The influence of increase in beef import on the price-formation of Japanese beef with grade of quality has been investigated by using econometric model. When developing econometric model concerning Japanese beef economy, the author paid particular attention to formulating the technological characteristics of Japanese beef production and the decision-making processes by the farmer in beef cattle production. It became clear from the results estimating the structure equations that the price-formation mechanism of beef varied with grade of quality. These results indicated that increase in supply of lower quality beef such as imported beef and dairy cattle caused decrease in prices of low grade beef. On the contrary, it caused increase in prices of high grade beef. The result of final test indicated that this model is appropriate for analysis of the influence of beef import on Japanese beef economy.
The simulation results in case of 7% increase to the previous year in beef import indicated that Japanese beef economy was not damaged so much. This result suggests that potential beef demand is fairly large in Japan. However, in case of 14% increase of beef import, Japanese beef economy was largely confused. Especially with this simulation, prices of both low grade beef and calf largely declined, but the prices of high grade beef did not remarkably decline. The most important task of Japanese beef production in such difficult situation is to achieve drastical reduction of production cost. Furthermore, assuming that beef import increases over 20%, Japanese beef cattle production must be on the verge of annihilation.

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The objective of this study is to investigate the sources of the growth of labor productivity in agriculture during the 1958-85 period during which the Japanese economy experienced a rapid growth until the early 1970s and a low or stable growth after that. This investigation is carried out for the average farms in different size classes by using data taken basically from Noka Keizai Chosa Hokoku. The Stevenson-Greene type translog cost function was estimated and the estimates were used to decompose the growth rate of labor productivity into the total substitution effect and TFP effect. These two effects were further decomposed into a number of effects. The former was decomposed into the price effect, nonhomotheticity effect, and biased technological change effect. And the latter was decomposed into the economies-of-scale effect and technological progress effect. The major findings are (1) larger scale farms responded more elastically to price changes than smaller farms in order to substitute other inputs for labor; and (2) the economies-of-scale effect played an important role in increasing the growth rate of labor productivity in larger scale farms.
It is now essential to raise productivity in Japanese agriculture. A policy implication of this study in this context is that agricultural policies should be made in such a manner that large farms can exploit more efficiently economies of scale and can introduce with more positive attitudes innovations in agricultural management in order to raise labor productivity.

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In this paper, I investigated the trend of Unshu mandarin orange production in Ehime Prefecture, through the analysis of the production cost.
During rapid economic growth of national economy, the commercial agriculture has developed rapidly. In Ehime Prefecture, Unshu mandarin orange monoculture has become typical within upland farming. The farm income of the commercial farming was significantly influenced by the fluctuation of the market price. In order to establish the farming system the core of which is commercial production of Unshu mandarin orange, the farm household should have considerable amount of funds. Therefore, the timing of transforming the farm system differed among family farms by the size of their funds. During the period of rapid eoonomic growth, the production of Unshu mandarin orange expanded at a high rate, because non-farm employment opportunity increased quite rapidly and non-farm income of the farm household increased considerably. But the introduction and expansion of Unshu mandarin orange during this period was too late, because by this time there was already excess supply of Unshu mandarin orange. It was very difficult to transform the farm system towards commercial production of Unshu mandarin orange in the late 1940s. The pioneer mandarin producers who could change the farm system in the late 1940s gained huge amount of profit. The share of such pioneers was estimated to be less than 20% of all mandarin producers in Ehime Prefecture.

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