Are Japanese bureaucrats politically stronger than farmers?: The political economy of Japan's rice set-aside program

The purpose of this paper is to examine the political process of bureaucrats' seemingly discretionary allocations among prefectures in Japan's rice set-aside program. Some hypotheses and a model are proposed and then these are empirically tested. Two major findings of this study are as follows: Firstly, it is suggested that the bureaucrats' discretionary allocation tends to be revised in response to political pressure. Consequently, allocations among prefectures tend to be inversely proportionate to the degree of political pressures. Moreover, such pressures can be explained by the expected income from rice-production and the share of part-time farmers, who are the majority in Japanese rural society and politically powerful. Secondly, among various factors which are publicly announced as those used in the calculation of allocation, it is suggested that those which may naturally reflect the market mechanism remain influential even after revision. Similarly, the factors which are contrary to the market mechanism, such as the share of full-time professional farmers, become less influential.Rice set-aside program, Bureaucrats' discretion, Uneven allocations, Public choice, Political actors, Agricultural and Food Policy, Q180, H890,

THE WINE MARKET IN JAPAN: MARKET COMPETITION AMONG EXPORTING COUNTRIES AND THE STRATEGY OF US WINE

The purpose of this paper is to examine the structure of wine consumption in the Japanese market, focusing on the consumption in households. Considering various tendencies of Japanese eating and drinking habits nowadays related to wine consumption, the model was built and empirically estimated. The data to be investigated was household's data from the past twenty-seven years of official statistics. It was found that Japanese households show high income elasticity for wine demand. The strategy to prioritize department store distribution was demonstrated to be effective due to the fact that wine consumption in the high income class is steadily high, while the sensitivity to income and compatibility of foods is higher in middle income classes. However, the result that compatibility of foods with wine is influential suggests the necessity to revise the strategy. The facts that Japanese in general accept to taste wine although there are some cultural barriers such as incompatibility of foods with wine should be considered in the strategy.wine consumption, compatibility of foods with wine, price elasticity, income elasticity, influence of recession, International Relations/Trade, Q110, Q130,

Damping of Condensate Oscillation of a Trapped Bose Gas in a One-Dimensional Optical Lattice at Finite Temperatures

We study damping of a dipole oscillation in a Bose-Condensed gas in a combined cigar-shaped harmonic trap and one-dimensional (1D) optical lattice potential at finite temperatures. In order to include the effect of thermal excitations in the radial direction, we derive a quasi-1D model of the Gross-Pitaeavskii equation and the Bogoliubov equations. We use the Popov approximation to calculate the temperature dependence of the condensate fraction with varying lattice depth. We then calculate the Landau damping rate of a dipole oscillation as a function of the lattice depth and temperature. The damping rate increases with increasing lattice depth, which is consistent with experimental observations. The magnitude of the damping rate is in reasonable agreement with experimental data. We also find that the damping rate has a strong temperature dependence, showing a sharp increase with increasing temperature. Finally, we emphasize the importance of the radial thermal excitations in both equilibrium properties and the Landau damping.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure

Propagation of Second sound in a superfluid Fermi gas in the unitary limit

We study sound propagation in a uniform superfluid gas of Fermi atoms in the unitary limit. The existence of normal and superfluid components leads to appearance of two sound modes in the collisional regime, referred to as first and second sound. The second sound is of particular interest as it is a clear signal of a superfluid component. Using Landau's two-fluid hydrodynamic theory, we calculate hydrodynamic sound velocities and these weights in the density response function. The latter is used to calculate the response to a sudden modification of the external potential generating pulse propagation. The amplitude of a pulse which is proportional to the weight in the response function, is calculated the basis of the approach of Nozieres and Schmitt-Rink (NSR) for the BCS-BEC crossover. We show that, in a superfluid Fermi gas at unitarity, the second sound pulse is excited with an appreciate amplitude by density perturbations.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures. This version includes an erratum concerning the temperature dependence of hydrodynamic sound weights in Phys. Rev. A 80, 043613 (2009