In this paper, I summarize Albert Ando's seminal and ingenious work on the saving behavior of the elderly in Japan and then present some pertinent data and evidence that became available only after Ando did his work in this area. I conclude that the retired elderly in Japan dissave, in...

Unless free international lending/borrowing is allowed, domestic saving equals domestic investment and hence saving and investment taxes have the identical effect, as is the case in a closed-economy context. However, if it is allowed, households can accumulate foreign assets besides domestic...

This paper proposes an implicit control mechanism of managers inside the firm. We argue that the need to motivate workers may make it beneficial for a self-interested, short-sighted manager to pursue long-run viability of the firm. When the firm is in a stable environment, this implicit control...

Corruption is a function of its return relative to engaging in productive activities. This paper presents an approach for thinking about the institutional features of societies and the resulting amount of corruption. The empirical results suggest that political competition is more important than...

We consider the problem of allocating an amount of a perfectly divisible good among a group of n agents. We study how large a preference domain can be to allow for the existence of strategy-proof, symmetric, and efficient allocation rules when the amount of the good is a variable. This question...

Using unique survey data which includes information on precautionary wealth and its target, we analyze the precautionary saving behavior of Japanese households. Our findings are: 1. Measures for income uncertainty have a positive influence on the target for precautionary wealth but not on...

This paper investigates empirically why Japan's household savings rate fell in the 1990s. We constructed an economic model consisting of two types of household: unconstrained life-cycle households and liquidity-constrained households. Unconstrained households generally save, but...

In this paper, I conduct an analysis of consumption and saving behavior in Japan, looking both at trends over time and comparisons with the other industrialized countries. I find that some of the conventional wisdoms (that the Japanese are asset-rich and hold conservative portfolios) still hold...

We analyze the effect of the Byrd Amendment, which amended the US Tariff Act of 1930 to allow revenue from antidumping duties to be distributed to domestic import-competing firms. In an international duopoly framework it is shown that it urges the home firm to restrict output so that the foreign...

A model of rational addiction (RA) with optimal inventories is developed and empirically tested using data on purchases in Japan. If a consumer has information regarding a future price increase, then she may hoard addictive goods; in this case, the optimal inventory period increases with the...