Misc

Productivity Research Notes (PRN Series), No. 2619. Reliable electricity at economically viable prices underpins long-lived capital. Using a bottom-up classification of more than 170 asset categories, this note estimates Japan's electricity-dependent capital stock at ¥1,000.8 trillion in 2019—49.8 percent of the measured stock of fixed assets, inventories, and household durables, and 1.8 times annual GDP—with a range of ¥403.4 to ¥1,830.7 trillion under alternative dependence weights. The measure captures neither outage losses nor physical damage; it quantifies an "implicit power-system credit" embodied in long-lived, partly irreversible investment commitments. The result motivates, but does not test, the hypothesis that weaker confidence in reliable and affordable electricity has contributed to Japan's weak capital accumulation and sluggish labor-productivity growth since the 2010s.

This article examines what a decarbonization “success story” can actually demonstrate, using the ZEB Ready certification of Kourakuen’s Asaka restaurant as a case study. Design-based energy performance does not necessarily reveal actual energy savings, private profitability, policy additionality, or replicability, while publicly visible achievements are themselves selected twice: first through project formation and then through corporate disclosure and media coverage. Strengthening regulations without examining these underlying conditions and economic costs may understate the burden of compliance, discourage capital accumulation, and ultimately reduce future productivity and income.

第7版は、第6版から大幅に拡充。最大の変更点は現状認識I章の全面再編で、新たにI.2「気候変動の科学的知見」を独立章として新設（12節構成）。第6版II.10に収録されていた気候科学関連の節を移管・拡充し、気候科学そのものへの批判的検証を体系化した。I.1（脱炭素政策の弊害）には「日独における鉄鋼の生産減退」「再エネ主力電源化の問題点」「再エネ開発と地域社会の衝突」など3節を新設。第6版のI.2（人為的温暖化論の社会学）はI.3に繰り下げ「メディアと言論行動のメカニズム」「気候変動言論の構造的収斂」の2節を追加、I.3（世界的に後退する脱炭素政策）はI.4に繰り下げ欧州グリーン実験の総括・米国火力復活・2025年の転換点など3節を追加した。政策提言のII章では、化石燃料章（II.3）に「ホルムズ海峡危機対応」を冒頭節として新設し、電力需給シナリオ・石炭サプライチェーン・固定費回収問題など4節を追加。エネルギーコスト章（II.1）に「GXは戦後最大級の政策的失敗である」など3節を新設。自動車章（II.5）には「日本自動車産業の現状と競争力」を冒頭節として追加。省エネ規制章（II.7）は2節から4節に全面改訂。電気事業制度章（II.8）には「自由化10年の総括—官製市場の失敗」1節を新設した。

Productivity Research Notes (PRN Series), No. 2618. Turkiye’s 2025 benchmark revision raised nominal GDP but lowered GDP per capita because Syrians under temporary protection were added to the national-accounts population while the labor-force population remained unchanged. This note shows that the resulting population-coverage gap may overstate Turkiye’s measured labor productivity by roughly 2–4%, enough to affect its comparison with Japan. The evidence supports an explicit caveat rather than a formal correction to AQALI.

Productivity Research Notes (PRN Series), No. 2617. Iran maintains two independent national accounts systems—SCI and CBI—whose GDP estimates differed by 38% under the previous benchmarks. The 2021 benchmark revision narrowed the gap to 20%, but this aggregate convergence is misleading. On the expenditure side, consumption and gross fixed capital formation reversed which series was larger, so the narrowing largely reflects offsetting movements rather than genuine agreement. On the production side, electricity remains a major outlier, with SCI’s estimate still 7.6 times that of CBI, plausibly reflecting different price-valuation bases. Inventory changes may also function as balancing items rather than measures of genuine stockbuilding. The note shows that aggregate convergence alone is not informative about measurement reliability; component-level diagnosis is required.

Productivity Research Notes (PRN Series), No. 2616. Applying a parallel-market exchange rate to the ICP PPP for GDP can imply an implausibly low price level, apparently suggesting that the PPP is underestimated. An exploratory price survey shows instead that the paradox reflects a mismatch between the economic transactions represented by PPPs and exchange rates. The note argues that meaningful international comparisons require matching PPPs and exchange rates to their intended economic transactions.

Productivity Research Notes (PRN Series), No. 2615. Under a technology-and-societal-implementation scenario (TSI) to 2040, evaluated with the SBI-FERI BIP model, energy productivity improves across most Japanese industries while the economy-wide measure barely moves (0.9% to 1.0% per year). This note shows that the near-flat aggregate reflects a structural shift toward more energy-intensive activity as manufacturing returns home, offsetting broad-based efficiency gains at the industry level. It extends the argument to emissions, where higher domestic emissions under TSI need not imply higher global emissions.

Productivity Research Notes (PRN Series), No. 2614. China's 2023 GDP revision, released following the Fifth National Economic Census, raised nominal GDP by 2.7 percent, with a substantial share arising from the adoption of a rental-equivalence approach for owner-occupied housing services. While this change moves China's national accounts closer to international standards, important measurement issues remain. Since 2022, the APO Productivity Database (APO-PDB) has incorporated explicit housing-service adjustments for China. This note discusses how these adjustments can be reconciled with the revised official statistics and explains the treatment adopted in APO-PDB 2026 to maintain cross-country comparability.

Productivity Research Notes (PRN Series), No. 2613. Japan's 2020 benchmark revision of the national accounts substantially expands measured intangible investment, with software investment alone accounting for roughly 1.5 percentage points of the 2.7% upward revision to 2020 nominal GDP. The adjustment is concentrated in the post-2015 period and markedly revalues the capital stock—software net stock rises by about 75% by end-2023. Because intangible assets carry higher depreciation rates and user costs, the revision raises the growth of capital services more than that of capital stock, widening the divergence between the two measures. In a Jorgensonian growth-accounting framework, this divergence—interpreted as capital quality—implies that a larger share of measured output growth is attributable to capital input rather than to residual total factor productivity. The revision therefore reframes Japan's recent growth performance as more capital-driven, with implications for both domestic analysis and cross-country comparisons.

Productivity Research Notes (PRN Series), No. 2612. Generative AI capabilities are advancing rapidly, yet measurable productivity gains may diffuse more slowly across economies. This note argues that the key bottleneck lies not in frontier AI access itself, but in the organizational and deployment capabilities required to integrate AI into enterprise production systems. As firms devote substantial resources to systems integration, workflow redesign, governance adaptation, and deployment-related activities, part of AI's economic gains may initially be absorbed by organizational adjustment costs rather than appearing as broad productivity improvements. Moreover, because many deployment-related activities are service-intensive, firm-specific, and difficult to capture in conventional input measures, measured TFP growth during the AI diffusion process may carry an upward bias that obscures the true scale of underlying organizational transformation.

Productivity Research Notes (PRN Series), No. 2611. Cross-country productivity comparisons are fundamentally shaped by how national statistical agencies treat quality change in price indices. When quality improvements are incompletely captured, measured inflation is overstated and real output growth understated—with differences accumulating over time. Neither constant PPPs, which extrapolate from a benchmark year using national deflators, nor current PPPs, which incorporate updated international price data, can fully resolve these inconsistencies. Interpreting productivity level comparisons therefore requires careful attention to cross-country differences in price measurement methods.

Since the Fukushima Daiichi accident, discussions on nuclear policy in Japan have emphasized the importance of “careful explanation” to society. This article argues that the central issue lies not in insufficient communication by frontline operators, but in the absence of a decision-making framework that evaluates safety levels through comparison with other risks and social costs. Referring to a recent survey experiment published in Energy Policy, the article shows that public support for nuclear power is shaped not only by perceptions of radiation risk, but also by comparisons with energy security, decarbonization, and international competitiveness. Drawing on Masao Maruyama’s idea of a “robust subjective spirit,” the article highlights the importance of continual comparative judgment rather than fixed and absolute values. It concludes that treating safety as unquestionable may ultimately weaken the economic and technological foundations necessary to sustain long-term safety itself.

Productivity Research Notes (PRN Series), No. 2610. Artificial intelligence is increasingly discussed as a driver of future productivity growth, yet its expansion also depends on electricity supply and physical infrastructure. This note argues that AI computation can increasingly be traded internationally as digital services, while electricity supply remains geographically constrained. Using Japan as a case study, it examines how electricity costs, transmission limitations, and industrial linkages shape the domestic location of AI-related computation. The note further highlights the uncertainty surrounding future AI-related electricity demand, emphasizing both the evolving electricity productivity of computation and the uncertain long-run sustainability of rapidly expanding digital consumption patterns. These observations suggest that AI competitiveness may increasingly depend on stable, scalable, and economically sustainable electricity systems as much as on advances in computation itself.

［時評・ウェーブ］「離脱と発言」（野村浩二） （電気新聞 ２０２５年８月１５日付・全文転載・出所：日本電気協会新聞部） 　今年６月、日本製鉄はＵＳスチールの買収を完了させた。歴史的な円安・ドル高の環境下、米国内で総額４兆円近い投資と雇用の維持創出を約束し、米政府には拒否権のある黄金株を付与した。日本国内では、「鉄鋼生産拡大はありえない」という橋本英二会長の判断のもと、脱炭素政策を掲げる政府の支援により水素還元製鉄の実証を進め、電炉や自前のＬＮＧ火力発電所を増設するという。トランプ関税の交渉カードを結果的に与えられた石破茂首相は「これから先の日米関係のモデルケースになる」と礼賛した。 　日本では脱炭素化と生産縮小を甘受し、（少なくともトランプ政権下では）脱炭素化が求められない米国では高炉の近代化に自らの時価総額を超えて投資する判断の合理性をどう評価すべきだろう。 　アルバート・Ｏ・ハーシュマンはその古典的名著『離脱・発言・忠誠』において、衰退への応答を分析した。組織に対する不満や国家による誤った政策などへの基本的な反応として、離脱と発言が区分される。離脱（エグジット）とは、不満を抱く組織の構成員が離れたり、企業が海外へと拠点を移転させたりすることである。そして発言（ボイス）とは、構成員や企業が内部から変革を求めて声を上げ、影響を及ぼそうとすることである。 　まず重要な前提は、競争によって効率的な資源配分が実現されるという経済学的な論理の核には、離脱が位置づけられていることである。消費者は品質に満足しなければ別の商品に切り替え、業績の低下した企業は退出を迫られる。市場メカニズムの機能は、離脱に全面的に依存している。 　だが離脱では問題が解決せず、むしろ悪化するケースもある。発言によって改善が可能である（取り返しのつく）場合でも、安易に離脱が選択されれば、発言は駆逐され内部の問題は表面化しない。誤りを正す機会は失われ、非効率性が放置される。 　ハーシュマンはそれを是正する機能として、忠誠という概念を導入した。忠誠（ロイヤリティ）とは、自らの所属する共同体には誤りを正す価値があるとした信念のもと、関与し続ける意志である。それは離脱を抑え発言を促し、衰退を食い止める。とくに自らの発言が効果的だと期待できる大企業には、忠誠に基づく発言が期待される。政府には、真に負担を見通す力などないからである。 　鉄鋼業は脱炭素政策の現実性の欠如を最も熟知する。だが近年の応答は、文字通りの離脱に加え、はるかに高価な水素への値差補填や、グリーン鉄への消費者負担を求める発言であった。こうした発言は、国内の高コスト構造を生じ自らの内需を縮小させ、離脱とともに国内ＣＯ２排出を減少させて脱炭素化の演出に寄与する。離脱と発言はともに日本という共同体の状況を悪化させている。 　ＥＶ熱に偏った政府やマスコミに追従しなかったトヨタの全方位戦略は、ハーシュマン的に制度を健全化させうる最適な応答と評価されよう。共同体への忠誠に基づき、離脱を抑えつつ発言を続け、今年３月には過去最高の営業収益を記録した。 　巨額投資と技術移転の後、米国政治が法制度・契約・規制を通じて資産や技術の実効的支配権を静かに包み込むときが訪れるかもしれない。自らの共同体への忠誠とは、義理ではなく、実利によって長期的に支えられるものである。