Synopses & Reviews
In our increasingly globalized world of shared cultures, we have seen the spread of addictive behaviors, such as smoking and various forms of gambling. As these behaviors and subsequent habits continue to spread across borders, it is paramount for policy makers to consider the economics of habit, information, and uncertainty in their practices.
Wan takes a two prong approach to analyzing 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. He then tests his theories with data on smoking, lottery gambling, and pachinko gambling to determine their causalities and distill proposals for policy makers.
Synopsis
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.
About the Author
Junmin Wan is a Professor at the Graduate School of Economics of Fukuoka University, Japan. He is the recipient of the Seventh ISER-Moriguchi Prize (2005) and has published countless peer-reviewed articles in English, Japanese, and Chinese in journals such as the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, the Journal of Housing Economics, the Review of Development Economics, and Applied Economics.
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