Stochastic volatility models present a natural way of working with time-varying volatility. However the difficulty involved in estimating these types of models has prevented their wide-spread use in empirical applications. In this paper we exploit Gibbs sampling to provide a likelihood framework...

Although the small and medium-sized firms have been an integral part of Japan's economic growth patterns, the way these firms are organized has mostly been studied only in relation to the more glamorous keiretsu organizational patterns. Japan's small and medium-sized firms did not develop only...

Since the 1980s, small and medium sized firms in Japan have adjusted themselves remarkably to the market changes of the post-Fordism industry, and have significantly contributed to the country's economy. This paper emphasizes the interaction of the state and local producers in building a social...