For 70 Japanese manufacturing industries, I test the simple Cournot hypothesis of proportionality between industry price-cost margin and Herfindahl index against the non-nested alternative that the industry price-cost margin remains constant in the face of varying Herfindahl index, as it would...

This paper explores role of multi-product plants and product switching in the Japanese manufacturing sector. While a substantial body of work has explored the importance of the extensive margins of plant entry and exit in employment and output flows, only recently has research begun to examine...

This paper introduces a novel analysis of the classic quot;persistence of leadershipquot; question, and applies it to a newly constructed dataset for Japanese manufacturing. The analysis rests on an appeal to an empirical quot;scaling relationshipquot; between current market share and the...

This chapter presents the major results of a comparative study of productivity growth in manufacturing in Japan and the United States conducted by the authors at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Japan was chosen for the comparison because the growth of productivity there has been extraordinary...

This paper analyzes multifactor productivity growth (based on capital, labor, energy, and materials) and labor productivity growth in the Japanese and U.S. manufacturing sectors. We find that the tests of separability required for a value-added approach fail for both the U.S. and Japan, making...

The importance of marketing and sales is undeniable. However, owning strategic technologies and new products obtained through innovation, reforming and R&D are crucial in accelerating the development of a manufacturing corporation. It requires powerful energy to realize the innovation potential...

Does competitive pressure foster innovation? In addressing this important question, prior studies ignored a distinction between discrete innovation aiming at entirely new technology and continuous improvement consisting of numerous incremental improvements and modifications made upon the...

Does competitive pressure foster innovation? Technical progress consists of numerous small improvements made upon the existing technology continuous improvement and innovative activities aiming at entirely new technology (discrete innovation). Continuous improvement is often of limited relevance...

To foster domestic electricity production, Japan introduced a Feed-in-Tariff policy in 2012, financed by a renewable levy. This paper examines the impact of this tax on industrial, energy intensive (EI) sectors using plant data from 2005 to 2018. We explore whether the introduction of the levy...

This study investigated temporal changes in factor adjustment of the Japanese manufacturing industry by applying a dynamic factor model, in which labor and capital were quasi-fixed to a panel of industries from 1972 to 2012. Estimations show that the adjustment speeds, with which factors...