Relationship between labor-income risk and average return: empirical evidence from the Japanese stock market

In Japan, as in the United States, stocks that are more sensitive to changes in the monthly growth rate of labor income earn a higher return on average. Whereas the stock-index beta can only explain 2 percent of the cross-sectional variation in the average return on stock portfolios, the stock-index beta and the labor-beta together explain 75 percent of the variation. We find that the labor-beta drives out the size effect but not the book-to-market-price effect that is documented in the literature. We explore the extent to which these results are an artifact of seasonal patterns in labor-income growth rates as well as asset returns. In Japan, the book-to-market-price characteristic can be adequately captured by a particular factor-beta, as suggested by Fama and French (1993). This is in contrast to the findings reported by Daniel and Titman (1997) for the United States.Labor supply ; Stock - Prices ; Japan

EFFECT OF PRE- γ-IRRADIATION DOSE ON THE DURABILITY OF THE SULFONATED ETFE-G-POLYSTYRENE CONDUCTING MEMBRANES

The influence of pre-g-irradiation dose on durability of the poly(ethylene-co-tetrafluoroethylene) (ETFE) film-based radiation-grafted polymer electrolyte membrane was investigated. The durability of membrane was found to be strongly influence by g-ray pre-irradiation dose. The durability was tested in a 3% H2O2 aqueous solution at 60°C. The durability of the polymer electrolyte membrane with a degree of grafting of about 30% prepared by lower pre-irradiation dose was more stable than that of the membrane prepared with higher pre-irradiation dose

X-Ray Spectra of the Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxy Ton S180 in Comparison with Galactic Black Holes

An analysis was made of 0.3-15 keV X-ray spectra of a Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxy, Ton S180, using archival data from ASCA, RXTE, and XMM-Newton. At energies above 2.5 keV, a power-law with a photon index of ~ 2.3 successfully and consistently reproduced the spectra from all of these observatories. Assuming this power-law component to extend toward lower energies, a soft excess, which is one of the most remarkable features of Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies, is explained by another power-law multiplied by a thermal cutoff at ~ 0.4 keV. Some similarities have been observed between this object and Galactic black hole binaries in very high state, the latter being realized under high accretion rates. Attempts have been made to interpret the soft excess in terms of Comptonization of the disk photons by an electron cloud surrounding the accretion disk, like BHBs in a very high state.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure

The CAPM with human capital: Evidence from Japan

We find that the CAPM beta has little ability to explain the cross section of average returns on Japanese stocks when the TOPIX return is used as the proxy for the return on the aggregate wealth portfolio. The relation between average return and beta is flat, with an R-Square of less than 3%. The empirical performance of the CAPM improves substantially if a measure of the return on human capital is also included when measuring the return on the aggregate wealth portfolio -- the R-Square rises to 75%. There is little evidence against the CAPM specification with this modification. It performs almost as well as the linear factor model which, following Fama and French, uses the TOPIX return and the payoffs on portfolios that capture the size and book to price effects found in the data as the three factors