Kazuharu Kiyono

Regulation of commuter railways and spatial development

Abstract The Japanese commuter railway industry is unique in that many of the operators are engaged in a wide range of side businesses. Although they are subject to the rate-of-return regulation, the regulation is applied only to the railway division of a company. Using a simple spatial model of commuter railways, we examine the consequences of a regulation of this type. We show that, in our model with unregulated side businesses, the Averch-Johnson effect may be reversed. This provides an explanation for extreme congestion in commuter railways in Tokyo: the regulation caused under-investment in railway capacity, instead of over-investment as the Averch-Johnson model predicts.

Environmental Management Policy Under International Carbon Leakage

This paper studies environmental management policy when two fossil-fuel-consuming countries non-cooperatively regulate greenhouse- gas emissions through emission taxes or quotas. The presence of carbon leakage caused by fuel-price changes a.ects the tax-quota equivalence. We explore each country.s incentive to choose an environment regula- tion instrument within a framework of a two-stage policy choice game and .nd subgame-perfect Nash equilibria. This sheds a new light on the question of why adopted policy instruments could be di.erent among countries. We also analyze the welfare e.ect of creating an interna- tional market for emission permits. International trade in emission permits may not bene.t the fuel-consuming countries.

Domestic and international strategic interactions in environment policy formation

In this paper, we establish the most possilbe general formulation of the technology governing carbon-gas emission, giving rise to global external diseconomies, and ty to explore into the strategic interactions,both domestic and international, when an individual country decides on the environmental policies. Through the comparison among emission taxes, quotas, and standard in the perfectly competitive private economies, we find that the first two policies are equivalent but they are different in effects by virtue of what we may call the tax-exemption effect of emission standards. Such a difference in the policy effect further affects the other countrys welfare through the global externalities, amplified through whether the government can precommit to either the emission tax or the emission standard. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003

Strategic Emission Tax-Quota Non-Equivalence under International Carbon Leakage

A growing anticipation of global wanning has spurred a lot of discussion among economists not only in environmental economics but also in international trade.1 One of the theoretically new issues in economics is which system of environmental regulation is desirable for the world, a decentralized regulation based on each country’s individual policy decision or a centralized one using the regional or international cooperation of environmental policies such as coordination in the emission tax policies and creation of the international tradeable emission permit market as proposed in the Kyoto protocol.2

Is Emission Trading Beneficial

We develop a two-country (North and South), two-good, general equilibrium model of international trade in goods and explore the effects of domestic and international emission trading under free trade in goods. Whereas domestic emission trading in North may result in carbon leakage by expanding Souths production of the emission-intensive good, international emission trading may induce North to expand the production of the emission-intensive good by importing emission permits. Emission trading may deteriorate global environment. Norths (Souths) emission trading may not benefit South (North). International emission trading improves global efficiency but may not benefit both countries.

Investment, Pricing and Regulation in Urban Transportation and Spatial Development

Japan is a rarity in the world where urban railway transportation is provided largely by the private sector. The extremely high density of the major metropolitan areas such as Tokyo and Osaka makes it feasible to provide urban transit services on a commercial basis. Furthermore, in the Tokyo and Osaka metropolitan areas, a fair number of private railway companies are competing each other.

International Transfer, Environmental Policy, and Welfare

This paper examines the effects of international transfer on pollution permits, which are determined non‐cooperatively by a donor and a recipient. First, we show that the untied international transfer decreases the pollution permits of the recipient, and may be welfare‐improving for both countries if pollution is transboundary. Second, we introduce a full‐compensatory emission‐contingent transfer and show that it may reduce the emission of pollution in the recipient country and may increase the welfare of the donor, while keeping the recipients welfare constant.

A Voluntary Subsidy Scheme for the Accounting Rate System in International Telecommunications Industries

This paper proposes a new scheme complementing the current accounting rate system for international telecommunications industries. From an economic standpoint, the current accounting rate system results in high service charges as well as inefficient production. This is a source of contention between developed countries and less developed countries. Although there have been discussions concerning the disadvantages of the accounting rate system, a concrete and workable alternative has not yet been proposed. In this paper, we shall propose a method, taking into account the utilization of a subsidy from a developed country to a less developed country to reduce the accounting rate in international telecommunications, and this scheme brings a second-best solution.

Incentives towards Economic Integration as the Second-Best Tariff Policy ∗

Economic integration such as free trade areas (FTAs) and customs unions (CUs) allows importing countries to circumvent the constraint of non-discriminatory tariffs posed by the most favored nation clause in WTO and to employ (incomplete) tariff discrimination. Thus the second-best choice for the importing country, if it does regional integration, is to choose as the partner the exporting country that would have been subject to the lower tariff under the full tariff discrimination. Regardless of the mode of competition, we will find that such a partner tends to be less efficient than other exporting countries, which implies that voluntary regional integration leads the world economy to less efficient resource allocations.

Reexamination of Strategic Public Policies

This paper attempts to reinterpret the familiar approach to strategic public policies from the viewpoint of inefficiencies involved in oligopoly where firms engage in Cournot competition. To this end, we introduce tools called “quasi‐reaction functions” and “quasi‐supply curves”. These tools allow us to conduct analyses through use of the standard partial‐equilibrium diagram, i.e. the quantity‐price plane. We can find the relationship between prices and quantities directly and, hence, deal with inefficiencies easily and also suggest policies to correct such inefficiencies. Specifically, we reexamine public policies related to mixed‐oligopoly, excess entry, technology choices with free entry and exit, and foreign oligopoly.