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The purpose of this paper is to clarify the demand and market power of green tea beverage brands in Japan. We use the Berry, Levinsohn and Pakes (BLP) model for analysis and focus on the effect of catechin, the functional ingredient of green tea beverages, on the demand structure and market power.The main results of the analysis are as follows: First, the consumer selects the brand with a low price if the catechin content is constant and the brand with a high catechin content if the price is constant.Second, regarding unobserved characteristics, a brand approved as food for specific health uses provides relatively high utility to consumers. Third, the market power of ITO EN, SUNTORY, Coca-Cola, KIRIN, and AEON is roughly the same; however, that of KAO is relatively low. Fourth, the trend

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This study econometrically analyzes the factors driving the expansion of Japanese green tea exports to the United States. We estimate the green tea demand structure after classifying green tea imported into the United States into three sources: Japan, China, and the rest of the world. Given that the share of the import value of Japanese green tea changed from a decrease to an increase from 2006 onwards, the analysis period is divided into January 1994 to December 2005 (the first period) and January 2006 to December 2017 (the second period). In addition, based on the estimation results, we evaluate the extent to which influencing factors such as changes in prices and preferences contributed to changing the import value share of Japanese green tea. The main analysis results are as follows. First, Japanese green tea demand is different from that of China and the rest of the world. In addition, the absolute value of the price and expenditure elasticity of demand for Japanese green tea are lower than those for Chinese green tea. Second, Japanese green tea became more popular among Americans in the second period. Third, the decrease in the value share of Japanese green tea imports in the first period was due to the increase in expenditure on green tea in the United States and the low expenditure elasticity of demand for Japanese green tea. The increase in the value share of Japanese green tea imports in the second period was due to the change in preferences.

The purpose of this paper is to econometrically clarify the demand structure for beef in Japan by disaggregating beef into four classes and considering the non-stationarity of time series data, and then to consider the impact of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement on the domestic production of beef. The main analysis results are as follows. First, demand for imported meats are more elastic to own price and meat expenditure compared with demand for domestically produced meats. Second, the TPP Agreement will not significantly affect the quantities demanded for Japanese beef and hybridize type beef but will decrease the quantity demanded for dairy beef by 8. 6%. Third, the situation after the TPP Agreement came into effect will be different from the situation after the beef tariffication; thus, we cannot expect a mitigation effect of trade liberalization impacts, such as compensating for the decrease in production of dairy beef by the increase in production of Japanese beef.