Farmland liquidity remains a critical issue in Japan's agricultural sector, given the growing need for farmland accumulation and consolidation among leading farmers. This study proposes a farmland liquidity indicator based on search theory, integrating the determinants of farmland transactions examined separately by previous studies into a unified framework, treating them as market frictions. Using nonparametric methods, we estimate the matching function that underlies the indicator, along with the potential supply of farmland available for rental. The results show the extent of frictions in the farmland rental market and how potential demand-supply balance shapes liquidity.

This study explores the drivers of rapid rice production growth after 2008 in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) using a new growth accounting framework. The new method allows us to identify contributions of not only changes in input quantities but also the growth of input-embedded and input-free productivities. To investigate the effects of the global food crisis, we anlyze the effects of changes in rice prices on the productivity growth. The empirical results show the following findings: i) land and fertilizer productivities drastically improved in 2008; ii) the rice production frontier remarkably extended in 2008; iii) fertilizer quantity got an important growth driver after 2008; iv) the growth patterns were different between traditionally rice-producing countries and non-rice countries. These results imply that the global food crisis improved the profitability of rice production, and it triggered the expansion of rice production in SSA through the adoption of modern technologies.

Recently, an international environment revealed the risk of import dependency and required improvement in the domestic production of agricultural products for a stable food supply in Japan. On the other hand, at ordinary times, domestic agricultural products are increasingly exposed to competition in international markets. Since 1993, when the Act on Promotion of Improvement of Agricultural Management Foundation was enforced, fostering efficient and stable agricultural management that can withstand international competition has been a policy objective. The Japanese government has supported certified farmers, acknowledged as leading farmers in the region by municipalities, by various measures. However, why does such policy support for certified farmers contribute to strengthening the competitiveness of agriculture and making it a growth industry? In this paper, we theoretically show that the concentration of resources by policy on certified farmers improves agricultural productivity when certified farmers are regarded as the leraning sector and has a productivity-spillover effect in the agricultural industry, and demonstrate the extent of the spillover effect through TFP growth rate decomposition using a cost function analysis. The analysis shows that such spillover effects increased the productivity growth rate of rice farming by about 0.27% on average nationwide.

Amid growing international concern about the resilience of the food supply chain, retail egg prices in Japan—long regarded as an "Honored Student of Prices" for maintaining nominal price stability—have risen sharply in recent years. This study examines whether such price surges reflect low resilience in Japan's retail egg markets by analyzing price transmission using the threshold price transmission models, with a focus on the role of horizontal food supply chains. Based on our empirical analyses, we find numerous cases of interregional price transmission that are inconsistent with smooth spatial arbitrage, including regional pairs with no stable long-run relationship, negative price transmission, and price adjustments involving deviations from stationary relationships following shocks. These findings indicate that price transmission consistent with efficient interregional arbitrage is limited. Accordingly, Japan's retail egg markets—where in-region transactions predominate—can be regarded as having low resilience to large supply shocks, in that smooth interregional demand-supply adjustments are constrained.

In this paper, we will reconsider an agricultural finance theory that has been previously examined under the assumption of small-scale farming, taking into consideration two points: the fact that today's agricultural policy finance targets leading agricultural management and how it is viewed in light of the theory of information economics. Reevaluating the uniqueness of agricultural finance in a country like Japan, where government involvement in the agricultural finance market is significant, and since the mid-1970s, investment by individual agricultural management has stagnated, provides new insights. Based on the theory of costly state verification, which is one of the mechanisms for credit rationing, it is shown that in agricultural finance, collateral such as agricultural products and farmland imposes costs on lenders in terms of realizing their value, indicating that there are issues in agricultural finance that do not necessarily depend on small-scale farming. This provides prospects for research, such as the relationship between land market liquidity and credit rationing, that will offer valueable insights not limited to Japan.

In this study, we consider the problem whereby policy intervention in the financial market might hide the existence of credit constraints. We develop a theoretical model of the representative borrower utilizing credit from private banks and a governmental financial institution. Using the exogenous change in the transaction technology for borrowing from the governmental institution, we can identify the existence of credit constraints even if the policy remains in the market. Additionally, our model shows that the inefficiency of policy intervention is larger when we consider the borrower's choice of optimal effort.

The objective of this study is to analyze the effect of the expansion of the branch network of policy finance on the primary sector economy, using aggregated macro economic data. The findings are as follows. First, if we assume the branch network expansion affected only certain prefectures, such prefectures raised labor productivity compared to other prefectures. On the other hand, if we assume the branch network expansion had an influence on all prefectures, then the prefectures where the ratio of certified farmers was higher decreased labor productivity more. If the latter is correct, it indicates an inefficiency of policy finance.