Journal of Behavioral Economics and Finance Vol. 10(2017)

Using a monthly survey, this paper finds that supporters of the governing cabinet are significantly happier than non-supporters throughout our sample period. We investigate the reason and examine two hypotheses: 1) happy persons support the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, and 2) supporters of any governing party tend to be happy. Oaxaca decomposition analysis reveals that the difference in happiness is not attributable to the difference of attributes and personalities, rejecting hypothesis 1). On the other hand, the happiness of cabinet and anti-cabinet supporters was not significantly different after an election in which the governing party was replaced, supporting hypothesis 2).

This research takes the theory of the interaction between altruistic parents and egoistic children in Becker (1974, 1991) as a starting point, and investigates the effect of parents' altruistic monetary transfers to their children enrolled in university, on their total hours of study and the priority they put on studying, by employing micro-data on the characteristics of Japanese university students and their lifestyle. Regarding study hours, a positive significant impact can only be observed for students of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences who live with their parents, while a significant effect could not be observed for students who are living away from home. No evidence of an effect of transfers from parents on the priority that students put on study could be observed on any group. Altogether, these findings show that information asymmetries in parent-child interactions can reduce the effectivity of monetary transfers from parents on their children's study habits.