Free trade agreements (FTAs) have proliferated in East Asia in recent years. As of December 2008, eight bilateral FTAs and one plurilateral FTA involving Japan have entered into force; additional negotiations are ongoing with several more countries. The proliferation of FTAs in Japan and other...

The number of temporary workers in Japan’s labor market has increased rapidly since the 1990s. This trend is particularly remarkable in the manufacturing sector, which now relies on sales to foreign markets. This paper formalizes the idea that global competition may encourage manufactures to...

Since the 1990s, there has been a rapid increase in the proportion of temporary workers in the Japanese workforce. This paper empirically explores a linkage between the shift from permanent to temporary workers in the Japanese manufacturing sector and economic globalization, using various...

Recent heterogeneous-firm models of international trade suggest that productivity determines whether firms engage in export and foreign direct investment. However in practice, m Abstract any productive firms are not internationalized, whereas many unproductive firms are. This situation suggests...