Plants in clusters are often more productive than those located in non-clusters. This has been explained by agglomeration effects that improve productivity of all plants in a region. However, recent theoretical development of trade and spatial economic theories with heterogeneous firms has shed...

This paper explores the relationship between patterns of productivity growth and the development stage of an industry, using firm-level data on the cotton-spinning industry in Japan in the late-nineteenth century. It is found that patterns of productivity growth depend on the development stage...

How did the postwar newer democracies, whose governments faced pressure from both vested special interests and voters, achieve trade liberalization? Exploiting the case of trade liberalization in Japan in the 1960s, this paper addresses this question. Because the benefits and costs of trade...

This paper attempts to provide a systematic analysis on the effects of industrial policy in postwar Japan. Among the various types of Japanese industrial policy, this paper focuses on the removal of de facto import quotas through the foreign exchange allocation system. Analyzing a panel of 100...

This paper empirically investigates the effect of industrial agglomeration through labor market pooling. Theoretical literature has shown that labor market pooling in industrial agglomeration can enhance expected profitability of firms by ironing out the firm-level idiosyncratic shocks, and...

In the 1930s and 1940s, the Japanese coal industry experienced huge fluctuations in production and labor productivity. In this paper, I explore the micro-aspects of labour productivity change in the coal industry during World War II using mine-level data, compiled from official statistics and...

This paper studies how signaling can facilitate the functioning of a market with classical adverse selection problems. Using data from Prosper.com, an online credit market where loans are funded through auctions, we provide evidence that reserve interest rates that borrowers post can serve as a...

Consumers often purchase more than one differentiated product, assembling a portfolio, which might potentially affect substitution patterns of demand and, as a consequence, oligopolistic firms’ pricing strategies. To study such consumers’ portfolio considerations, this paper...