The expenditure on children in Japan

This study estimates average expenditures on children by families in Japan on the basis of the rich information about household expenditures and demographics obtained from the Family Income and Expenditure Survey. We show that the total expenditure on the first child accumulated from birth through age 18 is approximately 16.5 million yen based on 2004-2008 data. Average per child expenditure (accumulated over the same age period) in a household with two children is reduced to about 11million yen, suggesting partly that there are economies of scale in child rearing activities and that families with two children have less money to spend on each child. The share of child rearing expenditure in total consumption appears to have been steadily increasing since mid-1980s.

Inflation Expectations of Japanese Households: Micro Evidence from a Consumer Confidence Survey

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 expectations are rational or not. Against this background, this study examines the properties of Japanese households’ inflation expectations using micro-based inflation expectations data from the Monthly Consumer Confidence Survey Covering All of Japan. Our analyses show that actual inflation expectations by Japanese households are not rational in the sense that they are upward biased, at least ex post, and individual households appear not to instantaneously incorporate into their expectations information that is freely available from news reports on the views of professional forecasters. Our findings, moreover, suggest that while the sticky information model appears to better explain inflation expectations dynamics (than rational expectations models), we encounter a handful of facts that look inconsistent with the simple model.inflation expectations, consumer survey

Price Expectations and Consumption under Deflation: Evidence from Japanese Household Survey Data

The Japanese economy has experienced price deflation since the mid-1990s. Despite the importance of overcoming deflation, there has been little recent research on price expectations in Japan. This paper takes advantage of an original and rich quarterly household-level data set from the gKokumin Seikatsu Monitorsh to estimate average price expectations, examine the factors that affect price expectations, and examine how changes in price expectations have affected household consumption. Our estimates indicate that average price expectations ranged from minus 0.2 to zero percent in 2001 and 2002. However, there was an increase to 1 percent in the first quarter of 2003, followed by a decline to 0.2 percent in the second quarter, and a steady increase toward 0.8 percent by the first quarter of 2004. Price expectations depend on current price movements and lagged expectations. A series of quantitative easing monetary policies were not very effective in changing the price expectations, since the policy announcements caused revision of price expectations only for a small portion, i.e., 5-10% of people surveyed. The jump observed in the first quarter of 2003 was a reaction to the outbreak of the Iraq war. Our study also confirms that deflationary expectations discourage household consumption, mainly durable consumption, by delaying the timing of purchases, suggesting that the deflationary expectations should be upwardly revised to restore a vital Japanese economy.

Do Households Smooth Expenditure over Anticipated Income Changes? Evidence from Bonus Payments to Public Employees in Japan

This paper provides new evidence of consumers’ reaction to an anticipated sizable change in income. Until FY2002, Japanese public employees received predictable large bonus payments three times a fiscal year (in June, December, and March), but the March bonus was abolished in FY2003. We compare the seasonal patterns of public employees’ expenditure before and after the reform of the bonus payment schedule. Contrary to the prediction of the life cycle/permanent income hypothesis (LC/PIH), we find evidence that monthly patterns of household expenditure were significantly affected by the anticipated large change in income pattern. However, at closer inspection, this excess sensitivity of expenditure is observed only for expenditure subcategories of some durability, i.e., durables and semi-durables. Thus, while the LC/PIH does not appear to hold for expenditure (which we observe here), it may still hold for consumption.Life cycle/permanent income hypothesis, excess sensitivity, bonus payments, Family Income and Expenditure Survey, Japan

Impact of photoevaporative mass loss on masses and radii of water-rich sub/super-Earths

Recent progress in transit photometry opened a new window to the interior of super-Earths. From measured radii and masses, we can infer planetary internal compositions. It has been recently revealed that super-Earths are diverse in composition. Such a diversity is thought to arise from diversity in volatile content. The stability of the volatile components is to be examined, because hot super-Earths undergo photo-evaporative mass loss. While several studies investigated the impact of photo-evaporative mass loss on hydrogen-helium envelopes, there are few studies as to the impact on water-vapor envelopes. To obtain theoretical prediction to future observations, we also investigate the relationships among masses, radii, and semimajor axes of water-rich sub/super-Earths that have undergone photo-evaporative mass loss. We simulate the interior structure and evolution of sub/super-Earths that consist of a rocky core surrounded by a water envelope, including mass loss due to the stellar XUV-driven energy-limited hydrodynamic escape. We find that the photo-evaporative mass loss has a significant impact on the evolution of hot sub/super-Earths. We then derive the threshold planetary mass and radius below which the planet loses its water envelope completely as a function of the initial water content, and find that there are minimums of the threshold mass and radius. We constrain the domain in the parameter space of planetary mass, radius, and semimajor axis in which sub/super-Earths never retain water envelopes in 1-10 Gyr. This would provide an essential piece of information for understanding the origin of close-in low-mass planets. The current uncertainties in stellar XUV flux and its heating efficiency, however, prevent us from deriving robust conclusions. Nevertheless, it seems to be a robust conclusion that Kepler planet candidates contain a significant number of rocky sub/super-Earths.Comment: 13 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Two-year results of the Arctic river surface temperature monitoring from space with GCOM-C/SGLI thermal infrared images

The Tenth Symposium on Polar Science/Ordinary sessions: [OM] Polar Meteorology and Glaciology, Wed. 4 Dec. / Entrance Hall (1st floor) , National Institute of Polar Researc

The Trend and Issues of Occupational Safety and Health in Japan

AbstractThis paper explores the history of occupational safety and health in Japan during the 20th century, and then provides an overview of trends in this particular field since the 1970s. In addition, current and future issues in regard to occupational safety and health during the 21st century are examine

Self-Consistent Study of Topological Superconductivity in Two-Dimensional Quasicrystals

In the past several years, there has been a burst of theoretical and experimental activities in the field of topological superconductors. Topological superconductivity (TSC) results in a novel superconducting state characterized by a nonzero topological invariant in the bulk. There is a relation between the bulk and edges or surfaces, which is called the bulk-edge correspondence. The bulk-edge correspondence implies that the topological invariant in the bulk is equivalent to the number of zero-energy excitations per edge or surface. Due to particle-hole symmetry inherent in a superconductor, in the case of TSC, the edge or surface modes in a topological superconductor are zero-energy Majorana fermions. Majorana fermions are their own antiparticles and due to the non-Abelian exchange statistics that they obey, they open the door to new and powerful methods of topological quantum computing. Majorana fermions have been detected, e.g., along the edges of a two-dimensional topological superconductor. Theoretically, so far TSC has only been studied in periodic crystals such as square lattice systems. In such systems with translational symmetry, the superconducting order parameter is uniformly distributed. Motivated by the recent discovery of superconductivity in a quasicrystal (QC), we investigate the occurrence of TSC in two-dimensional QCs. Although QCs present Bragg peaks, they have no periodicity. We generalize a tight-binding model for TSC in two dimensions, which was originally proposed for square lattice systems, for QCs. As the most fundamental examples, the Penrose and Ammann-Beenker QCs are studied. QCs are inherently fractal, and characterized by self-similarity. It is interesting to ask whether a stable TSC phase can exist in QCs, despite their aperiodic and fractal structure. In this thesis, we solve the Bogoliubov-de Gennes (BdG) equations — coupled Schrödinger-like equations for the electron and hole components of quasiparticle excitation — on the tight-binding model for TSC generalized for QCs. This model describes two-dimensional TSC with broken time-reversal symmetry, whose topological nature is governed by the first Chern number in periodic systems. For QCs, we calculate the Bott index as the topological invariant of the system, which is equivalent to the first Chern number in the presence of translational symmetry. The mean-field approximation is applied to the model Hamiltonian of TSC and the superconducting order parameter as well as the spin-dependent Hartree potential are obtained self-consistently. Our numerical results confirm the existence of a stable TSC state in QCs and the appearance of a Majorana zero mode along edges of a QC, despite the lack of translational symmetry. However, we find that the self-consistently obtained mean fields are both spatially inhomogeneous. In particular, we examine how the underlying aperiodic structure of a QC is reflected in the superconducting order parameter