"Publicly Listed Parent/Subsidiary Pairs: Benchmarking to TOPIX and Market Distortion"

This paper explores the impact of publicly listed parent/subsidiary pairs on the pricing and volatility of companies' shares. We construct a noisy rational expectations equilibrium model in which a parent and its subsidiary company are both publicly listed. Two classes of traders participate in the market: institutional investors who have private information on the fundamentals of listed companies, and individual investors who have no private information. A key feature of the model is that institutional investors attempt to optimize the risk-return tradeoff relative to TOPIX, the capitalization-weighted index of the stock market. Individual investors are assumed to act without reference to any performance benchmark. Within this framework we first establish the rather obvious result that the market portfolio of all outstanding shares is not an efficient portfolio. This result implies that benchmarking to TOPIX, which is the surrogate of the market portfolio without any adjustment for double-counting of parent/subsidiary pairs, generates excessive demand for shares of the subsidiary company. We analyze the equilibrium of our market model and show that (1)the price of the subsidiary companyfs share is pushed up to a level higher than that implied by its fundamentals, (2) the share price of other companies who are highly correlated with the subsidiary company receive similar effect, (3)the subsidiary companyfs shares become more volatile and (4)tend to respond more to good news than to bad news. The results of this paper suggest that using TOPIX as the performance benchmark, which is the prevailing practice in evaluating pension fund managers and other institutional investors, may be causing distortion in share prices and volatilities of subsidiary companies. A new index which corrects for the double counting is worth a serious consideration.

Enhancement of antiferromagnetic correlations below superconducting transition temperature in bilayer superconductors

Motivated by the recent experiment in multilayered cuprate superconductors reporting the enhancement of antiferromagnetic order below the superconducting transition temperature, we study the proximity effect of the antiferromagnetic correlation in a bilayer system and also examine the possibility of a coexistence of antiferromagnetic order and superconductivity. We present the result of mean field theory that is consistent with the experiment and supports the proximity effect picture.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, added Fig.6, some comments, and reference

An Envy-free and Truthful Mechanism for the Cake-cutting Problem (New Trends in Algorithms and Theory of Computation)

Alijani, Farhadi, Ghodsi, Seddighin, and Tajik considered a restricted version of the cake-cutting problem and proposed a mechanism based on the expansion process with unlocking [1, 6]. They claimed that their mechanism uses a small number of cuts, and that it is envy-free and truthful. We first show that it is not actually envy-free and truthful. Then, for the same cake-cutting problem, we give a new envy-free and truthful mechanism with a small number of cuts, which is not based on their expansion process with unlocking

Cake Cutting: An Envy-Free and Truthful Mechanism with a Small Number of Cuts

The mechanism for the cake-cutting problem based on the expansion process with unlocking proposed by Alijani, Farhadi, Ghodsi, Seddighin, and Tajik [Reza Alijani et al., 2017; Masoud Seddighin et al., 2019] uses a small number of cuts, but is not actually envy-free and truthful, although they claimed that it is envy-free and truthful. In this paper, we consider the same cake-cutting problem and give a new envy-free and truthful mechanism with a small number of cuts, which is not based on their expansion process with unlocking

"Publicly Listed Parent/Subsidiary Pairs: Benchmarking to TOPIX and Market Distortion" (in Japanese)

This paper explores the impact of publicly listed parent/subsidiary pairs on the pricing and volatility of companies' shares. We construct a noisy rational expectations equilibrium model in which a parent and@its subsidiary company are both publicly listed. Two classes of traders participate in@the market: institutional investors who have private information on the fundamentals of@listed companies, and individual investors who have no private information. A key feature of the model is that institutional investors attempt to optimize the risk-return tradeoff relative to TOPIX, the capitalization-weighted index of the stock market. Individual investors are assumed to act without reference to any performance benchmark. Within this framework we first establish the rather obvious result that the market portfolio of all outstanding shares is not an efficient portfolio. This result implies that benchmarking to TOPIX, which is the surrogate of the market portfolio without any adjustment for double-counting of parent/subsidiary pairs, generates excessive demand for shares of the subsidiary company. We analyze the equilibrium of our market model and show that (1)the price of the subsidiary company's share is pushed up to a level higher than that implied by its fundamentals, (2)the share price of other companies who are highly correlated with the subsidiary company receive similar effect, (3)the subsidiary company's shares become more volatile and (4)tend to respond more to good news than to bad news. The results of this paper suggest that using TOPIX as the performance benchmark, which is the prevailing practice in evaluating pension fund managers and other institutional investors, may be causing distortion in share prices and volatilities of subsidiary companies. A new index which corrects for the double counting is worth a serious consideration.

Worker discontent, voice, and EI programs in Japan: Evidence from the Japanese worker representation and participation survey

Using a unique new survey, the Japanese Worker Representation and Participation Survey (JWRPS), this paper documents that there is currently an alarming degree of worker discontent in Japan. Specifically, we find that: (i) nearly one in two Japanese workers usually do not look forward to going to work; (ii) almost one third of Japanese workers are dissatisfied with their current jobs and do not at all feel loyal to their employers or feel loyal only a little; (iii) nearly one in five Japanese workers either do not at all trust information provided by their firm or trust such information only a little; and (iv) fully 40 percent of Japanese workers rate labor management relations as only fair or poor. Estimating probit models, we find systematic evidence that such worker discontent is significantly related to the lack of strong employee voice on decisions affecting workplaces, and that the lack of or weakened use of Japan's once celebrated EI programs (such as Shopfloor Committees, Small Group Activities, and Joint Labor-Management Committees) is in part responsible for weak voice and hence an alarming degree of worker discontent. An important policy implication of our findings is that weakening Japan's participatory employment system (as the popular rhetoric at times suggests) may result in exacerbating the already alarming degree of worker discontent in Japan, and ultimately weakening the competitiveness of the Japanese economy

Discovery of Enhanced Radiative Recombination Continua of He-like Iron and Calcium from IC 443 and Its Implications

We present deep observations of the Galactic supernova remnant IC 443 with the {\it Suzaku X-ray satellite}. We find prominent K-shell lines from iron and nickel, together with a triangle residual at 8--10~keV, which corresponds to the energy of the radiative recombination continuum (RRC) of He-like iron. In addition, the wavy residuals have been seen at $\sim$5.1 and $\sim$5.5~keV. We confirm that the residuals show the first enhanced RRCs of He- and H-like calcium found in supernova remnants. These facts provide robust evidence for the recombining plasma. We reproduce the plasma in the 3.7--10~keV band using a recombining plasma model at the electron temperature 0.65~keV. The recombination parameter $n_{\rm e}t$ ($n_{\rm e}$ is electron density and $t$ is elapsed time after formation of a recombining plasma) and abundances of iron and nickel are strongly correlated, and hence the errors are large. On the other hand, the ratio of nickel to iron relative to the solar abundances is well constrained to 11$^{+4}_{-3}$ (1$\sigma$). A possibility is that the large abundance ratio is a result of an asymmetric explosion of the progenitor star.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, published in Ap

Long-term replication of Epstein-Barr virus-derived episomal vectors in the rodent cells

AbstractPlasmids containing the origin of replication, oriP, of the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and EBV nuclear antigen-1 genes replicate extrachromosomally in primate cells. However, these plasmids have been believed not to replicate in rodent cells. We demonstrate here that these plasmids can replicate in some types of rodent cells over a long period. This result should offer not only the new insight into the mechanisms of species-specific replication of EBV, but also the possibility that an EBV-based vector can be used for gene transfer experiments in non-primate cells and an animal experiment regarding human gene therapy

Induced Order in Nonequivalent Two-Leg Hubbard Ladder

Motivated by the presence of different orders in multilayered high-temperature superconductors, we examine a model consisting of nonequivalent two Hubbard chains coupled by interchain hopping by using the density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) and a mean-field theory. As an example, we consider a system with noninteracting chain without order and a Hubbard chain with strong spin-density-wave correlation. We find that the magnitude of the interchain hopping controls the strength of induced order as well as that of original order and its fluctuation. It is also found that the induced order decreases with increasing the magnitude of the original order. Implications to the multilayered system are discussed.Comment: 9 page