Current Food Consumption of Households in Japan: Possibilities in Cooperation with Domestic Agriculture

In Japan, the continuous reduction in family size during the post-war period has caused a decline in the efficiency of domestic production in households. The proportion of expenditure on foodstuffs for homemade meals in total food expenses has decreased; on the other hand, the proportion of expenditure on convenience foods (cooked food, fast food, etc.) and eating-out has increased. The changes in the diet of Japanese people prevent the household consumption of domestic agricultural products. The objective of this study is to provide a baseline about food consumption from the viewpoint of the household demand-side and to find a measure, which acts as a brake on the decrease in the household consumption of domestic agricultural products. The main outcomes of this study are as follows. First, the changes in the dietary habits of Japanese households during the post-war period depend on the economic factors associated with Japanese economy at that time in spite of dietetic issues. Second, the household consumption of domestic agricultural products is going to decline if we maintain the same conditions. Third, an improvement in the efficiency of domestic agricultural production is essential for keeping the volume of household demand for domestic products since progress in the efficiency of homemade meals is difficult for today's households. This is the measure of cooperation between households and domestic agriculture the study suggests

The Promotion of the AESJ Journal Submission by Planning the Annual Meetings

The main symposiums of the AESJ annual meetings have had a tendency toward two biases: first, temporary issues of agricultural and rural policies have been eagerly discussed; second, the senior members aged in their 50s have been dominating the roles of presenters and discussants at these symposiums. These two biases have weakened the strong point of the AESJ, its characteristic of respecting the evidence from a large number of empirical analyses. As a result, low submission rates to Nogyo Keizai Kenkyu (JRE) and JJRE have not improved yet, and the interest of young members in the symposium has continued to decline. This article points out that the biases have split the current AESJ members into three groups, “policy talk lovers," “obligation performers," and “research lovers," then, the AESJ has got trapped in a fallacy of composition. To resolve the biases, the AESJ planning committee asked young researchers including a government official to make presentations with the support of middle and senior discussants in the two business years of 2012 and 2013

Paradigm Shift in Agricultural Trade: Exploring Options to Improve Fairness in Trade

The 2018 Annual Meeting of the Society Cooperation Committee and International Committee 1st Joint Hosting Symposium: Explanatory Note

Optimal Behavior of Rice Farmers in the Imperfectly Competitive Land Lease Market in Japan: With a Focus on Transaction Costs andUncertain Returns on Land Lease Investment

In the process of drawing up contracts, farmers must pay some transaction costs, including the cost for searching for appropriate farmlands. In addition, farmers tend to postpone making the contracts from their anxiety about uncertain returns on land lease investment in spite of present profitability. The objective of this study is to judge whether transaction costs and uncertain returns work as restrictions on the number of land lease contracts in Japan. This study assumes that the previous papers associated with this context overestimated the number of the contracts because of ignoring the effects of the two obstacles resulting from their precondition of the competitive market framework. The originality of this study is to prove the previous overestimation from the theoretical and empirical viewpoints, and to estimate the transaction costs and the option value coefficients as an index of uncertain returns by applying real option theory. The main outcomes of this study are as follows. First, the study makes it clear theoretically that the perfectly competitive land lease market assumption adopted by the previous papers leads to the overvaluation of the number of land lease contracts when the market competitiveness is imperfect. Second, the study proved empirically that the land lease markets of rice farming are imperfectly competitive according to the significant estimation results of the transaction costs and the option value coefficients. Third, from the estimation results of the study, the estimate of transaction cost in the former period of 1981 to 1992 was relatively larger than the estimate in the latter period of 1995 to 2002; on the contrary, the estimate of option value coefficient in the former period was relatively smaller than the estimate in the latter period. These results imply that each of the two obstacles restricts the number of land lease contracts at different periods. The empirical results of this study strongly suggest that the government policy to mitigate both transaction costs and a degree of the uncertainty of returns on land lease investment is effective in accelerating farmland lease contracts in rice farming in Japan

The Size of Calf-Raising Farms in Japan under Price Uncertainty An Empirical Analysis by the Dynamic Dual Model

The objective of this paper is to investigate the fact that an increase in risk exposure gives negative effects on the expansion of the calf-raising farm size by using a dynamic econometric model. It is empirically known that the calf-raising farms facing the risk of calf price fluctuation tend to reduce the number of beef cows to escape a shrink in their future profitability; however, most previous studies on beef production have not discussed how uncertainty concerning prices affects the investment behavior of risk-averse producers because of their intending to analyze the mechanism of beef cycle. The main findings from the empirical results of this study imply that a ratio of risk premium to the expected calf price is 17.2% during the period calf price goes down drastically. The ratio of 17.2% is greater than the ones which are estimated in the previous studies as the case of the rice and dairy farms. In addition, a result of the decomposition analysis of the investment behavior indicates that uncertainty concerning prices induces risk averse farmers to reduce the farm size in the observation period; therefore，the variance of calf prices has significant effects on the farm size expansion as well as the expected value of calf prices

Optimal Behavior of Rice Farmers in the Imperfectly Competitive Land Lease Market in Japan: With a Focus on Transaction Costs and Uncertain Returns on Land Lease Investment

In the process of drawing up contracts, farmers must pay some transaction costs, including the cost for searching for appropriate farmlands. In addition, farmers tend to postpone making contracts because of their anxiety about uncertain returns on land lease investment in spite of present profitability. The objective of this study is to judge whether transaction cost and uncertain returns work as restrictions on the number of land lease contracts in Japan. This study assumes that the previous papers associated with this context overestimated the number of the contracts because they ignored the effects of two obstacles as a result of their preconception of the competitive market framework. The originality of this study is to prove the previous overestimation from theoretical and empirical viewpoints, and to estimate the transaction cost and the option value coefficients as an index of uncertain returns by applying real option theory. The main outcomes of this study are as follows: First, the study makes it clear theoretically that the perfectly competitive land lease market assumption adopted by the previous papers leads to the overvaluation of the number of land lease contracts when market competitiveness is imperfect. Second, the study proves empirically that the land lease markets of rice farming are imperfectly competitive according to the significant estimation results of the transaction costs and the option value coefficients. Third, from the estimation results of the study, the estimate of the transaction costs in the former period from 1981 to 1992 was relatively larger than the estimate in the latter period from 1995 to 2002; on the other hand, the estimate of option value coefficient in the former period was relatively smaller than the estimate in the latter period. These results imply that each of the two obstacles restricts the number of land lease contracts at different periods. The empirical results of this study strongly suggest that government policy to mitigate both transaction costs and a degree of uncertainty of returns on land lease investment is effective in accelerating farmland lease contracts in rice farming in Japan

Performance of Microfinance Institutions in Ethiopia: Integrating Financial and Social Metrics

Since their inception in the 1970s, microfinance institutions (MFIs) have received increasing attention both from policymakers and academic circles. Using unbalanced panel data (2000–2017) from Ethiopia, in this paper, we investigated the performance of MFIs and its determinants on the one hand and whether or not mission drift exists on the other hand. To this end, we employed seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) and fixed/random effect panel models. The results indicate that, based on different outreach and financial performance metrics, the MFIs in Ethiopia have good performance compared with those of the 10 biggest economies in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The econometric estimation results show that asset holding and the yield on gross portfolio have a positive and significant effect on the social and financial performances of MFIs in Ethiopia. Furthermore, the number of loan officers, loan officer productivity, and personnel productivity have a positive and significant impact on the financial performance of MFIs. Our results also suggest that the null hypothesis—that MFIs are not shifting away from poorer clients—cannot be rejected, implying that there is no mission drift by MFIs in Ethiopia