This paper examines a number of traditional characteristics of the Swedish welfare state, and discusses how they have been changed over time, especially since the economic crisis in the early 1990s. It emphasizes that the country did not only suffer from the economic crisis and recent...

The Bank of Japan adopted the Quantitative Easing (QE) Policy from March 2001 to March 2006. This paper investigates whether or not this QE had an effect in stimulating real economy in Japan. The identification of policy effect in the above Japanese case enables us to evaluate indirectly the...

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the degree of competition of consumer loan industry in Japan utilizing responses to a questionnaire survey conducted by Japan Consumer Finance Association. Estimating the cost function, we found that the industry is characterized by large scale economies....