Consumer Casualties: Exploring the Economics of Habit, Information, and Uncertainty in Japan

by J. Wan

Overview

Junmin Wan takes a two prong approach to analysing this pressure in Japan in his new volume Consumer Casualties. He first clarifies the consumer preference for habit to identify useful approaches toward solving a number of economic issues, such as gambling and other addictive practices.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781349481835
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	11/06/2014
Edition description:	1st ed. 2014
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Junmin Wan is Professor of Economics at Fukuoka University, Japan.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 2. Rational Addiction with an Optimal Inventory: Theory and Evidence from Japanese Daily and Monthly Purchases 3. Response to Health Information: Theory and Evidence from Cigarette Consumption and Intake of Nicotine and Tar in Japan 4. Responses of Consumers to the Mandatory Disclosure of information: Evidence from Japanese Inter-brand Cigarette Sales 5. Is Gambling Addictive? Evidence from Pachinko Participation, Quitting, and Re-Initiating 6. Are Gambling and Smoking Complementary? Direct Tests from Japanese Individual Data 7. Tax Revenue in China and the Incentive to Declare Taxes: The Lottery Receipt Experiment 8. Is the Life-Cycle Model or Ono's Model Most Suitable for the Japanese?: Analysis by Time-Series Data and Surveys of Lottery Purchase and Large-Prize Winners 90 9. Conclusions

Editorial Reviews

"This book is a seminal piece of work on what might be called the 'economics of addiction' - economic analysis of the consumption of addictive goods, such as cigarettes and gambling. Wan uses a variety of unique data sets and creative methodologies, such as natural experiments, to analyze various aspects of addictive behavior from both theoretical and empirical perspectives and obtains numerous interesting and original findings. I recommend this book highly to researchers, students, and policymakers alike." - Charles Yuji Horioka, Research Professor, Asian Growth Research Institute, Kitakyushu, Japan; Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research, USA

"A superb empirical attempt to analyze consumers' addictions to smoking and gambling with a 'natural experiment' approach. The book contains rich and important implications for public policy, such as cigarette tax, disclosure of cigarette contents, and gambling regulations." - Kazuo Ogawa, Professor, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University, Japan

From the Publisher