Japan, like most of the developed world, faces potentially extreme demographic shortfalls brought on by a rapidly aging society with a long life expectancy and low birthrate. Where other western countries have utilized greater levels of immigration to help fight these tendencies, immigration...

Japan, like most of the developed world, faces potentially extreme demographic shortfalls brought on by a rapidly aging society with a long life expectancy and low birthrate. Where other western countries have utilized greater levels of immigration to help fight these tendencies, immigration...

This paper discusses three alternative assumptions concerning household preferences (altruism, self-interest, and a desire for dynasty building) and shows that these assumptions have very different implications for bequest motives and bequest division. After reviewing some of the literature on...

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the economic benefits of country of origin labeling (COOL) regulation by estimating the consumer's willingness to pay (WTP) for Taiwan products vs. other imported products if clearly labeled with their countries of origin. We employ the Vickrey...

In this paper, I conduct an international comparison of the financial health of households using data on household wealth and indebtedness for the Group of Seven (G7) countries and show that, even though household borrowings in Japan were the highest among the G7 countries, at least until 2000,...

In this paper, I analyze the causes of the prolonged slowdown of the Japanese economy in the 1990s and find that the stagnation of investment, especially private fixed investment, was the primary culprit. I then investigate the causes of the stagnation of household consumption during the 1990s...

This paper analyzes what adult children would do for their parents were they frail and in need of long-term care. Focusing on the special case of parents' illness, the paper then investigates altruism in Japanese children. Descriptive statistics show that about 30% of adult children living...

In this paper, we present data on recent trends in private consumption and in possible determinants of private consumption (such as GDP, household incomes, household saving rates, household wealth, and employment conditions) in the Group of Seven (G7) countries and find that there has been...