In recent years, it has been observed that many internet users engage in so-called “multi-task usage” or accessing the Internet while doing something else such as watching TV, or listening to the radio or music. This phenomenon is of particular interest for the way in which time is used concurrently for different tasks but it is difficult to estimate the benefit derived from this activity by using an ordinary maximizing utility framework under budget constraints including time allocation. In this study, we consider the “multi-task usage” of the Internet as a “new service” which becomes available because of new developments in technology. We used methods of evaluating a consumer surplus when there is a new product or service in the market. Based on the data available, our estimate indicates that the surplus amounts to about JPY 3,500 a day for an average user and that this can be greater within the current smart phone usage environment.

View full abstract

The adoption of broadband is a major policy issue for all countries. The objective of this paper is to identify factors which lie behind mobile broadband diffusion (3G + 4G mobile phones) by focusing on smartphones. Broadband consists of fixed and mobile (or wireless), and the former consists of DSL, cable modem, and FTTH. His paper focuses on the latter. In so doing, among 34 OECD member countries, the US, UK, France, Germany, Korea, and Japan are selected, since these six countries represent more than 50% of the total population and the number of mobile handsets in these 34 countries. Based on the data from 2000 to 2012, panel data analysis is employed. Estimates from the results of this analysis show that the introduction of smartphone, competition in the market in terms of HHI, and FTTH diffusion are factors in mobile broadband adoption. In particular, the result for HHI can be applied to the current issue of “consolidation”, namely the merger of mobile carriers. The result indicates that consolidation should not be approved by regulators.

View full abstract

10 more years have passed since the original Cool Japan essay by Douglas McGray has published. According to this essay, Japan's global cultural influence had quietly grown, from pop music to consumer electronics, architecture to fashion, and animation to cuisine, and Japan became more like a cultural super power than it had been in the 1990s. While this essay has been greatly appreciated in Japan, not only by the bureaucrats and politicians but also the general public, in the reception process of his essay in Japan, his original phrase, Japan's Gross National Cool, has been changed into a slightly different one, Cool Japan, which has become a catch phrase to advance numerous policies not only to boost the Japanese cultural economy but also to enhance national image in the global society based on a sort of national narcissism.
However, during the time of the popularity of Cool Japan discourse, Japanese electronic industry, once the symbol of ‘Japan as Electronic Nation’, has followed the path of decline not only in terms of production and exports value but also innovation power, in other words, the power to create ‘Wow! so cool product’, despite of various government strategies and policy that has been supported by techno-nationalism. That is, after all, the cool Japan discourse along with techno-nationalism has functioned as an ideology for the protection of vested interests of established industry and media conglomerates.

View full abstract