We develop a theoretical framework that considers the role played by moral hazard and the diversity of networks and cultures in the choice of hiring channel. In favoritism contexts social networks, and particularly strong ties, are adopted as hiring channels for unskilled jobs and result in wage...

In the paper, productivity convergence is analyzed with a broad panel of industry sector data for the United States and Germany for 1960-1990. The time-series/cross-sectoral data set allows to investigate country-specific convergence, and to control for sector-specific differences in human...

Local productivity externalities play an important role in the recent literature on economic geography and regional growth. But apart from case studies there is only weak empirical evidence. Using a simple theoretic framework the paper derives two empirical implications of those externalities...

This paper examines empirically some of the reasons why Japanese manufacturing firms frequently fail to satisfy concavity conditions of the cost function. We focus on the 'bubble period' in the 1980s when land was in great demand for reasons related to both production and speculation, and land...

Empirical factor demand analysis typically involves making a choice from among several competing non-nested functional forms. Each of the commonly used factor demand systems, such as Translog, Generalized Leontief, Quadratic, and Generalized McFadden, can provide a valid and useful empirical...

Based on a panel data set of Japanese manufacturing firms in research-intensive industries, we investigate quantitatively the extent to which debt outstandings in the 90s affected the firm's R&D activities. We find that massive debt outstandings had significantly negative effect on R&D...

We examined investment behavior in the Japanese manufacturing industry using investment revision data to analyze investment behavior from a fresh angle. We tested the martingale investment hypothesis and then the q-theory of investment by looking at the response of stock return and investment to...

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...

An increasingly influential technological-discontinuity paradigm suggests that IT-induced technological changes are rapidly raising productivity while making workers redundant. This paper explores the evidence for this view among the IT-using U.S. manufacturing industries. There is some limited...