Three essays on demand for organic milk in the U.S., environment and economic growth in Japan, and life expectancy at birth and socio-economic factors in Japan

This dissertation consists of three separate empirical essays on: 1) Censored demand system estimation and analysis for U.S. organic milk; 2) A multilevel modeling approach to examine the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis using SO2 and NOx concentration data in Japan; and 3) A study on life expectancy at birth in Japan between 1955 and 2005 using a dynamic panel data approach. The abstract of each essay is described below.;[Essay One] Organic dairy sales have been growing rapidly in the past decade. Within the organic dairy category, organic milk has had the largest share of sales. Against the backdrop of such a rapid growth, the first essay empirically examines consumer behavior toward organic milk in 2004 and 2005 by using consumer purchase data collected by ACNielsen. Two empirical problems caused by the data (missing price information for non-purchasing households, and extreme censoring) are overcome in this study. As for missing price data, I systematically match consumers by the stores at which they shop, and transfer price data from a purchasing household to a non-purchasing household. The second empirical problem (censoring) is addressed by using a censored demand system. The zero expenditure shares are accounted for by estimating a translog demand system with a Quasi-Maximum Likelihood method. The compensated own-price elasticities show that organic milk is more sensitive than non-organic milk to own-price changes. Cross-price elasticities indicate that organic milk purchases increase when non-organic milk price rises. Yet, the reverse is not true. With respect to the impacts of demographic factors, household income does not significantly affect organic milk purchases. Actually, lower income households are estimated to have larger expenditure shares on organic milk than higher income households. Households with a female head and non-white households have less expenditure shares on organic milk compared to their counterparts.;[Essay Two] The hypothesis of an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) has been studied and examined theoretically and empirically by many researchers since the 1990s. Fewer studies have looked at an EKC relationship within a country, and to my knowledge, no studies have looked at the impacts of different political units on environmental pressures in one country. Therefore, the purpose of the second essay is to investigate the empirical relationship between environmental pressure and income in Japan by looking at municipal level SO 2 and NOx concentration data and income data at both the prefecture and national levels using a multilevel modeling approach. By incorporating municipal and prefecturespecific effects into the model (the random intercept model), I find an inverted U-shaped (EKC) relationship at the prefecture level only for SO2 concentrations. However, after allowing the slope of prefectural income to vary among prefectures (the random coefficient model), I find no evidence for an EKC. Similarly, with respect to NOx, I find an EKC at prefecture level when I adopt the random intercept model for both the whole dataset and non-roadside station data. Yet the random coefficient models do not show an EKC relationship for both datasets. The roadside station data do not show significant associations between prefecture income per capita and NOx concentrations in any models. As for the relationship between national GDP per capita and NOx concentration, the roadside station data show upward sloping curves while the non-roadside station data show downward sloping curves.;[Essay Three] Japanese life expectancy at birth has increased dramatically, particularly since the end of the Second World War, and is now one of the highest levels in the world. Backed by such a rapid growth, the third essay empirically examines the major determinants of Japanese longevity using prefecture-level data at five-year intervals on life expectancy at birth for males and females, and health and socio-economic factors between 1955 and 2005. This study uses a dynamic panel data model, which allows us to take into account the dynamic nature of adjustment and also to control for serial correlation, which can otherwise cause inconsistency in the estimates. More specifically, I use both the Arellano and Bond estimator and the system GMM estimator. As far as I am aware, this paper is the first to employ a dynamic panel data model in this field. The results show that income is positively related to life expectancy at birth for males and females from 1955 to 1980, but the association between these two variables disappears for the period from 1980 to 2005. The percentage of the population living in rural areas adversely affects life expectancy for males in the period between 1955 and 1980, while it positively affects life expectancy for females in the latter period (1980 to 2005). College education is positively related to life expectancy for both males and females only during the higher life expectancy period (1980 to 2005), but has no effect during the lower life expectancy period (1955 to 1980).