To investigate how fertility rates interrelate with the modern economy, we construct a simple model in which variety expansion of consumption goods reduces fertility rates. In our model, variety expansion reduces the relative price of a composite of differentiated goods compared to child-...

In this paper, we present a model in which agents choose voice, exit, or stay options when their marital condition becomes bad. The "voice" option can be interpreted as a spouse's effort or "investment" in the household to resolve his/her dissatisfaction and improve the marital condition. If a...

This article focuses on two distinct faces of globalization: the decrease in trade costs of goods and the decline of affiliation costs of joint ventures by foreign firms with local firms. The decrease of affiliation costs drives relocation of firms from the North to the South. When the market...

In this paper, we construct an interregional trade model that has en- dogenous fertility rates in the manner of Helpman and Krugman (1985). The presented model shows that fertility rates in a large region become lower than those in a small region because of the agglomeration of man- ufacturing...

We investigate the role of firm heterogeneity in considering profitability and desirability of mergers in the international economy. Analysis shows that higher trade costs make only crossborder mergers profitable whereas larger firm heterogeneity is likely to increase both domestic and...

A Grossman-Helpman-Romer-type endogenous-growth model is developed in this study. This model has two countries in which there are knowledge spillovers that are partially local. Owing to these spillovers, innovation cost in a particular country decreases as the number of firms locating in both...

In this paper, we focus on the skill formation when considering the trade impacts on labor markets. Although workers are identical as unskilled labor, they differ in their productivity as skilled. Workers become skilled by incurring the training costs. Introducing the above settings into a trade...

This paper presents an overlapping generations model with technology choice and credit market imperfections, in order to investigate a possible source of underdevelopment. The model shows that a better financial infrastructure that provides stronger enforcement of contracts facilitates the...

In order to examine the impacts of market size on entrepreneurship, we estimate a monopolistic competition model that involves entrepreneurial decision by using data on Japanese prefectures. Our results show that a larger market size measured by the population density leads to higher incentive...

In this paper, we develop an endogenous growth model with two coun- tries in which the international trade of differentiated goods requires dif- ferent trade costs and equilibrium wages in the two countries. If the labor productivity in one country's agricultural sector is higher than that of...