Analysis of a Japan government intervention on the domestic agriculture market

We investigate an economic system in which one large agent-the Japan government changes the environment of numerous smaller agents-the Japan agriculture producers by indirect regulation of prices of agriculture goods. The reason for this intervention was that before the oil crisis in 1974 Japan agriculture production prices exhibited irregular and large amplitude changes. By means of analysis of correlations and a combination of singular spectrum analysis (SSA), principal component analysis (PCA), and time delay phase space construction (TDPSC) we study the influence of the government measures on the domestic piglet prices and production in Japan. We show that the government regulation politics was successful and lead: (i) to a decrease of the nonstationarities and to increase of predictability of the piglet price; (ii) to a coupling of the price and production cycles; and (iii) to increase of determinism of the dynamics of the fluctuations of piglet price around the year average price. The investigated case is an example confirming the thesis that a large agent can change in a significant way the environment of the small agents in complex (economic or financial) systems which can be crucial for their survival or extinction. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.