Influenza vaccination has been shown to be cost effective in reducing morbidity and mortality and in decreasing work absenteeism and use of health-care resources. The purpose of this study was to identify predictors and beliefs regarding people's vaccination decision against the influenza. It...

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 uses one-minute returns on the TOPIX and S&P500 to examine the efficiency of the Tokyo and New York Stock Exchanges. Our major finding is that Tokyo completes reactions to New York within six minutes, but New York reacts within fourteen minutes. Dividing the sample period into three...

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)...

We first report that one-minute returns on TOPIX have exhibited significant autocorrelation at five-minute intervals since 1997/98, which implies there is an arbitrage opportunity. Special quotes that are issued whenever there is a price jump in excess of a predetermined band seem to be the...

Studies in psychology have long argued the possibility that sibling structure, such as birth order and the gender of siblings, shapes onefs feminine and masculine personality traits, such as a preference for competition. In light of recent developments in the economics literature on the gender...

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...

This paper attempts to test the morale theory of nominal wage rigidity by identifying the causal effect of pay cuts on workers' income satisfaction and work morale. This paper uses the current deflationary recession in Japan to estimate this causal effect. Our original survey of Japanese firms...