This paper uses a monopolistic competitive framework with many sectors to study the impact of trade liberalization on local and global emissions. We focus on the interplay of the pollution haven effect and the home market effect and show how a large-market advantage can counterbalance a high...

In this paper, we examine the role of industrial clusters and infrastructure in mitigating or magnifying the impact of the 1995 Kobe earthquake on the survival of manufacturing plants and their post-earthquake economic performance. Our methodological approach is to use information on...

Wholesalers are considered to play an important role in ensuring efficient transaction networks. Using unique data on Japanese domestic transactions compiled by Tokyo Shoko Research, we investigate wholesalers' roles in transaction networks for intermediate manufacturing goods. Comparing...

This paper studies greenhouse-gas (GHG) emission controls in the presence of carbon leakage through international firm relocation. The Kyoto Protocol requires developed countries to reduce GHG emissions by a certain amount. Comparing emission quotas with emission taxes, we show that taxes...

In an economic geography model with firm heterogeneity, Baldwin and Okubo (2006) show that regional policies for promoting periphery development attract low-productivity firms and adversely affect the productivity gap within a country. This paper empirically examines their theoretical prediction...

Using firm-level data on the sales and sourcing patterns of Japanese affiliates, this paper suggests that very little foreign direct investment (FDI) falls neatly into the standard bins of horizontal, vertical and export-platform FDI. Most affiliates import some intermediates and export some...

We examine the impact of cross-prefectural differences in financial integration on the regional spread of Japan's Great Recession in the early 1990s. In prefectures with many small manufacturing firms, post-1990 growth was significantly lower if low levels of banking integration with the rest of...

We explore the effects of domestic environmental standards when a domestic firm and a foreign rival compete in the domestic market. We focus on a situation where the introduction of environmental standards forces the foreign product out of the domestic market because it does not meet the...

This paper empirically examines how productivity distributions of firms vary across regions based on Japan's manufacturing census data. We confirm the established finding of higher average productivity in core regions, but find that firm productivity is distributed with wide dispersions,...

This paper starts out from the observation that the export shares of firms (export to sales ratio) vary greatly among firms, and tend to be systematically related to the firms' capital labour ratios. This observation cannot be explained by e.g. the standard Melitz model, since it predicts that...