In recent years, foreign direct investment (FDI) in Japan has jumped to unprecedented levels. This paper examines the underlying reasons, looking at both the international factors - the global boom in FDI and mergers & acquisitions(M&A) during 1998-2000 - and domestic regulatory, structural and...

We propose an efficient moment estimator for the probit model with a continuous endogenous regressor. The estimation can be readily implemented using a standard statistical package that can estimate a non-linear system two-stage least squares (instrumental variable) estimator.

We examine patent pools in the context of a consortium standard. Although such pools of complementary technologies are approved by antitrust authorities, the actual implementation has proved to be problematic. We identify two possible obstacles: free riding and bargaining failure. We also...

We develop a novel approach to estimating the integrated variance of a general jump-diffusion with stochastic volatility. Our approach exploits the relationship between the speed (distance traveled per fixed time unit) and passage time (time taken to travel a fixed distance) of the Brownian...

We relate household saving to pension reform, to explain the high household saving rates in urban China from a new perspective. We use the exogenous-policy induced-variation in pension wealth to explicitly estimate the impact of pension wealth on household saving, and obtain a significant offset...

This paper constructs and estimates a model of strategic wage bargaining with on-the-job search to explore three different components of wages: general human capital, match-specific capital, and outside option. As the workers find better job opportunities, the current employer has to compete...

We propose the concept of a universal social ordering, defined on the set of pairs of an allocation and a preference profile of any finite population. It is meant to unify evaluations and comparisons of social states with populations of possibly different sizes with various characteristics. The...