The Economics of Japan's Postal Services Privatization

Japan's privatization of its postal services -- which includes one of the largest financial institutions in the world -- is exceptional for its huge size and complex structure. This essay examines the economic background of these features, as well historical development, competitive environment, and lessons. The effect on management incentives of a soft budget is key in understanding the system's problems when it was operated as a government agency. The analysis suggests the privatized components should achieve higher profitability and greater efficiency, including recovering from the soft-budget problem

The Future of Japan’s Financial Market

The subject of this paper is the relationship between developments in ICT and financial services and legislation, with a focus on the financial market. The basic approach is as follows: the services for financial transactions are built on the latest ICT, while the legal implications are stipulated by existing financial legislation. Although the rapid development of ICT has put enormous pressure on the financial industry to innovate their services, a nation’s financial legislation might show remarkable delay because of the path-dependency of lawmaking and enforcement systems. The discrepancy between the progress of ICT and delayed legislation varies by country, which reflects the relative competitiveness of financial industries and markets. Following this approach, I first show that the economic value produced by financial transactions consists of saving transaction costs. Transaction costs are basically information processing costs, which are determined by the level of ICT. Second, I explain the grand design of financial legislation and the peculiarities of Japan’s system. Generally speaking, the financial legislation of a country is composed of two categories. The first category is broad such as bankruptcy laws, and the second is narrow such as security exchange laws. Third, I examine the changes in financial transactions caused by ICT advancement in various countries and compare them to development in Japan. Fourth, I focus on current changes in financial markets by introducing examples from around the world. Former financial exchanges have transformed themselves into providers of financial market infrastructures. Global regulations have also changed in accordance with this transformation. Fifth, I identify two main challenges for Japan’s financial legislation in adapting to digital innovation.The first is how to design overall financial legislation, and the second is how to enforce individual legislation. I hope this paper stimulates further research and widespread construction on this theme

Legal Background to the Low Profitability of Japanese Enterprises

Japanese enterprises have shown low profitability for quite some time now. This paper presents several hypotheses regarding the influence of Japan’s legal systems on this phenomenon. The laws discussed in this paper cover not only corporate law but also ‘enterprise law’ as a whole, including bankruptcy law, capital markets law and civil litigation law. Besides, I examine not only the ‘laws on the book’ but also ‘legal systems in practice’. As for the research design of this paper, I identify major differences in the enterprise laws among Japan, the United States, and Germany. On the other hand, I assume incentive structures of the parties concerned, such as management, shareholders, creditors, investors and regulators that they play their role on the basis of economic rationality. Then I combine both examinations so as to consider the possible effects caused by the differences in legal systems. Under this approach, this paper discusses the individual law system that may influence the behavior of the enterprises. First I discuss the business reorganization system. Here I point out Japanese enterprises might retain significant cash reserves to avoid the danger of being compelled to file for bankruptcy protection. To the next, I examine the takeover systems and argue that a potential bidder might regard the takeover of a Japanese enterprise as irrationally difficult. This system might bring about an insufficient industry reorganization and weak market pressure on individual enterprises. As for the shareholders’ activities, I suggest that corporate governance disclosure system in Japan might provide negligible pressure on enterprises and investors because of the separation of corporate law and market law. Concerning the enforcement of enterprise law such as lawsuits by shareholders or actions by regulators, I show that the characteristics of enforcement system in Japan might contribute to weak market discipline and risk aversion in the business decisions of directors. I hope this paper stimulates further research and widespread constructive discussion on this issue

Selective entanglement breaking

We discuss the cases where local decoherence selectively degrades one type of entanglement more than other types. A typical case is called state ordering change, in which two input states with different amounts of entanglement undergoes a local decoherence and the state with the larger entanglement results in an output state with less entanglement than the other output state. We are also interested in a special case where the state with the larger entanglement evolves to a separable state while the other output state is still entangled, which we call selective entanglement breaking. For three-level or larger systems, it is easy to find examples of the state ordering change and the selective entanglement breaking, but for two-level systems it is not trivial whether such situations exist. We present a new strategy to construct examples of two-qubit states exhibiting the selective entanglement breaking regardless of entanglement measure. We also give a more striking example of the selective entanglement breaking in which the less entangled input state has only an infinitesimal amount of entanglement.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

Should hedge funds be regulated?

The rapid growth of the hedge fund industry has attracted increasing attention from government regulators. In the United States, for example, the Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC) voted in October 2004 to require many hedge funds to officially register with the Commission beginning in 2006. Actions such as this have led to a widening debate over whether(or to what extent) government should play a role in the development of the hedge fund industry. To address this issue, The Program on Alternative Investments at Columbia Business School's Center on Japanese Economy and Business sponsored a symposium entitled "Should Hedge Funds Be Regulated?" which was held at New York's University Club in November 2004. U.S. SEC Commissioner Harvey Goldschmid, currently on leave from Columbia Law School, delivered the keynote speech, arguing in favor of the Commission's October decision. Following Commissioner Goldschmid's address, Program Director Mark Mason moderated a panel of leading experts from the business, government, and academic communities who debated the pros and cons of government involvement in the industry. These panelists included Franklin Edwards, Arthur F. Burns Professor of Free and Competitive Enterprise at Columbia Business School; John Gaine, President of the Managed Funds Association, a leading hedge fund industry group; Sudhir Krishnamurthi, Managing Director of Rock Creek Capital, a Washington, D.C.-based fund of hedge funds; and Nobuyuki Kinoshita, Director at the Financial Services Agency of Japan.This report covers the keynote address by Commissioner Goldschmid, together with the remarks of the expert panelists and selected exchanges with the audience. Columbia Business School Dean Glenn Hubbard and Center on Japanese Economy and Business Director Hugh Patrick delivered opening remarks, which are also reproduced in this report

Disease-Association Analysis of an Inflammation-Related Feedback Loop

SummaryThe IL-6-triggered positive feedback loop for NFκB signaling (or the IL-6 amplifier/Inflammation amplifier) was originally discovered as a synergistic-activation signal that follows IL-17/IL-6 stimulation in nonimmune cells. Subsequent results from animal models have shown that the amplifier is activated by stimulation of NFκB and STAT3 and induces chemokines and inflammation via an NFκB loop. However, its role in human diseases is unclear. Here, we combined two genome-wide mouse screens with SNP-based disease association studies, revealing 1,700 genes related to the IL-6 amplifier, 202 of which showed 492 indications of association with ailments beyond autoimmune diseases. We followed up on ErbB1 from our list. Blocking ErbB1 signaling suppressed the IL-6 amplifier, whereas the expression of epiregulin, an ErbB1 ligand, was higher in patients with inflammatory diseases. These results indicate that the IL-6 amplifier is indeed associated with human diseases and disorders and that the identified genes may make for potential therapeutic targets

Rinsing of oropharynx and storage place of respiratory medicine inhaler: A cross‐sectional audit

BackgroundIn patients with bronchial asthma and those with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), inhalation therapy and rinsing of the mouth and the oropharynx by gargling (“RMOG”) after inhalation are recommended. We performed a cross‐sectional audit aimed at investigating (a) the proportion of patients performing “RMOG” after inhalation and (b) storage place of patients’ inhaler.MethodsPatients with bronchial asthma and those with COPD were asked by medical aids at outpatient visits whether they did “RMOG every time,” “RMOG sometimes,” or “no RMOG” after inhalation, and where they stored their inhaler.ResultsDuring a six month study period up to September 2017, 330 consecutive patients with asthma and those with COPD were included in the study. Two hundred and thirty‐two (70.3%) of the 330 patients answered “RMOG every time” and 98 (29.7%) of them did “RMOG sometimes” and did “no RMOG.” There was a difference in the proportion of patients performing RMOG after inhalation with patient age. With regard to the storage location of inhaler, we found the proportion of patients performing RMOG was higher in those who stored inhalers in a room with running water than in those who stored inhalers at other places. This difference was found in patients with both bronchial asthma and those with COPD.ConclusionsFurther implementation of “patient education” on performing RMOG after inhalation for patients receiving inhaled medication is still necessary. Our results suggest that it is better to store inhalers in places where there is easy access to tap water used for RMOG

Introduction for Fisheries and Aquatic Biology

Chapter I. Aquatic Environment. Ken FURUYA and Ichiro YASUDA : chapter_1.pdfChapter II. Biology and Ecology of Aqua-Shere. Toyoji KANEKO, Katsumi TSUKAMOTO, Atsushi TSUDA, Yuzuru SUZUKI and Katsufumi SATOH : chapter_2.pdfChapter III. Aquatic Resource and Production. Ichiro AOKI, Kazuo OGAWA, Taku YAMAKAWA and Tomoyoshi YOSHINAGA : chapter_3.pdfChapter IV. Chemistry of Aquatic Organism and Their Utilization. Hiroki ABE, Shugo WATABE, Yoshihiro OCHIAI, Shigeru OKADA, Naoko YOSHIKAWA, Yoshiharu KINOSHITA, Gen KANEKO and Shigeki MATSUNAGA : chapter_4.pdfChapter V. Relation between Aqua-Shere and Human Life. Hisashi KUROKURA, Hirohide MATSUSHIMA, Shingo KUROHAGI, Haruko YAMASHITA, Akinori HINO, Kazumasa IKUTA, Satoquo SEINO, Masahiko ARIJI, Ken FURUYA, Junichiro OKAMOTO and Nobuyuki YAGI : chapter_5.pdfPart of "Introduction for Fisheries and Aquatic Biology