Dual labor market and the "Phillips curve puzzle": the Japanese experience.

Low inflation was once welcomed by both policymakers and the public. However, Japan's experience during the 1990s changed the consensus of economists and central banks around the world regarding prices. Facing deflation and the zero-interest bound at the same time, the Bank of Japan had difficulty conducting an effective monetary policy, making Japan's stagnation unusually prolonged. The too-low inflation that concerns central banks today translates into the "Phillips curve puzzle." In the United States and Japan, in the course of the recovery from the Great Recession after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the unemployment rate had steadily declined to a level commonly regarded as lower than the natural rate or NAIRU. However, inflation remained low. In this paper, we consider a minimal model of the dual labor market to jointly investigate how the different factors affecting the structural evolution of the labor market have contributed to the observed flattening of the Phillips curve. We find that the level of bargaining power of workers, elasticity of the supply of labor to wage in the secondary market, and composition of the workforce are the main factors jointly explaining the evidence for Japan. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00191-022-00781-8.

Cryptoasset networks: Flows and regular players in Bitcoin and XRP.

Cryptoassets flow among players as recorded in the ledger of blockchain for all the transactions, comprising a network of players as nodes and flows as edges. The last decade, on the other hand, has witnessed repeating bubbles and crashes of the price of cryptoassets in exchange markets with fiat currencies and other cryptos. We study the relationship between these two important aspects of dynamics, one in the bubble/crash of price and the other in the daily network of crypto, by investigating Bitcoin and XRP. We focus on "regular players" who frequently appear on a weekly basis during a period of time including bubble/crash, and quantify each player's role with respect to outgoing and incoming flows by defining flow-weighted frequency. During the most significant period of one-year starting from the winter of 2017, we discovered the structure of three groups of players in the diagram of flow-weighted frequency, which is common to Bitcoin and XRP in spite of the different nature of the two cryptos. By examining the identity and business activity of some regular players in the case of Bitcoin, we can observe different roles of them, namely the players balancing surplus and deficit of cryptoassets (Bal-branch), those accumulating the cryptoassets (In-branch), and those reducing it (Out-branch). Using this information, we found that the regime switching among Bal-, In-, Out-branches was presumably brought about by the regular players who are not necessarily dominant and stable in the case of Bitcoin, while such players are simply absent in the case of XRP. We further discuss how one can understand the temporal transitions among the three branches.

Correction: Untangling the complexity of market competition in consumer goods - A complex Hilbert PCA analysis.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0245531.].

Money flow network among firms' accounts in a regional bank of Japan.

In this study, we investigate the flow of money among bank accounts possessed by firms in a region by employing an exhaustive list of all the bank transfers in a regional bank in Japan, to clarify how the network of money flow is related to the economic activities of the firms. The network statistics and structures are examined and shown to be similar to those of a nationwide production network. Specifically, the bowtie analysis indicates what we refer to as a "walnut" structure with core and upstream/downstream components. To quantify the location of an individual account in the network, we used the Hodge decomposition method and found that the Hodge potential of the account has a significant correlation to its position in the bowtie structure as well as to its net flow of incoming and outgoing money and links, namely the net demand/supply of individual accounts. In addition, we used non-negative matrix factorization to identify important factors underlying the entire flow of money; it can be interpreted that these factors are associated with regional economic activities. One factor has a feature whereby the remittance source is localized to the largest city in the region, while the destination is scattered. The other factors correspond to the economic activities specific to different local places. This study serves as a basis for further investigation on the relationship between money flow and economic activities of firms.

Untangling the complexity of market competition in consumer goods-A complex Hilbert PCA analysis.

Today's consumer goods markets are rapidly evolving with significant growth in the number of information media as well as the number of competitive products. In this environment, obtaining a quantitative grasp of heterogeneous interactions of firms and customers, which have attracted interest of management scientists and economists, requires the analysis of extremely high-dimensional data. Existing approaches in quantitative research could not handle such data without any reliable prior knowledge nor strong assumptions. Alternatively, we propose a novel method called complex Hilbert principal component analysis (CHPCA) and construct a synchronization network using Hodge decomposition. CHPCA enables us to extract significant comovements with a time lead/delay in the data, and Hodge decomposition is useful for identifying the time-structure of correlations. We apply this method to the Japanese beer market data and reveal comovement of variables related to the consumer choice process across multiple products. Furthermore, we find remarkable customer heterogeneity by calculating the coordinates of each customer in the space derived from the results of CHPCA. Lastly, we discuss the policy and managerial implications, limitations, and further development of the proposed method.

Publisher Correction: Relationship between Macroeconomic Indicators and Economic Cycles in U.S.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Relationship between Macroeconomic Indicators and Economic Cycles in U.S.

We analyze monthly time series of 57 US macroeconomic indicators (18 leading, 30 coincidental, and 9 lagging) and 5 other trade/money indexes. Using novel methods, we confirm statistically significant co-movements among these time series and identify noteworthy economic events. The methods we use are Complex Hilbert Principal Component Analysis (CHPCA) and Rotational Random Shuffling (RRS). We obtain significant complex correlations among the US economic indicators with leads/lags. We then use the Hodge decomposition to obtain the hierarchical order of each time series. The Hodge potential allows us to better understand the lead/lag relationships. Using both CHPCA and Hodge decomposition approaches, we obtain a new lead/lag order of the macroeconomic indicators and perform clustering analysis for positively serially correlated positive and negative changes of the analyzed indicators. We identify collective negative co-movements around the Dot.com bubble in 2001 as well as the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in October 2008. We also identify important events such as the Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 and the Oil Price Crisis in July 2008. Additionally, we demonstrate that some coincidental and lagging indicators actually show leading indicator characteristics. This suggests that there is a room for existing indicators to be improved.

Interindustry linkages of prices-Analysis of Japan's deflation.

The interactions among macroprices with leads and lags play a significant role in explaining the behavior of an aggregate price index. Thus, to understand inflation and deflation, it is essential to explore the mechanism according to which these macroprices interact with each other. On the basis of a new method, we show that, irrespective of the sources of shocks, a robust flow of changes occurs in domestic prices from upstream to downstream. Moreover, we demonstrate that macroprices change in clusters, and we identify these clusters. Firms are not symmetric. Overall, our analysis suggests that the inertia arising from input/output linkages in production explains the behavior of aggregate prices.

Hierarchical communities in the walnut structure of the Japanese production network.

This paper studies the structure of the Japanese production network, which includes one million firms and five million supplier-customer links. This study finds that this network forms a tightly-knit structure with a core giant strongly connected component (GSCC) surrounded by IN and OUT components constituting two half-shells of the GSCC, which we call awalnut structure because of its shape. The hierarchical structure of the communities is studied by the Infomap method, and most of the irreducible communities are found to be at the second level. The composition of some of the major communities, including overexpressions regarding their industrial or regional nature, and the connections that exist between the communities are studied in detail. The findings obtained here cause us to question the validity and accuracy of using the conventional input-output analysis, which is expected to be useful when firms in the same sectors are highly connected to each other.

Interdependencies and Causalities in Coupled Financial Networks.

We explore the foreign exchange and stock market networks for 48 countries from 1999 to 2012 and propose a model, based on complex Hilbert principal component analysis, for extracting significant lead-lag relationships between these markets. The global set of countries, including large and small countries in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and the Middle East, is contrasted with the limited scopes of targets, e.g., G5, G7 or the emerging Asian countries, adopted by previous works. We construct a coupled synchronization network, perform community analysis, and identify formation of four distinct network communities that are relatively stable over time. In addition to investigating the entire period, we divide the time period into into "mild crisis," (1999-2002), "calm," (2003-2006) and "severe crisis" (2007-2012) sub-periods and find that the severe crisis period behavior dominates the dynamics in the foreign exchange-equity synchronization network. We observe that in general the foreign exchange market has predictive power for the global stock market performances. In addition, the United States, German and Mexican markets have forecasting power for the performances of other global equity markets.

Bank-firm credit network in Japan: an analysis of a bipartite network.

We investigate the networked nature of the Japanese credit market. Our investigation is performed with tools of network science. In our investigation we perform community detection with an algorithm which is identifying communities composed of both banks and firms. We show that the communities obtained by directly working on the bipartite network carry information about the networked nature of the Japanese credit market. Our analysis is performed for each calendar year during the time period from 1980 to 2011. To investigate the time evolution of the networked structure of the credit market we introduce a new statistical method to track the time evolution of detected communities. We then characterize the time evolution of communities by detecting for each time evolving set of communities the over-expression of attributes of firms and banks. Specifically, we consider as attributes the economic sector and the geographical location of firms and the type of banks. In our 32-year-long analysis we detect a persistence of the over-expression of attributes of communities of banks and firms together with a slow dynamic of changes from some specific attributes to new ones. Our empirical observations show that the credit market in Japan is a networked market where the type of banks, geographical location of firms and banks, and economic sector of the firm play a role in shaping the credit relationships between banks and firms.

Topographical, morphological and immunohistochemical characteristics of carcinoma in situ of the breast involving sclerosing adenosis. Two distinct topographical patterns and histological types of carcinoma in situ.

AIM: To examine the histopathological features of 24 surgically resected carcinoma in situ (CIS) involving sclerosing adenosis (SA), with special reference to the topographical relationship between CIS and SA. METHODS AND RESULTS: In 13 (54%) lesions, CIS was entirely surrounded by SA (type A) and in 11 (46%), CIS involved SA at least focally but was not confined to the SA area (type B). The mean size of CIS in type B (30.45 mm) was significantly larger than in type A (18.00 mm). The mean size of SA in type A (39.46 mm) was significantly larger than in type B (19.54 mm). Most type A CIS were non-high-grade, and the oestrogen receptor (ER)(+)/progesterone receptor (PgR)(+)/HER2(-) immunophenotype predominated. Most type B CIS were high-grade and six (54%) were ER(-)/PgR(-). Most type A were bcl-2(+)/p53(-) in both SA and CIS areas, but two (18%) apocrine ductal CIS of type B were bcl-2(-)/p53(+) in both SA and CIS areas. Expression of ER and cyclin D1 in SA was not different from that of SA unassociated with cancer. CONCLUSIONS: Most CIS involving SA arises within SA and high-grade DCIS tends to grow beyond SA. Occasional CIS may arise outside SA and secondarily involve SA.

Fluctuation-dissipation theory of input-output interindustrial relations.

In this study, the fluctuation-dissipation theory is invoked to shed light on input-output interindustrial relations at a macroscopic level by its application to indices of industrial production (IIP) data for Japan. Statistical noise arising from finiteness of the time series data is carefully removed by making use of the random matrix theory in an eigenvalue analysis of the correlation matrix; as a result, two dominant eigenmodes are detected. Our previous study successfully used these two modes to demonstrate the existence of intrinsic business cycles. Here a correlation matrix constructed from the two modes describes genuine interindustrial correlations in a statistically meaningful way. Furthermore, it enables us to quantitatively discuss the relationship between shipments of final demand goods and production of intermediate goods in a linear response framework. We also investigate distinctive external stimuli for the Japanese economy exerted by the current global economic crisis. These stimuli are derived from residuals of moving-average fluctuations of the IIP remaining after subtracting the long-period components arising from inherent business cycles. The observation reveals that the fluctuation-dissipation theory is applicable to an economic system that is supposed to be far from physical equilibrium.

Serous papillary adenocarcinoma of the female genital organs and invasive micropapillary carcinoma of the breast. Are WT1, CA125, and GCDFP-15 useful in differential diagnosis?

Serous papillary adenocarcinoma of the female genital organs and invasive micropapillary carcinoma of the breast have close histologic similarities. Thus, when these cancers occur synchronously or metachronously in the same patient, it is difficult to determine the primary site. We examined 23 serous papillary adenocarcinomas (16 ovarian, 5 endometrial, and 2 peritoneal) and 37 invasive micropapillary carcinomas of the breast (12 pure and 25 mixed types) on immunohistochemical expression of Wilm's tumor antigen-1 (WT1), CA125, and gross cystic disease fluid protein-15 (GCDFP-15), which have been reported to be useful in the differential diagnosis of primary ovarian carcinomas versus metastatic breast cancer to the ovary. The positive rates of WT1, CA125, and GCDFP-15 in serous papillary adenocarcinomas were 78%, 78%, and 0%, respectively, and the corresponding rates in invasive micropapillary carcinomas were 3%, 40%, and 38%. The CA125-positive rate of invasive micropapillary carcinoma was higher than the rate reported for other types of breast carcinomas. We consider CA125 to be not always useful in the differential diagnosis of serous papillary adenocarcinoma and invasive micropapillary carcinoma. Although the positive rate of WT1 was significantly higher in serous papillary adenocarcinoma than in invasive micropapillary carcinoma, WT1 expression in endometrial serous papillary adenocarcinoma was infrequent (20%). WT1 and GCDFP-15 could be useful markers for the differential diagnosis of ovarian and peritoneal serous papillary adenocarcinoma versus breast invasive micropapillary adenocarcinoma. However, the availability of GCDFP-15 is limited because of the low positive rate of GCDFP-15 in invasive micropapillary carcinomas.

A phase II study of S-1 in patients with metastatic breast cancer--a Japanese trial by the S-1 Cooperative Study Group, Breast Cancer Working Group.

BACKGROUND: S-1 is a newly developed novel oral dihydrouracil dehydrogenase inhibiting fluoropyrimidine drug consisting of 1 M tegafur (FT), 0.4 M 5-chloro-2, 4-dihydroxypyrimidine (gimeracil), and 1 M potassium oxonate (oteracil), with efficient antitumor activity and low gastrointestinal toxicity which is widely used in Japan against advanced gastric, head and neck cancers. We investigated its clinical efficacy against metastatic breast cancer. METHODS: A non-blind phase II study was carried out to evaluate the efficacy and toxicity in metastatic breast cancer patients. Patients with measurable metastasis foci (n=111) were enrolled, and 108 patients were regarded as eligible. S-1 was administered orally at a standard dose of 80 mg/m2/day b.i.d. One course consisted of 28 consecutive days of administration followed by a 14-day rest, and courses were repeated up to six times. RESULTS: Among the eligible patients, 10 had a complete response and 35 had a partial response, with an overall response rate (CR+PR) of 41.7% (95% confidence interval: CI, 32.3-51.5%). The incidences of toxicity (> or =grade 3) were neutropenia 9.1%, anemia 0.9%, anorexia 3.6%, stomatitis 1.8%, nausea/vomiting 1.8%, diarrhea 0.9%, and fatigue 2.7%, however no treatment-related deaths were observed. The median survival time was 872 days (95% CI, 572-1,110 days). There was no difference in response rate or toxicity between the under 65-year-old group and the older group. CONCLUSION: S-1 was demonstrated to have high efficacy with low gastrointestinal toxicity even in older patients and will be a promising new chemotherapy drug for metastatic breast cancer.

1-hexylcarbamoyl-5-fluorouracil + cyclophosphamide + tamoxifen versus CMF + tamoxifen in women with lymph node-positive breast cancer after primary surgery: a randomized controlled trial.

We studied the usefulness of the oral 5-FU anti-cancer drug 1-hexylcarbamoyl-5-fluorouracil (HCFU) + cyclophosphamide (CPM) + tamoxifen (TAM) (HCT group) in comparison with CMF + TAM (CMFT group) in adjuvant therapy for breast cancer by a non-inferiority study based on a multi-institutional joint study. Clinical stage I, II primary breast cancers with histologically positive axillary lymph node metastasis were randomly assigned to the HCT group or the CMFT group after primary surgery. We registered 136 cases (HCT group 68 cases, CMFT group 68 cases). No significant difference in the 5-year overall survival rate (OS) and the 5-year disease-free survival rate (DFS) was found between the two groups. In the stratified analysis, DFS in cases in which the number of metastatic lymph nodes was 1-3 was significantly better in the HCT group (HCT group 84.3%, CMFT group 69.4%, log-rank test p=0.0496). No significant difference in the total incidence of adverse effects was found between the two groups, but there were significantly less adverse effects of grade 2 or over in the HCT group (p=0.034). The QOL survey at 3 months after surgery showed a significant decline of the QOL regarding lassitude, degree of difficulty in daily life, satisfaction with treatment and present mood in the CMFT group. Study results suggest that 2-year HCT therapy including the oral 5-FU anti-cancer drug HCFU is a useful adjuvant therapy which can replace CMFT therapy in early breast cancer cases with 3 or lower metastatic lymph nodes.

Combination chemotherapy with docetaxel and doxifluridine showed a beneficial outcome in advanced or recurrent breast cancer patients with longer disease-free interval.

UNLABELLED: Fundamental studies have confirmed that combination chemotherapy with docetaxel and doxifluridine (a capecitabine metabolite) is very useful in the treatment of breast cancer. This study investigated the usefulness and tolerability of a combination chemotherapy consisting of docetaxel administration on day 8 of doxifluridine therapy in 40 advanced/recurrent breast cancer patients. The overall response rate was 41.0% in 39 eligible patients. The median time to progression (TTP) for all patients was 295 days. Many responders had lung metastasis, soft tissue metastasis or a good performance status, whereas the clinical response showed no correlations with the estrogen receptor status or prior treatment with an anthracycline. The most common hematological toxicities were leukopenia and neutropenia, but dose reduction or delay of administration of either drug was unnecessary. CONCLUSION: The good response rate and long TTP of this doxifluridine plus docetaxel regimen indicate its potential as a first- or second-line treatment for advanced/recurrent breast cancer patients.

[Early phase II dose-finding study of exemestane in postmenopausal patients with advanced/recurrent breast cancer].

Exemestane was administered orally to postmenopausal women with advanced/recurrent breast cancer at a dose of 10 mg/day or 25 mg/day once daily for more than 8 weeks in order to evaluate the drug's anti-tumor effects and safety in a dose-finding study. The response rate (CR + PR) in the 10 mg and 25 mg group was 25.0% (8/32) and 31.4% (11/35), respectively, demonstrating no significant differences between the two groups, yet a higher efficacy rate was observed in 25 mg group. The efficacy rate in hormone-treatment-resistant patients within the 10 mg and 25 mg groups was 14.3% (3/21) and 26.1% (6/23), respectively, demonstrating more than a 20% response rate in 25 mg group. Incidences of the adverse events of which relevance to the drug could not be excluded were 30.6% (11/36) in the 10 mg group. 13.9% (5/36) in the 25 mg group and 22.2% (16/72) in the total group. The major adverse events were, hot flashes, numbness of the limbs, nausea, headache etc. Abnormal findings in clinical laboratory tests were as follows: ALP increase; GOT increase; GPT increase; gamma-GTP increase; total cholesterol increase; urinary sediment present. Abnormal findings in endocrine function were as follows: aldosterone decrease; testosterone.cortisol.DHEA-S decrease. But discontinuation due to abnormal laboratory findings was not found. No abnormal findings in physical tests were observed. A significant decrease in plasma estrogen concentration at week 4 was observed in both the 10 mg and 25 mg groups compared with baseline. These low levels were maintained throughout the study period. On the basis of these results, the efficacy of exemestane 25 mg/day was verified to be slightly higher than 10 mg/day. In addition the safety profile had no major adverse events to notice. In these patients with advanced/recurrent breast cancer, 25 mg/day was recommended as the most appropriate dose to be used clinically.

[CGS 20267 (Letrozole), a new aromatase inhibitor: early phase II study for postmenopausal women with advanced breast cancer].

A multicenter, open labeled, randomized early Phase II study for CGS 20267 was conducted at the doses 0.5 mg once daily and 1.0 mg once daily in postmenopausal women with advanced breast cancer. Sixty-four patients were randomly assigned to the doses of either 0.5 mg once daily (n = 33) or 1.0 mg once daily (n = 31). Thirty-one patients were eligible for 0.5 mg group, and 29 for 1.0 mg group. A total of 57 patients (30 in the 0.5 mg group and 27 in the 1.0 mg group) were eligible for the evaluation of efficacy. There were 3 CR, 5 PR, 5 stable disease (SD: NC lasting over 24 weeks), 7 NC and 10 PD in the 0.5 mg group. The objective response rate (ORR) was 26.7%. There were 4 CR, 7 PR, 8 SD, 3 NC and 5 PD in the 1.0 mg group. The ORR was 40.7%. A total of 57 patients (29 in the 0.5 mg group and 28 in the 1.0 mg group) were eligible for safety evaluation. Adverse clinical events related to CGS 20267 in the 0.5 mg group were headache, nausea, cold sweat, sleepiness and muscle ache in the lower extremities (2 patients, incidence rate 6.9%) whereas those in the 1.0 mg group were generalized itching and generalized hot feeling (2 patients, incidence rate 7.1%). All of the adverse events were grade 1 except the generalized itching which was grade 2. CGS 20267-related abnormalities in the laboratory tests for the 0.5 mg group were a decrease in WBC, and increases in GOT, GPT, LDH and gamma-GTP (5 patients, 14.3%) whereas those in the 1.0 mg group were increases in GPT, gamma-GTP, alkaline phosphatase, and total bilirubin (1 patient, 3.6%). The increases in GOT and GPT were grade 2, but others were grade 1. The data show both CGS 20267 0.5 mg once daily and 1.0 mg once daily to be effective and tolerable in the treatment of postmenopausal women with advanced breast cancer.