This paper proposes a new three-factor model with stochastic mean reversions for commodity prices and derives the closed-form solution for the term structure of futures prices. It also examines the relation of our model with Schwartz(1997) type models that explicitly include interest rates and...

This paper proposes a structural model to price credit risk of firms with short-term and long-term debts. This enables one to distinguish between default probabilities in the short run and in the long run, and to identify how the composition of debts affects credit risk. We endogenize the banks'...

This paper analyses the effects of schooling, outside work experience and job tenure on human capital formation, using the personal history data of white collar employees of Mitsubishi Zaibatsu in prewar Japan. For all samples including both engineers and clerks, the rate of return to schooling...

Under the financial turbulence, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) had launched a series of unprecedented monetary policies in the late 1990s and the early 2000s. The conventional monetary policies were not effective under liquidity trap. However, some unconventional monetary policies, including zero...

This paper investigates how ownership changes affect the plant performance, focusing on the cotton spinning industry in early twentieth century Japan, where many plants experienced ownership changes. Through analyses of detailed plant-level data, it is revealed that, after ownership changes,...

The sales tax would seem to be a good candidate for subnational taxes. It is a broad based tax whose base is relatively evenly distributed across regions, and is a revenue raising component of the tax mix, rather than one used for redistributive purpose. The purpose of this paper is to...

The Japanese government, in collaboration with local governments, guarantees the credit of small businesses. During the last decade, it spent annually an average of 2 billion US dollars under these programs. In addition, during the last stage of the Japan's "financial crisis" (Oct. 1998-Mar....

There have been large fluctuations observed in major macro-economic variables in Japan. When the official seasonal adjustment such as U.S. Census X-12-ARIMA is used, it has been important to make the change point analysis carefully. We illustrate the related problems by using recent official...

It is the common knowledge that the modern textile factories, cotton spinning and silk reeling, which led the Japan's industrialization, based their labor foundation on the juvenile female workers. These female workers, however, might have made only a slight impact on the indigenous development...

This is a short essay giving the author's view on recent discussions on the economic rationale of equity style management. The essay will be printed in "Perspectives" of the Security Analysts Journal, January 2006.