We analyzed the factors yielding inconvenience and laboriousness involved in shopping for food, using the data obtained by a consciousness survey. Spatial conditions such as time and distance, and means of transportation have the greatest influence on the inconvenience and laboriousness involved in shopping for food. Among other things, a long journey to a grocery store is quite troublesome for elderly people. Travel by car greatly reduces the inconvenience and hassle. In general, elderly people experience much more hassle than younger people. These results may help statistically identify the group of people needing countermeasures. However, regional differences must be kept in mind. In a suburban housing complex of a big city, for example, families with small children too might find it troublesome to shop for food.

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This essay reviews the approaches taken by the Japanese agricultural economists on farmland concentration and consolidation. We critically discuss how scholars saw and understood the "land market" and evaluate the achievement and limitations of empirical studies. We suggest sharing a more realistic image of land markets, evaluation of policies and programs, and designing institutions to facilitate farmland consolidations as important directions for further research. Close collaboration between case-studies and quantitative approaches would be fruitful.

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The vegetable and fruit market, which has traditionally been considered as a perfect competitive market, is now changing to an imperfect one in an economic environment marked by large-scale buyers and growing demand for industrial uses. Its economic evaluation has now emerged as an issue. This paper firstly reviews evaluations for oligopoly, oligopsony and vertical coordination in the domestic vegetable and fruit market. Most previous researches have denied oligopolistic behaviors by large-scale production areas, or their negative economic effects both empirically and theoretically. On the other hand, researchers also evaluated the oligopsonic behaviors by large-scale buyers and vertical coordination in both positive and negative aspects. A unified evaluation methodology, however, has not been found yet. Secondly, whether the increasing of vertical transactions and decreasing of auction transactions will bring about incompleteness of market information is discussed. Theoretically if price-elastic buyers expand vertical transactions, the nature of the index of auction prices will be impaired. But domestic vegetable and fruit markets have not yet arrived at that situation.

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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the relation between international trading rules and the market mechanisms. The aim of the GATT/WTO is to promote international trade through market mechanism based on a competitive market structure and to be supported by the fundamental theorem of welfare economics that states a competitive market equilibrium induces the Pareto optimal resource allocation. However, if a market is not competitive or is distorted, it may fail to optimize national welfare through resource allocation. Under the current international trading rules, the Free Trade Agreements and State Trade Enterprises are exceptionally allowed. Trade diversion effects and the market power of the State Trade Enterprises might deteriorate the national welfare. In the long run, it is of utmost importance to remove these distortions. When the welfare change in domestic policies harmonized under the international trading rules is evaluated in the short and medium terms, it is necessary to consider the market distortions as well as the appropriate market structure. Since there are a few econometric studies that identify the international market structure, it is valuable to accumulate the empirical studies regarding international agricultural markets.

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A literature review about the farmland accumulation and the farmland market problem in Marxian economics was performed. Analysis of farmland accumulation and the farmland market has been conducted by relating to agricultural capitalization. In other words, research was advanced as a differentiation of the farmer class theory, and competition between the large-scale farm and small-scale farm has attracted attention. Moreover, the study that paid attention to a characteristic of the farmland market structure was conducted historically, and the development of the farmland price theory was seen. In particular the farmland pricing theory under the scattered field system has attracted attention. The remarkable rise of farmland prices due to the high economic growth in Japan brought about a limit to agricultural economic analysis. The Imamura-Kajii theory that appeared around 1970 pointed out the productivity differential between classes of rice growers, and viewed an acceleration of the differentiation of farmer classes. Thereafter, studies that paid attention to leading farmers have developed.

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This paper focuses on fresh produce marketing in the U.S. The realities of and industry trends for each marketing stage─from production areas to wholesale, all the way up to the retail stage─were examined by analyzing research reports and statistical data, and by reviewing material such as academic papers in the related agricultural economics fields. The paper then considers these results and views future trends in Japan in terms of the agricultural economics research in related fields. Over the past 30 years, the consumer market for the fresh produce in the U.S. has grown threefold at the consumer level and almost doubled at the farm gate level. Meanwhile, however, the fresh produce industry is facing issues such as the retail concentration and the decline of small-sized suppliers in retailing. Going forward, agricultural economics research issues that need to be studied in Japan include the effects of retail concentration on consumers, the effects that advancing concentration and vertical coordination of retail corporations will have on agriculture and wholesale businesses, changes in agricultural management, and changes in the organizational structure and function of cooperatives as a result of responding to changes in their business relationships with retail companies.

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The purpose of this paper is to show that theoretical and empirical studies of agricultural trade should be conducted under the precondition that international markets are imperfectly competitive. The degree of imperfect competition in international wheat markets is calibrated as tariff equivalent. The results of the theoretical analysis showed that an erroneous assumption of perfect competition overestimated the effect of trade liberalization, while an increase in the degree of imperfect competition in international markets offset the benefit of trade liberalization. In addition, the results of the quantitative analysis showed that the present international wheat markets were imperfectly competitive, and the degree of imperfect competition had increased since the implementation of the Uruguay Round agricultural agreements.

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