Published papers

昨年12月に京都で開催された、いわゆるCOP3(Conference of Parties)において、京都議定書(KyotoProtocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change)として、参加161箇国が2008年から2012年の期間に地球温暖化ガスの削減に向けて努力することが合意をみた。議定書の発効要件として、(1)55箇国以上の批准、(2)批准した附属書Ⅰの締約国(先進国)のCO2総排出量が附属書Ⅰの全締約国のC02排出量の55%を超過することを要件とすることが定められている。必ずしも議定書の発効が確実かどうかについても疑問なしとはしないが、我が国の現状を踏まえて、現時点でそこでの目標の達成の可能性とそのための政策施策を検討しておくことは重要な課題である。この研究は、我が国の経済を定量的に捉える多部門一般均衡モデルを用いることによって、CO2排出量削減目標の達成の可能性を検討し、目標実現に向けての各種の施策導入が、我が国経済構造にいかなる影響をもたらすかを推察することを目的に行ったものである。各経済主体はその行動の原理として主体均衡の経済合理性を追求する。そこでは、各期の期首に与えられた諸条件を前提として、一期ごとの合理的行動を積み重ねて、逐次的に経済成長の経路を導くことになっている。このモデルによって京都議定書の目標対象期間2008-12年におけるC02排出量が求められ、目標値との関係で、新たな施策の導入が経済成長の逐次的経路に及ぼす影響を算定することができる。各種政策手段の導入の効果を算定するために、このモデルでは様々な政策に対応しうるフレキシビリティのあることが特徴といえる。本稿では、次節でCOP3でのいわゆる京都議定書の内容と我が国エネルギー需給構造との対応に触れた後、第3節で、環境保全対策に対する幾つかの経済的手段の意味を明らかにすることから始める。環境保全の経済的手段は、いわゆる市場オリエンテッドな炭素税や排出権売買などの手段と省エネルギー施策の法的手段やその他の誘導的手段に大きくは別れるかもしれない。政策手段の効果評価は、その環境保全の費用効果性(Cost Effectiveness)、効率性(Efficiency) 、公平性(Equity)の観点から総合的に判断すべきものである。第4節では、第3節の総論的説明を前提に多部門一般均衡モデルの構造を示す。構築したモデルによる各種シミュレーションについては、次稿(II)環境保全政策と炭素税賦課シミュレーションで考察することにする。

This paper develops a high-frequency indicator to assess real price and cost differentials for energy use across eight industrialized countries: China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and the U.S. The study assesses the overall energy cost burden using the real price level index (PLI) and the real unit energy cost (RUEC). The real PLI, unaffected by exchange rate fluctuations, provides a stable measure of real energy price differentials, while the RUEC indicates the challenges facing the energy transition. An analysis of RUEC trends from the first quarter of 2015 to the fourth quarter of 2023 highlights a substantial post-pandemic surge, particularly evident in Germany and Italy, where levels spiked by about 80% compared to pre-pandemic periods. This surge in Germany has coincided with a 20% decline in output within energy-intensive manufacturing by the end of 2023. Asian countries, on the other hand, managed to curb the post-pandemic RUEC surge to less than half of this level through energy subsidies and government interventions. Nonetheless, the higher RUEC levels in China and South Korea underscore the formidable challenges they encounter in propelling their energy transition initiatives forward. In Japan, about half of the limitations on the RUEC surge are attributed to reduced energy consumption resulting from the hollowing out of its industrial sector. Without a fundamental reevaluation of energy policies to ensure economic growth, the current path of the energy transition remains precarious.

Various methods have been considered in measuring non-market-produced educational services, but their proper evaluation requires the development of consistent measurements based on a common data foundation. This paper aims to approach price-quantity indices reflecting changes in the quality of education services using multiple approaches based on long-term time series data from the Education Services Production Database of Japan (ESJ) in Nomura (2020a), which is detailed crossclassification data on school education services in Japan, and the Extended Input-Output Table for Education Sector (EIOT) constructed in Nomura (2020b) based on the ESJ, covering 1955–2019. Four methods are applied: I. Unweighted output volume method, II. Output volume method, III. Input method, and IV. Hybrid method, in which the output volume method is applied to educational activities in a narrow sense and the input method to its auxiliary activities. In applying the Output volume method (II and IV), three output measures are defined: a. the number of students, b. total class hours of students, and c. total class hours of teachers. In Japan, where the number of students has been declining, applying the Output volume method based on the demand-side output indicators (a and b) is not necessarily effective as a quality-adjusted price/quantity indices. According to the measurement in this paper, IV. Hybrid method based on the supply-side output indicator (c) is evaluated as the most effective approach for capturing the quality changes from the point of view of the production account in the national accounts.

This paper attempts to adjust labor input for quality change over time, and quantify its impact on the TFP growth estimates, in six South Asian countries, i.e. Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, covering the period of 1970–2015. This work requires employment data differentiated into labor categories and their corresponding wage estimates for each of these countries. The database we compile are country’s employment and wage matrices cross-classified by four attributes, namely, gender, education, age, and employment status. Our findings suggest that it is significant to account for labor quality change. In the whole period of our observation, labor quality growths are considerable in all six South Asian countries included in this study, ranging from 0.7% per year on average in Bangladesh to 1.9% in Nepal, compared to the annual growths in total hours worked ranging from 1.4% in Sri Lanka to 2.6% in Bhutan. The changes in labor quality explain 27–46% of the quality-adjusted labor input (QALI) growth in the South Asian countries, implying downward revisions to their TFP growths estimated without considering the changes in labor quality of 0.4–1.1 percentage points per year on average.

我が国の資本蓄積の構成を分解し、資本財の質的変化および構成変化に着目し、特に高度成長期において資本蓄積が旺盛であったばかりではなく、その質的な変化が大きかったことを検出している。また同時に価格側からの資本サービス価格の計測を通じて、本源的生産要素の相対価格の劇的な変化と資本蓄積との整合的な変位について歴史的に評価をおこなった。

Recovery from the global financial crisis of 2008-09 has been notably slow in the European economy, with its growth rate for 2010-14 steady at 0.5 percent per annum on average, relative to 2.1 percent growth in the pre-crisis period of 2000-07 (as represented by 15 member countries of EU prior to enlargement). In contrast, the United States has managed to raise its growth rate to 1.9 percent for 2010-14, and is beginning to return to its long-term growth track. The Asian economy, which has become increasingly autonomous from the Western economies and even contributed to stabilizing the global economy at the time of the global financial crisis, has been maintaining a stable economic growth of 5.3 percent per annum on average during 2010-14. Yet, this represents a slowdown of 1 percentage point from the level recorded in the pre-crisis period. Our study indicates that it is mainly due to the reduction in the growth of total factor productivity (TFP) of the Asian economy.

© 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. This paper provides new benchmark estimates of industry-level price differentials between Japan and the United States for 2011 based on a bilateral price accounting model anchored to the Japan-US input-output tables. We apply the model to translate available demand-side data on purchaser's price purchasing power parities (PPPs) for final uses (e.g., the Eurostat-OECD PPPs) and intermediate uses (e.g., the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry [METI] survey) to unmeasured producer's price PPPs for industry output. These PPPs allow us to produce price-level indexes at the industry level, which we use to assess price competitiveness between Japan and the United States We conclude that price competitiveness of Japanese service industries has considerably improved in the more recent time period. However, Japanese producers have a significant price disadvantage in comparison to their US counterparts in electricity and gas supply, and most of the agricultural producing industries.

This chapter provides an overview of the changes in energy consumption and energy productivity throughout Japan’s economic growth over the 135 years from 1885 to 2019. During this observation period, the Japanese economy succeeded in sustainably improving labor productivity, except for times of war and temporary recession periods. However, energy productivity has followed a U-shaped curve, declining until World War II and then moving on a track of steady improvement with repeated acceleration and deceleration. The sustained improvement in energy productivity in postwar Japan includes the effects of structural changes, such as rapid heavy and chemical industrialization, high energy prices caused by oil shocks, and prolonged economic stagnation. This chapter also provides an overview of each chapter’s focus and methodological framework and explains the structure of the productivity account developed in this book to analyze the sources of energy productivity changes.

This chapter assesses the economic resilience of the Japanese economy to rising energy prices by measuring the real unit energy cost (RUEC). The Japan-U.S. level comparison shows that the RUEC gap has been widening since the U.S. shale revolution and, in recent years, has increased to a level 39% higher than the U.S., approaching the peak in the 1960s. The factors behind this are the narrowing of the energy productivity gap (Japan’s advantage has been halved over the past two decades) and the widening of the real energy price gap. The turning point when Japan’s RUEC started to rise was in the mid-1990s. Since then, real energy price growth has increased from 0.8% on average in 1973–1995, which included two oil shocks, to 1.7% in 1995–2019. During this period, the biggest factor in the acceleration of real energy prices was the 15-year-long decline in nominal wages from 1997.

This chapter analyzes the cyclical relationship between energy productivity improvement (EPI) and total factor productivity growth (TFPG). The first direction of the cycle is from TFPG to EPI. In Japan’s economic growth, technological changes that require more energy input per labor unit were robustly observed. Although this directly depressed energy productivity, it contributed to EPI by increasing labor productivity and TFP, offsetting the negative effect. This chapter formulates an EPI consisting of an energy-saving factor through an increase in the capital-energy ratio, an energy-enhancing factor through a decline in the labor-energy ratio, and an overall-efficiency factor as TFPG. The measurement shows that the most significant factor in achieving sustainable EPI in the postwar Japanese economy was TFPG, not the energy-saving factor. The second direction of the cycle is from EPI to TFPG. Since the 1990s, further energy-saving investment led to a significant decline in capital productivity, and TFPG tended to turn negative in some energy-intensive industries. In addition, EPI in the service sector has been achieved while reducing energy use per labor unit, which has been at the expense of labor productivity and TFPG. These suggest the difficulty of balancing the pursuit of EPI with the economy’s overall efficiency.

Even if Japan cannot import electricity directly, it can be understood as indirectly importing electricity by reducing domestic production of goods that consume large amounts of electricity and switching to imports. This chapter constructs Effective Import Dependency (EID) as an indicator of indirect dependence on electricity imports and measures the electricity EID from 1960 to 2018 for the Japanese economy based on an input–output analysis framework. The measurements show three major transition periods: a rise after the first oil shock, a fall from the 1980s, and a re-rise from the mid-1990s. In particular, during the recent re-rise period, the economy-wide electricity EID doubled from 10.3% in 1995 to 22.8% in 2018. The Japanese government has attributed the recent decline in domestic electricity demand to the decoupling of economic growth and energy consumption resulting from successful energy conservation policy, and it is increasingly confident about further tightening regulations. However, the measurements in this chapter show that the effect of increased electricity imported indirectly, which has not been directly observed, explains about 30% of the recent slump in domestic electricity demand.

Transitioning to carbon neutrality in Japan by 2050 is a process that will take decades, and it will be more difficult if economic efficiency deteriorates in the process. Examining the discrepancy between past projections of greenhouse-gas emission reduction targets and their impact on economic growth and the actual economy realized can provide useful insights for future feasibility studies. In addition, the observed facts measured in the chapters of this book from the experience of the Japanese economic growth serve as lessons, which show three forms in which economic growth and emission reductions are compatible. While summarizing the prospects of international price differentials for electricity and renewable energy, this chapter discusses the problems of Japan’s current energy policy and the possibility of policy changes toward an energy transition.

This paper aims to analyze changes in productivity over a half-century by measuring quality-adjusted labor input (QALI) in the Vietnamese economy for the period 1970–2020. The biggest barrier to the construction of productivity account for the Vietnamese economy is that compensation of employees (COE) is not estimated in the Vietnamese System of National Accounts (VSNA). The time-series estimates on hours worked and hourly wage rates, which are cross-classified by gender, education, age, and employment status, are constructed based on fragmentary available data in Vietnam. The constructed data enables to development of not only the QALI but also the COE and labor share with a micro foundation. In August 2022, the VSNA based on the 2008 SNA was released, resulting in a significant upward revision of GDP. Based on the new VSNA, which extends back to 1970 in this paper, the labor quality improvement has accelerated from 0.6% per year in 1970–2000 to 2.0% per year in 2000–20 (mainly through improvements in education). This acceleration explained 65% of the increase in QALI and 14% of the increase in labor productivity over the same period. This paper also finds that total factor productivity in the Vietnamese economy started to improve later than in the previous analysis, becoming more pronounced in the second half of the 2010s.

We identify and measure two impacts of industry-level total factor productivity (TFP) growth on aggregate price change in the U.S. and Japan. The first is a standard effect from the definition of aggregate GDP. TFP change lowers aggregate prices ceteris paribus. The second is that a change in TFP in the production of investment goods lowers the cost of capital via lower investment prices. We call this the cost-of-capital effect and formulate an expanded growth accounting framework to capture both effects. We apply it to a harmonized dataset for the two countries and find that the standard effect has fallen since the peak around 2000 due to lower TFP growth and a diminished share of GDP. However, the cost-of-capital effect has risen in importance and offsets part of this decline in the standard effect.

21世紀の電力生産はどこまで化石燃料依存から抜け出すことが可能であろうか。この問題に対する最も革命的選択肢の1つは，「太陽発電衛星」(Solar Power Satellite: SPS) による電力の供給である。なぜ，地上に代わって高度3600kmの人工衛星上という宇宙空間からの発電が優れているかを以下でまず説明し，次に，このシステムを支援する施設の生産をも含めた総合的なCO2の負荷量の分析を行う。産業連関分析の手法は，直接の負荷量のみでなく，1次，2次，3次と間接的な負荷量までも含めた総合的な計算を可能とする。はたしてSPSがどこまでCO2負荷量を軽減できるか。真に未来型発電システムたりうるかをI-O分析の視点から検討を試みる。

One of the largest obstacles to developing a productivity account in Vietnam is the lack of the estimate on compensations of employees in the System of National Accounts. This paper constructs the data for Vietnam on hours worked by type of workers, which are cross classified by gender, education attainment, age, and employment status, and on hourly wages in each type of labor for the period 1970–2018. The data constructed in this paper is used to estimate labor share at the aggregate level, which has a micro foundation, and to develop the measure of the quality-adjusted labor input. Our estimates show that the improvement in labor quality was very modest at an annual rate of 0.1% from 1970 to 2000, but accelerated to an average of 1.9% per year from 2000 to 2018, accounting for 57.9% of the growth of quality-adjusted labor input of 3.3%.

This paper develops the monthly estimates on the successful bid rate based on the Japanese bidding data from 1989, when the competitive bidding system was introduced, to 2021. Using these estimates, we evaluate revisions to the input-cost-type output price used in the Japanese system of national accounts. As for the annual price index for public civil enginerring as a whole, the growth of the current price index based on the input method (“Construction Cost Deflators”) has increased by 36.3% over the entire measurement period of this paper (33 years), while the growth of price index adjusted for bidding rate is 26.9%. It suggests that the promotion of competition through the introduction of the bidding system contributed to Japan's long-term decline in the prices of public civil engineering. In particular, the deviation has become larger due to the impact of intensified price competition since the mid-2000s. Based on the adjusted price index measured in this paper, the current estimate of real net capital stock of the entire public civil engineering is assessed to be underestimated by 3.5% (19.0 trillion yen at the current price) as of the end of 2020.