Money-metric utilitarianism

We discuss a method of ranking allocations in economic environments which applies when we do not know the names or preferences of individual agents. We require that two allocations can be ranked with the knowledge only of agents present, their aggregate bundles, and community indifference sets—a condition we refer to as aggregate independence. We also postulate a basic Pareto and continuity property, and a property stating that when two disjoint economies and allocations are put together, the ranking in the large economy should be consistent with the rankings in the two smaller economies (reinforcement). We show that a ranking method satisfies these axioms if and only if there is a probability measure over the strictly positive prices for which the rule ranks allocations on the basis of the random-price money-metric utilitarian rule. This is a rule which computes the money-metric utility for each agent at each price, sums these, and then takes an expectation according to the probability measure.     

Licensing and training requirements for direct care workers in Japan: what can the United States and Japan learn from each other?

Shortages of direct care workers have been of concern both in the United States and in Japan. This article compares issues surrounding long-term care provisions in the two countries and introduces Japan's unique licensure and certificate system for direct care workers. Japan has established three levels of direct care worker certificates and a direct care licensure, which can be potentially used as a career ladder. Studies show that this system has resulted in different work conditions and benefits between different certificate and licensure levels but had a limited impact on hourly wage and task differentiation. Implications for the United States are also discussed.     

The Possibility of Mixed-Mode Surveys in Sociological Studies

Abstract:  This paper explores the possibility of the mixed-mode survey in Japan in order to ensure a wider range of respondents, focusing on the specific type of mixture that is designed to make contact with a respondent by more than one mode and in which a respondent can choose an alternative mode convenient for him or her. The dataset mainly used comes from the survey Study on the Social Composition of the Urban Local Community conducted in Shinagawa Ward of Tokyo in 1999. Three other studies are introduced for additional information. As an indicator of the effectiveness of a mixed-mode design, the response rates of four studies are examined and some improvement in the response rates is observed, compared to that of a single-mode design. Another indicator is the representativeness of a sample and it is evaluated using the data of the Shinagawa survey. When the discrepancy between valid respondents and the population on some demographic characteristics is regarded as representation bias, a mixed-mode design is found to reduce the bias. An inherent problem in a mixed-mode design is "mode effect." In order to control for the mode effect in analyses, the inclusion of an additional variable indicating "mode" in the model is recommended. It is further suggested that the interaction effects between the "mode" and the respondents' traits should be checked, on the assumption that the survey mode affects respondents differently. The attempts are made and discussed in this paper using two variables drawn from the Shinagawa survey.     

日本传统戏曲与中国民俗艺能之继承关系与应用立体坐标法解释

文章利用立体坐标法对中日民间艺术进行数字化记录,将日本的传统艺术"能乐"和民俗艺术"花祭"与中国江西省石邮村的"傩舞"进行对比,认为亚洲各国各地区之间的艺能表现,在通过肢体动作来表现情感、传达思想等方面具有普遍的共通性。     

Positive Feedback Model for City Vitalization

Abstract  In the present study, we first attempt to construct a model for the dynamics of city images, in which intra- and intercity communications promote the joint possession of city images by residents and the establishment of a city identity. It is suggested that community spirit, which emerges strongly associated with city identity, urges citizens to voluntarily take part in a city's cultural events. The voluntary participation of citizens may change various aspects of a city's functions and physical structure, and as a result the city becomes vitalized in a bottom-up way. Based on this model, we propose a new planning method to facilitate city vitalization as a substitute for hardware-oriented planning. Finally, to ascertain the effectiveness of the new planning method, we focus on Iida City, which has recently successfully established its identity as a puppet drama town.     

The compensation of national union presidents: Moderating effects of union size

Over the last forty years numerous reseachers from the fields of economics, finance, and human resources management have proposed and empirically evaluated a number of models in efforts to identify determinants of executive compensation. Recently, similar research efforts have been undertaken to identify compensation determinants for union officers, both at the local and national levels. As an extension of these works, this study found measures of union financial strength, job complexity, performance and tenure in office to be directly related to national union presidents’ compensation. Although union income and relative union member earnings were the strongest determinants of officer compensation for the sample of unions as a whole, analyses of three subgroups of unions based on size revealed very different findings for large as opposed to small and medium-sized unions.     

Linking Decision Theory and Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment: Tradeoffs Between Compliance and Efficacy for Waterborne Disease Interventions

Achieving health gains from the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals of universal coverage for water and sanitation will require interventions that can be widely adopted and maintained. Effectiveness—how an intervention performs based on actual use—as opposed to efficacy will therefore be central to evaluations of new and existing interventions. Incomplete compliance—when people do not always use the intervention and are therefore exposed to contamination—is thought to be responsible for the lower‐than‐expected risk reductions observed from water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions based on their efficacy at removing pathogens. We explicitly incorporated decision theory into a quantitative microbial risk assessment model. Specifically, we assume that the usability of household water treatment (HWT) devices (filters and chlorine) decreases as they become more efficacious due to issues such as taste or flow rates. Simulations were run to examine the tradeoff between device efficacy and usability. For most situations, HWT interventions that trade lower efficacy (i.e., remove less pathogens) for higher compliance (i.e., better usability) contribute substantial reductions in diarrheal disease risk compared to devices meeting current World Health Organization efficacy guidelines. Recommendations that take into account both the behavioral and microbiological properties of treatment devices are likely to be more effective at reducing the burden of diarrheal disease than current standards that only consider efficacy.     

萧红作品的魅力——一个外国读者看萧红

正如众多的研究学者和读者所阐述的那样,萧红作品的最大魅力是它美丽而丰富的语言.这也是笔者从二十几岁到现在一直倾心于萧红的重要理由之一.然而,汉语毕竟不是笔者的母语,这就使得笔者经常要与"到底自己能够理解多少萧红的作品"这样一个疑惑作斗争.今天,我想利用这个机会,谈一谈作为一名外国读者足被萧红作品中的那些语言表达所吸引,以与中国读者们进行交流.     

Associating Gene Therapy with the Human Genome Project

As is often the case with cutting-edge biomedical technology, the introduction of gene therapy in Japan provoked discussions of ethics and safety while offering little hope for dramatic recovery. Nevertheless, only 5 years after the first authorized clinical trial in the USA, the first Japanese trial was conducted in 1995. This trial event garnered extensive media coverage but yielded little opposition. To understand the public reaction, a range of sources were examined, including news media and popular scientific magazines. In the case of Japan, public acceptance did not mean enlightened consent; rather, it meant that interactions among researchers, the media, and the populace brought about a new interpretation of the technology.