Recently, many small and medium enterprises in the Japanese food manufacturing industry have expanded their business overseas through export. In this study, we explore the determinants of exporting activity at the plant-level, paying particular attention to product price and quality as well as...

The issue on the growth and its variation of intra-firm trade of intermediate inputs is of great interest in international economics. This paper examines the determinants of intra-firm trade by shedding light not only on factor price and trade cost but also on the organizational form in terms of...

This paper pinpoints the impact of Japanese electronic machinery FDIs on productivity at home. Our analysis is based on the activity level of firms and not on their ready-made level. For example, if a firm has more than two kinds of activities such as upstream activity and downstream activity,...

In this paper, we conduct a quantitative analysis of the impact of the entry/exit of large-scale stores and the existence of community facilities on the sales of small- and medium-sized retail stores, using the METI Census of Commerce (Wholesale and Retail Trades) and other mesh data. From this...

This paper explores the timing and location of firms' headquarters relocation using Japanese firm-level data. The issue on the location choices for corporate headquarters has attracted the attention of not only academic researchers but also policy makers. Since the agglomeration of headquarters...

This paper examines whether there is any link between export openness and the temporary workers ratio at firms. First, we investigate the effect of export openness on sales volatility using Japanese firm-level data. Next, we examine whether firms will increase the number of temporary workers as...

During the 1980s and 1990s, Japanese manufacturers began to relocate production from sites in Japan to low-wage East Asian countries such as China, Malaysia and Thailand. Imports of manufacturing goods increased substantially over the same period. This rapid rise in imports, and proliferation of...

This paper pinpoints the impact of Japanese electronic machinery FDIs on productivity at home. Our analysis is based on the activity level of firms and not on their ready-made level. For example, if a firm has more than two kinds of activities such as upstream activity and downstream activity,...

In this paper, we estimate the consumer benefits of competition in the retail industry. In our analysis, we incorporated the service quality of retail outlets as outputs. In Japan, in the process of the deregulation of entry restriction on large-scale retail stores, specialty supermarkets have...

Using firm-level data for the Japanese manufacturing sector, we examine characteristics of internationalized firms, i.e., firms engaging in export and/or foreign direct investment (FDI), and compare these characteristics with those for selected European countries. We find that internationalized...