By using the data obtained from a questionnaire survey to the Japanese firms in China this paper empirically examines the effects of the IPRs protection against local illegal imitation. No evidence has been found in the test that the patent and trademark registration, which constitutes a part of...

This paper compares the productivity of firms active in foreign outsourcing, exporting, foreign direct investment, or only in domestic operations by a firm-level data of more than 118 thousand Japanese manufacturers. Only a small fraction of firms outsource, export, or invest across borders. The...

We examine the effects of unionization in the host country on a firm's choices of entry mode when serving a foreign market, i.e., its incentives for exporting, green-field FDI and merger. If, due to government regulations the merged firm must operate a plant in the host country, we find that the...

Economies worldwide vary greatly in terms of how much their consumers spend on various types of retail activities. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the regulatory characteristics as well as the natures and strategies of businesses are related to retail spending. We employed random...