Three essays on Japanese consumption patterns and agricultural policy

TL;DRAbstract

Rice is the most important staple food in Japan.The Japanese government has historically utilized price supports and trade restrictions.The pressure to liberalize the Japanese rice market will continue under WTO negotiations.The main theme of this study is to analyze the historical consumption patterns of rice, meat and related food products and to simulate a new equilibrium if Japan liberalized its rice market.The first main objective of this research is to analyze the rice and its related food consumption patterns and to conduct an econometric analysis of food demand structure in Japan.We use the cross-sectional household data in 1997 and time-series data from 1972 to 1999.We estimated the Working-Leser model, Tobit and Heckman's two-step for single equation specification, and the almost ideal demand systems (both full and linear approximate) imposing theoretical restrictions.Empirical results show that the rice consumed in Japan is a normal good, contrary to the results from previou

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