In his stimulating article in the American Economic Review (1966) and several subsequent papers, Harvey Leibenstein developed the X-efficiency concept. The purpose of this address is to examine the hypothesis that X-inefficiency is an increasing function of market power, and to assess its validity empirically in Japanese manufacturing industries. The method used here is, at first, to measure the residuals between estimated and actual 'price-cost margin' based on census totals at the four-digit level. Then, the relation between these residuals and four-firm concentration ratios is investigated. This is much the same approach as that utilized by W. G. Shepherd in some recent econometric studies on market structure and performance. This approach is also on the assumption that these residuals are likely to be associated with the degree of X-efficiency.
Almost all the variables used in 'price-cost margin' equations are derived from the 1970 Census of Manufactures, except for R & D and advertising expenditures. Values for R & D and advertising intensities are taken from the 1970 input-output table and the related materials. I found that there existed a statistically significant difference in the average of negative residuals between the high-concentration-in-dustry group and the low-concentration group. This result suggests that competition tends to lessen X-inefficiency. In another paper, I and Iwasaki estimated the frontier production function. There we found that technical efficiency declined as concentration increased in the high-concentration-industry group.
The conclusion resulting from these investigations is clear: If economic efficiency is the most important goal of the competition policy at all, it is natural to strengthen rigorous antimonopoly actions.

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An exciting new breakthrough in national accounting has been attained by the publication and dissemination of the United Nations' revised SNA in the past decade. Fully recognizing the epoch-making achievement of the revised SNA, the authors take up its major contributions to national accounting studies in this article, which is constituted by two parts. In the first part, they go into the particulars of the conceptual framework of SNA dealing with such points as the conceptual basis of normal residents, its sectoring and classification schemes of transaction flow. Then, the definition and boundary of important transaction categories come to the authors' attention including those points which have been central issues of studies like the imputation of banking services, the concepts of transfer, the boundary of intermediate consumption and the definition of current and capital expenditure. They also make clear how the doubly classified input-output table by commodity and industry which forms the basic corner-stone of SNA is worked out making use of alternative technology assumptions and valuation bases and propose a new approach to the mixed technology of the input-output model. In the second part, the author's scope is broadened as wide as possible so as to follow the developments of SNA through to contemporary arguments. The major points taken up there are: (i) the measurement of constant value of important aggregates of SNA, (ii) the construction of the system of price and quantity indexes on the consistent basis, (iii) the design of national and sector balance sheets and their gearing into the SNA and (iv) the conceptual and valuation problems of stock aggregates in the balance sheets. This article is concluded with the discussion to indicate how the SNA is utilized for the measurement of more welfare-oriented system of economic and social statistics.

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Theory part of this paper (Section 1) tries to answer the following basic questions. (a) Why can we obtain the quality-adjusted price indices by regressing the prices of goods on their characteristics? In other words, what are measured by the hedonic approach? (b) Prices of goods are given to an individual consumer. Then, why can the random error term enter the hedonic regression equation if all the characteristics are taken into account?
Section 1-1 uses Lancaster's approach to consumer theory. It shows that the hedonic approach measures the marginal utilities of goods as their qualities and the inverse of the marginal utility of income as the quality-adjusted price index. Ittpresents the cases when the hedonic price indices coincide with the theoretical definition of CPI. It also shows that the random error can enter the hedonic regression equation even if the prices are given and none of the characteristics are omitted. Section 1-2 uses Adelman-Griliches and Fisher-Shell models. It shows that the hedonic price indices are not generally equal to the theoretical definition of CFI but that the hedonic indices are appropriate when the "pure repackaging" hypothesis holds. Section 1-3 shows that the hedonic price indices are made up of the four indices under certain separability conditions; the indices of mark-up ratio, quantities of products, technological level, and input prices.
Section 2 discusses the problems concerning the method of the hedonic approach in practical applications. Section 3 applies the hedonic approach to Japanese automobile prices.

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In Japan commercial banks are under the regulation of Ministry of Finance in many respects, e. g. interest rates, entry, and the construction of new branches. The interest rate of deposit is looked upon as the price of an input into banking activities, but this rate has been strictly regulated for the past years. Therefore, the interest rate could not play a significant role to allure customers to a particular bank.
On the other hand, the market for bank deposits is subject to fierce competition among several kinds of banks. The lending opportunity has been abundant, all banks are eager to attract customers by differentiating their deposits through the extra services. That is, banks are forced into quality or non-price competition in the deposits market.
In this paper we have analyzed the economic consequences of this quality competition. First, we have constructed a model of banking behavior and shown that there exists a trade-off between the deposit interest rate and quality services: if the interest rate held low, the level of quality services gets higher and vice versa. Next, we tried to estimate empirically the degree of non-price competition by using the data about labor inputs in banks assigned for these quality services.
According to our results, the present state of non-price competition is judged rather excessive. Our investigation indicates the ratio of the quality services expenditure (including advertising) to the current revenue, amounts to approxi- mately 3%. This is comparable to the ratio of selling expenditures to sales in other industries and 3% promotional expenditure industry belongs to the group of differentiated consumer goods industries by heavy sales promotion. Then it is suggested the regulation of interest rates has brought about the allocational loss of resources. Moreover, it has been shown quality services are liable to redistribute income from the small, less wealthy customers to the big, rich ones and may be disastrous from the viewpoint of equity.

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