There are a number of indications that Japanese job security laws have been relaxed since the end of the 1990s. The purpose of this paper is to establish causality between job security laws and firing costs in the Japanese labor market. The analysis first investigates when and how firing costs...

Japan consists of many small inhabited islands in addition to four main islands. We examine the impact of fiscal expenditure and the number of tourists on per capita taxable income in remote islands using panel data analysis. The results show that both fiscal expenditure and population size have...

We have analyzed the determinants of the Gini coefficient for income and expenditure. In both cases, we do not find support for the Kuznets inverted-U hypothesis. From economic globalization viewpoint, the opening of goods markets reduces income inequality both in the short run (the Gini...

Using the Atkinson inequality measure of income distribution, we analyze the impact of China as a single country and examine the effect of its domestic income inequality on total income inequality among East Asian countries. First, we find that China's domestic income inequality exacerbated...

The life cycle/permanent income hypothesis (LCPIH) makes two postulates: people behave with rational expectations, and people do not have self-control problems. If either or both of these postulates do not apply, we cannot obtain a testable implication of the LCPIH. We use Japanese panel data...

Life-Cycle/Permanent Income Hypothesis (LCPIH) could be decomposed into the following three hypotheses: (1) Rational expectation in a narrow sense; (2) Householdsf having planning ability; and (3) Householdsf having execution ability for his optimal consumption plan. We test the LCPIH by parts,...

The Amami Islands are located 380 kilometers southwest of Japan proper. These islands have two economic features: they are islands that many tourists visit because of their natural resources, and they are an undeveloped area where the central government of Japan provides large fiscal subsidies....

In this paper, we investigate causal relationships among exports, imports, and economic growth in North Korea by using time series data for the period between 1964 and 2004. The empirical results show that there was Granger causality from imports to GNP in the first half of the period. However,...

This paper investigates the impacts of the BSE and Bird Flu on consumersf meat demand in Japan using the Almost Ideal demand system. BSE and Bird Flu scares bring about a fall in demand for beef and chicken respectively, and an upturn in demand for pork and fishery products, both of which are...

Medical school usually has the highest tuition fees among the university departments. The reason why students pay such expensive fees is that they estimate that their earnings will greatly increase after graduation. We construct a model about student behavior on entering college and estimate the...