Japan in pictures.

https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/eastbooks/1226/thumbnail.jp

A Atenção Primária E O Programa Mais Médicos Do Sistema à nico De Saúde: Conquistas E Limites

An historical analysis of Brazil's policies in Primary Healthcare, with emphasis on the Family Health Strategy (FHS), and the Mais Medicos Program (PMM). Studies were made of documents and secondary official data, and the bibliography that has been produced on this theme. It was found that primary healthcare has been established and successfully consolidated as an option in healthcare for a great part of the population of Brazil. There have, however, been structural hurdles, which have tended to compromise the effectiveness and sustainability of this policy. It was identified that these obstacles arise principally from insufficient financing and from inefficient modes of planning and management. The Mais MEdicos Program has widened care coverage and made the distribution of primary healthcare doctors more equitable, although it has not resolved the structural problems of the public system.2192655266

Microdata Analysis of Japanese Farmers’ Productivity: Estimating Farm Heterogeneity and Elasticity of Substitution among Varieties

Modern theories of trade and economic geography pay particular attention to the role of product differentiation under monopolistic competition in manufacturing, while agriculture is considered to produce homogeneous goods. By contrast, agribusiness studies shed light on active entrepreneurs who have high productivity and are engaged in product differentiation by creating new products in their niches. Given these two contradicting views of agriculture, we examine the incidence of farm heterogeneity and product differentiation. This study uses microdata of Japanese farmers to estimate their total factor productivity. We find that heterogeneity is relatively low in the horticulture, grain and soybean (excluding rice), and fruit farming sectors, and high in the livestock sectors. In addition, the degree of product differentiation is relatively high in the livestock sectors, and the elasticity of substitution is as high as three, which is similar to findings in earlier studies on agriculture and manufacturing.This study is supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant (Nos. 16K07907, 16KT0036,and 19K01622) and GRIPS Policy Research Center.http://www.grips.ac.jp/list/jp/facultyinfo/hosoe_nobuhiro

New trade models, elusive welfare gains

経済学 / EconomicsWe generalize the formulae for welfare changes by Arkolakis, Costinot, and Rodríguez-Clare (2012) and Melitz and Redding (2014a) to allow for various cardinalizations of the subutility functions for varieties. Despite the same macro restrictions and the same equilibrium allocations, our new formula coincides with the original ones if and only if the number of varieties is invariant to foreign shocks. When product diversity responds to foreign shocks, different cardinalizations generate different welfare changes, thus revealing a fundamental difficulty in quantifying welfare gains implied by new trade models.JEL Classification Codes: F11, F12http://www.grips.ac.jp/list/jp/facultyinfo/kanemoto_yoshitsugu