A production approach based on the translog cost function is used to analyze import demand for wheat differentiated by class and country of origin in the Japanese wheat flour milling industry. Results indicate that US wheat faces strong competition in the Japanese wheat market, but its multiple classes and end-use characteristics enable the US to preserve the largest market share in Japan. © 20...

The airline industry has undergone significant changes following deregulation more than a decade ago. A prominent development in recent years has been the proliferation of airline alliances. An important question arises: are alliances cost savings or competition reducing? This paper addresses the first part of the question. However, the answer has bearing on the second part as well, since resul...

This paper develops a separable functional form in which all the relevant aggregator functions are modeled to the desired degree of approximation. This leads to separable structures that are more flexible than those implied by parametric restrictions of flexible functional forms. Tests of separability can then be accomplished in a non-nested framework. This approach is illustrated with an appli...

The focus of the Japanese local telecommunications policy is moving toward how to solve the problem of the digital divide that accompanies the spread of high-speed and broadband services. This paper estimates the translog cost function of two outputs, the standard telephone service and the leased circuit service, and measures the regional gap of those stand-alone costs and incremental costs. Th...