The impact of crime on housing land prices and the effects of police boxes and voluntary groups on crime prevention in Japan

Many people now fear crime in Japan, which has had the image of being a safe country, because the crime rate has increased dramatically and the rate of crime detection has decreased at the same time. As demand for low-crime residential areas becomes stronger, low-crime rates may affect land prices in Japan. High levels of land prices may reflect the high economic value of low-crime neighborhoods. However, the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) estimate may cause a bias because the crime rate is not necessarily an exogenous determinant of land price. Therefore, in this study, we adopt the instrumental variable (IV) method, and use instrumental variables such as distance from police boxes and existence of voluntary anti-crime groups, and analyze the effects of property crime rates on residential land prices. The results show that a 10% decrease in the rate of burglaries causes an average rise in residential land prices of 1%.Property Crime, Police box, Voluntary crime-prevention group, Instrumental Variable, Propensity Score Matching

Overconfidence Increases Productivity

Recent studies report that productivity increases under tournament reward structures than under piece rate reward structures. We conduct maze-solving experiments under both reward structures and reveal that overconfidence is a significant factor in increasing productivity. Specifically, subjects exhibiting progressively higher degrees of overconfidence solve more mazes. This result shows a positive aspect of overconfidence, which usually has been examined in its negative aspect as an expectation bias.

On Psychosomatic Problems of Young Women : Comparison with Their Mothers

The purpose of this study is to investigate young women\u27s psychosomatic problems, especially in comparison with their mothers. The present study has two main topics. One is how they felt when they had menarche, and the other is their menstrual distress. We administered a questionnaire to 252 junior college students and 143 of their mothers. We tried factor analysis to the data about feelings at menarche, and got 2 factors : we named them "mental restlessness" and "consciousness for social role". We took log-linear analysis to MDQ (Menstrual Distress Questionnaire) scores. The result shows that mother and daughter might have something in common in some menstrual distress symptoms during premenstrual or menstriual stage

Noriko Ohtake, Doctor of Musical Arts recital, piano, April 16, 1987

Sonata, Op. 1 (Berg, Alban); Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI/6 (Haydn, Joseph); Impromptu in F Minor, Op. 31 (Fauré, Gabriel); Nocturne in D-flat Major, Op. 63 (Fauré, Gabriel); Impromptu in A-flat Major, Op. 34 (Fauré, Gabriel); Symphonic Etudes, Op. 13 (Schumann, Robert). Instrumentation: pian