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.

Pairs trading is an investment strategy that seeks profitability by analyzing past price movements of two stocks. This paper extends the stochastic spread method-based pairs trading approach as described in Elliott et al. (2005) and then suggests pairs trading that employ the technical indicator “moving-average spread ratio.” More specifically, this paper shows creation of pairs trading by applying the 25-day Moving Average Spread Ratio to the AR (1) model and picking up stock price pairs with faster mean reversion speed from TOPIX Core30 shares. The author's empirical analysis has revealed that pairs trading based on the aforementioned technical analysis gives a better return than the pairs trading as suggested in Gatev et al. (2006) and TOPIX Core30 Dividend Index during the analysis period from January 2002 to June 2016. Because this outcome incorporates trading costs and some other factors, it represents contrary evidence against weak-form market efficiency.

This study investigates the behavioral economic traits of overtime workers. A survey is conducted on the various preferences and personality traits of workers in a private firm A, and the firm provides personnel records on their working hours to us. The study also evaluates the firm's work-style reform. The firm recently set a target for the total overtime hours per worker per month to not exceed 45 hours. In addition workers are allowed to freely choose when and where they work by themselves after the reform. We find through the empirical analysis of the data provided that the workers' overtime before the reform is explained by the following behavioral economic traits: (1) Workers who had a habit of procrastination in childhood tend to work longer in midnight, (2) egalitarian workers tend to work longer in total, and (3) workers who have a high score of conscientiousness tend to work shorter in midnight but longer in total. Implementing the work-style reform leads to a significant decrease in overtime hours of workers who used to work over 45 hours per month preceding the reform.

As smartphones and SNSs become popular, there are a string of unending problems due to lack of ethical awareness. To promote ethical use of SNSs, especially for youth, this study examined the effects of nudge, which has been proposed in the field of Behavioral Economics. First, we systematically verified nudge tools and presented a comprehensive framework. Then, the nine nudge tools, which had not been examined yet, were analyzed to promote ethical SNSs use among young people in Japan, the U.S., and China (n=1,220). The results indicated that three types of nudge tools; “reminder,” “default,” and “mental accounting” were significantly effective for the ethical use of SNSs and smartphones. The strongest nudge effects among Japanese youth, as well as the highest level of ethical awareness among U.S. youth were revealed. The results of this study suggest effective tools for the companies or service providers seeking ethical usage of SNSs and smartphones.

People often conform to others either pro-socially or self-interestedly. This study investigates how observing others' behaviors influences individuals' behaviors. Specifically, by conducting modified dictator game experiments where subjects observe others' behaviors, we measure subjects' conforming/non-conforming and pro-social/self-interested behavioral changes and examine factors that influence such behavioral changes. The main results are as follows: (1) self-interested conformity was most frequently observed, followed by pro-social conformity, self-interested non-conformity, and pro-social non-conformity; (2) observational learning induces both pro-social conformity and self-interested conformity; and (3) observational learning enhances the degree of self-interested conformity, but not pro-social conformity. These results suggest that a subject's utility increases with one's payoff and decreases with non-conformimg to the descriptive social norm.