Noriko Ishikawa

Impact of BSE and bird flu on consumers’ meat demand in Japan

In this article, we investigate the impact of BSE and bird flu on consumers’ meat demand in Japan by using the ‘almost ideal’ demand system. The BSE and bird flu scares brought about a fall in demand for beef and chicken, respectively, and an upturn in demand for pork and fishery products, which are substitutes for beef and chicken in Japan. We also find that the bird flu outbreak had no impact on the market share for beef. This suggests that BSE had a larger impact on consumers’ meat demand than did bird flu. Our empirical results also show that BSE has had a persistent impact whereas, bird flu has not. These differences might depend on the characteristics of each disease, such as the incubation period, cure rate and infection risk.

Impacts of tourism and fiscal expenditure to remote islands: the case of the Amami islands in Japan

The Amami islands are located 380 km southwest of Japan proper. These islands have two economic features: they are islands that many tourists visit because of their natural resources and they are an undeveloped area where the central government of Japan provides large fiscal subsidies. We investigate the impacts of tourism and fiscal expenditure simultaneously. The results show that one tourist and about 52 000 yen (about US

A modified Kakwani measure for health inequality

480) fiscal expenditure are substitutable in the end.

Urbanization and quality of life: an overview of the health impacts of urban and rural residential patterns

We propose simple modifications for the Kakwani tax progressivity measure that make it suitable for evaluating access inequality for medical services. Our modification is to measure inequality using the ratio of the concentration index to the Gini coefficient instead of the difference between them. We also propose a measure using the Gini coefficient or concentration index of consumption expenditure as the denominator in the modified measure as an alternative type of modified measure. This measure can also be interpreted as the income/consumption expenditure elasticity evaluated at the mean. Additionally, we propose a decomposition method using expenditure components and provide an empirical example with Japanese data.

Who Expects the Municipalities to Take the Initiative in Tourism Development? Residents' Attitudes of Amami Oshima Island in Japan

Urbanization and quality of life : an overview of the health impacts of urban and rural residential patterns