We examine the factors that determine the differences in ex ante returns on equities in eleven Pacific Basin countries. Our concern is whether real return differentials are primarily caused by nominal return differentials or expected changes in real exchange rates. We find that nominal return...

Are workers in modern economies working "too hard"--would they be better off if an equilibrium with fewer work hours were achieved? We examine changes in life satisfaction of Japanese and Koreans over a period when hours of work were cut exogenously because employers suddenly faced an overtime...

A low-quality patent system threatens to slow the pace of technological progress. Concerns about low patent quality are supported by estimates from litigation studies suggesting that the majority of patents granted by the U.S. patent office should not have been issued. This paper proposes a new...

We estimate and compare the production structures of the US, Japanese, and Korean total manufacturing sectors for the 1974-1990 period. We employ a translog variable cost function that includes such inputs as labor, materials, physical and R&D capital with the physical and R&D capital treated as...

This paper uses new firm level data from five East Asian countries to explore the patterns of manufacturing productivity across the region. One of the striking patterns that emerges is how the extent of openness and the competitiveness of markets affects the relative productivity of firms across...

We estimate the impact of COVID-19 on business failures for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) using firm-level data in seventeen countries. Absent government support, the failure rate of SMEs would have increased by 9.1 percentage points, representing 4.6 percent of private sector...