An economic crisis can be considered as a man-made disaster with the characteristics of an aggregate shock, thus complicating and hindering mutual insurance or help in local communities. This paper investigates the dynamics of productivity in prewar rural Japan and who were more vulnerable to the Great Depression, as a representative example of aggregate shocks that seriously impacted rural sectors. First, using panel data for farm households collected by the Imperial Agricultural Association(Teikoku Nokai), we measured the Malmquist productivity index and decomposed it into technical and efficiency change for the period 1924-1933. Second, with this panel data, we investigated which farm household was more vulnerable to aggregate shocks. Our main findings are as follows. First, although the Malmquist productivity index decreased rapidly after the Great Depression occurred, due to the technical and efficiency change, this rapid productivity decrease was temporary. Second, the vulnerability of farm households to aggregate shocks differed across regions, and largescale farmers were relatively robust to them. These differences in the vulnerability across farm size might have triggered the structural changes to prewar agriculture after the Great Depression. Our findings shed light on the dynamics of farm household behavior in prewar Japan from micro and quantitative perspectives.

Food labeling is important to mitigate asymmetric information between suppliers and consumers.This study reviewed empirical studies on food labeling and consumer behavior from the perspectives of label contents and analysis methods. Numerous related studies on diverse subjects that use various methods were found. Therefore, this review conducted a quantitative overview of academic trends using a citation index of previous literature collected from journal article databases. It is vital to adopt a suitable method for each subject to develop this area of research.

The total factor productivity (TFP) of soybean production in Japan was measured by the Tornqvist index. The TFP value increased gradually for the last 40 years, while soybean yield per unit area continued to decrease. The yield decreases could possibly be attributed to observed drastic decreases in labor input per unit area with increases in scale of production. The results indicated that 1) soybean farmers adopted scale-expanding, labor-saving production techniques and 2) yield-improving techniques adopted by the farmers did not have enough effects in compensating for the yield decreases. Further analyses are required to clarify and confirm these hypotheses.

Large-scale rice farms are continuing to expand in scale in Japan. However, the increase in the number and extent of these cultivated areas is considered to be problematic. Given its nature, the JA Investment Agriculture Production Corporation, in particular, has difficulty with declining investment in areas that are considered to be less-favorable for rice cultivation. A number of large-scale farms have emerged that have succeeded in overcoming such circumstances by implementing a variety of mechanisms to resolve problems arising from expanding operations, in areas that are now operating in the black.

The objective of this study is to elicit consumers' preferences and firms' pricing behavior for beers and beer-flavored beverages in Japan. To estimate price elasticities and markups for brands of the beverages, the Berry, Levinsohn, and Pakes (BLP) model of product differentiation and consumer preference heterogeneity was applied to data from 34 brands of beers and beer-flavored beverages purchased in major retail stores in Japan from April 2008 to March 2014. The estimation results indicated that products in the same category were likely to be substitutes, brands categorized as new genre beer produced by each company were close substitutes, and increase in prices of regular beer brands lead to growth in the consumption of new genre beers and beer-flavored beverages. Price-cost margins were found to be higher in brands of beer and low-malt beer compared to those of new genre beer and beer-flavored beverages. The market power of each producer reflected its strategy for the production share for each beer category.

In Japan, the continuous reduction in family size during the post-war period has caused a decline in the efficiency of domestic production in households. The proportion of expenditure on foodstuffs for homemade meals in total food expenses has decreased. The objective of this study is to attract attention to whether the family size effects by age-group have contributed to the decline. To investigate these empirical facts, LA/AIDS was estimated by using the age group of household head data.

This study aims to clarify dietary awareness and eating behavior characteristics peculiar to single mothers. We conducted a quantitative analysis, using individual data from several large sample surveys. Our statistical analysis indicates that, irrespective of household income levels, single mothers are more likely to skip meals and less likely to have a nutritionally-balanced diet, pay attention to food safety, or spend time on housework, compared to two-parent households. This is likely to be explained by the fact that single mothers tend to work longer hours to support their families and have to do many things on their own.

This paper discusses wine-tourism visitors' attitudes toward local tourism resources through a case study in Yamanashi, Japan. About 40% of visitors on the wine tour are categorized as repeat visitors and 25% of the visitors have experienced three or more visits. Repeat visitors seem to be a key segment and clarifying repeaters' attitudes would contribute to understand tourists' demand on the wine-tourism business. We focus on how business characteristics (food, varieties of wine, locality of ingredient grape, wine tasting and related events) are evaluated by repeat visitors. Data were collected by a questionnaire survey for the visitors visiting the site. The survey was conducted on November 9 and 10, 2013 and 173 questionnaires were received in total. In the questionnaire, the paired comparison method was applied to calculate relative weights to analyse and discuss what kind of factors are more essential for visitors when visitors select the wine-tourism site in Yamanashi. Findings from the analysis are as follows. It would be critical issue to introduce a policy program supporting the strengthening of the wine-tourism business environment. In particular, a policy supporting development of local tourism resources related to local food and agriculture may be an important matter to discuss. The policy program for supporting wine-tourism operators should be created from the view of repeat visitors' social characteristics and attitudes toward local resources.

This paper aims to verify whether Japan's commitments in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement are consistent with the Liberal Democratic Party's manifesto and the Diet resolutions. The former is defined as a request to exempt any agricultural product from tariff elimination, while the latter to exempt all five sensitive agricultural products from any commitment. The paper concludes from an analysis of Japan's tariff schedule that, whereas the manifesto is observed, the resolutions are not observed since the share of the five agricultural products exempted from any commitment is 26 and zero percent, respectively, based on a narrow and broad tariff classification.