This paper examines a change in the level of competition in the Japanese life insurance industry over the last 17 years. We estimate the first order condition for profit-maximizing insurance oligopolies to obtain the degree of non-competition and collusion. Estimation results suggest that: 1)...

The delay effect, that people discount the near future more than the distant future, has not been verified rigorously. An experiment conducted by us in China confirms that, by separating the delay from the interval, the delay effect exists only within a short delay. The results are reliable,...

This paper investigates whether competition in the Japanese banking sector has improved in the last quarter of the 20th century. By estimating the first order condition of profit maximization, together with the cost function and the inverse demand function, we found that competition had...

In view of the finding that debtors are likely to be more obese than nondebtors, we investigate whether interpersonal differences in body mass are, as in the case of debt behavior, related to those in time discounting and time discounting anomalies. The effects of time discounting on body mass...

This paper examines Chinese students' risk attitudes using selling and buying experiments with lotteries. We found that subjects were more risk averse during the buying experiment than during the selling experiment, suggesting an endowment effect. In the selling experiment, subjects were risk...

Using a monthly survey, this paper finds that supporters of the governing cabinet are significantly happier than non-supporters throughout our sample period. We investigate the reason and examine two hypotheses: 1) happy persons support the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, and 2) supporters of...

This paper investigates whether the Japanese voters became happy and/or unhappy due to the results of the General Election in 2009. We conducted a daily web survey for seven days before and after the election, obtaining 1068 responses. Estimating a fixed effects model, we found that supporters...

This paper investigates how peoplefs happiness depends on their current activities and on time. We conducted an hourly web survey, in which 70 students reported their happiness every hour on one day every month from December 2006 to February 2008. This method is an extension of the experience...

During the period of 2001-2006, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) adopted a market-oriented policy under the Koizumi cabinet. In 2006, following the formation of the first Abe cabinet, the LDP returned to a traditional redistributive policy. We assume that the supporters of the Koizumi cabinet...