steady state. Conversely, an increase in the income tax rate reduces the growth rate in the low-growth steady state and there exists a tax rate that maximizes the growth rate in the high-growth steady state.


4 Futagami, K. *1 ; Kaneko, A.; Ono, Y. *2 ; Shibata, A.
*1 (Graduate School of Economics)
*2 (Institute of Social and Economic Research)
International Asset Trade, Capital Income Taxation, and Specialization Patterns
Journal of Public Economic Theory, 10(5), 743-763 (2008)


5 Hirose, K.; Ikeda, S.
(Institute of Social and Economic Research)
On Decreasing Marginal Impatience
The Japanese Economic Review, 59(3), 259-274 (2008)

We examine the implications of an empirically relevant specification whereby time preference exhibits decreasing marginal impatience (DMI). With DMI, there are multiple steady-state non-satiated and satiated equilibria. In a constant interest rate economy, the non-satiated steady-state point is necessarily unstable, with the rich accumulating wealth up to a satiated level, while the poor’s wealth shrinks toward the minimal subsistence level. In a capital economy with decreasing returns technology, both the non-satiated and satiated steady-state points can be saddle-point stable.


6 Ishida, J.; Matsushima, N.
(Institute of Social and Economic Research)
Should Civil Servants be Restricted in Wage Bargaining? A Mixed-Duopoly Approach
Journal of Public Economics, 93, 634-646 (2009)

This paper constructs a model of unionized mixed duopoly to examine the optimal wage regulation for the public firm. We find that the wage regulation yields an ambiguous welfare effect, depending crucially on the degree of product differentiation between the firms. We also find that, in contrast to the popular belief, granting the right to bargain collectively to civil servants would not necessarily help them because they tend to demand excessively high wages when they are allowed to bargain collectively.


7 Kawamura, S.; Komori, M.; Miyamoto, Y.
(Graduate School of Human Sciences)
Smiling Reduces Masculinity: Principal Component Analysis Applied to Facial Images
Perception, 37, 1637-1648 (2008)


8 Naito, T.; Abe, K.
(Graduate School of Economics)
Welfare- and Revenue-Enhancing Tariff and Tax Reform under Imperfect Competition
Journal of Public Economic Theory, 10(6), 1085-1094 (2008)

We examine welfare and revenue effects of tariff and tax reform in a country importing final and intermediate goods under imperfect competition. We consider two reform strategies. One is to lower the sum of a consumption tax and a tariff on the intermediate good and leave the sum of the consumption tax and a tariff on the final good unchanged. The other is to lower the former while keeping government revenue unchanged. We specify conditions under which each reform strategy raises welfare without decreasing government revenue.


9 Nakamichi, M.; Yamada, K.
(Graduate School of Human Sciences)
Distribution of Dorsal Carriage among Simians
Primates, 50, 153-168 (2009)

In some nonhuman primate species such as some macaque species, baboons and great apes, mothers carry their infants not only ventrally but also dorsally. Mothers could carry their older infant offspring on the back with relatively low cost and such dorsal carriage of infant could meet the demand that the older infants sometimes but not always seek the close contact with their mothers. Therefore, dorsal carriage of infant by mother could function to prolong the affiliative mother-infant relationships.


10 Ogawa, K.; Suzuki, K.
(Institute of Social and Economic Research)
Information, Investment, and the Stock Market: A Study of Investment Revision Data of Japanese Manufacturing Industries
Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, 22, 663-676 (2008)

We examined investment behavior in the Japanese manufacturing industry using investment revision data. We tested the martingale investment hypothesis that investment fully reflected the news available for firms and the q-theory of investment. The martingale hypothesis was accepted at early stage of investment planning, but not at later stages. We also found evidence favorable for the q-theory. Investment was responsive to profit rate revision and sales revision, but stock return responded only to the former. Further investigation revealed that investment was also motivated by expansion of market share for sales, especially for industries with rapid technological progress.


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Omori, A.
(Graduate School of Language and Culture)
Emotion as a Huge Mass of Moving Water
Metaphor and Symbol, 23, 130-146 (2008)

This article is an attempt to clarify the attributes of emotion prototype and to identify specific emotions close to the prototype, discussing the significance of each source domain, or the lack thereof, on the metaphorical understanding of various types of emotion. Through analyses of a number of citations of conventional metaphors retrieved from the British National Corpus, it proposes an alternative to the long-accepted idea on the prototype of emotion formed by the introspective method adopted in traditional cognitive linguistic studies.

Takii, K.
(Osaka School of International Public Policy)
Fiscal Policy and Entrepreneurship
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 65, 592-608 (2008)

This paper reexamines the effect of expansionary fiscal policy on real GDP in the presence of entrepreneurship when government expenditure partially crowds out private consumption. As government expenditure cannot reflect changes in consumers’ tastes, expansionary fiscal policy weakens the social role of firms’ activities to predict and adapt to idiosyncratic changes in consumers’ taste. I show that expansionary fiscal policy can lower real GDP when idiosyncratic risk and the substitutability of goods are large and when firms have a strong ability to predict changes in consumer tastes. I also investigate how expansionary fiscal policy influences firms’ investments in prediction ability.

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