In this paper, we investigate the volatility of sales at the firm and the aggregate level using the longitudinal dataset of the <i>Financial Statements Statistics of Corporations</i> (FSSC). The main findings are as follows: (1) Firm-level volatility decreased until the mid-1990s but then increased...

Germany's nominal exchange rate has remained weaker because it is linked to weaker eurozone economies. Germany's real exchange rate also depreciated vis-à-vis eurozone countries after 2000 because German firms and workers controlled unit labor costs. This paper investigates how exchange rate...

Since its enactment in 1974 until its easing in the 1990s, the Large-Scale Retail Store Law (<i>Daikibo Kouri Tenpo Ho</i>) strictly regulated the entry of large-scale retailers in cities in Japan to protect local small and medium incumbent stores. This paper investigates the effect of large-scale...

There have been very few World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement cases based on the Agreement of the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT Agreement). While the rulings of the <i>European Communities-Measures Affecting Asbestos and Products Containing Asbestos</i> and <i>European Communities-Trade...</i>

While the Word Trade Organization's (WTO) Technical Barriers to Trade (hereinafter "TBT Agreement") has long remained unused as a legal basis of the WTO dispute settlement, the Appellate Body made three landmark decisions in 2012: <i>US-Clove Cigarettes</i>, <i>US-Tuna II</i>, and <i>US-COOL</i>. This paper...

This paper examines <i>US-COOL</i>, which is the third, landmark Appellate Body's ruling under the Word Trade Organization (WTO)'s Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (hereinafter "TBT Agreement") and came out in 2012.The case addressed two key obligations of the TBT Agreement (i.e., Articles 2.1...

Rapid economic development in emerging economies including China has been transforming the structure of the world economy. One such phenomenon is an international struggle for resources, in which resource-endowed countries tend to resort to export restraints of resources as one of their tools....

In treaty-based investment arbitration, tribunals quite often render their awards referring to the protection of the investor's legitimate expectations. A number of tribunals deal with this issue in the context of the application of the fair and equitable treatment clause and argue that the...

Japanese labor and employment law is based on the "command-and-control" model in which the government sets uniform minimum labor standards and enforces them through penalties and administrative inspections while leaving the determination of above-the-standard working conditions to employers,...

Research in psychology and neuroscience has shown that negative emotions such as depression and anxiety affect decision making in such a way that these emotions lead to pessimistic risk estimates. To see if this is applicable to consumer confidence, we conducted preliminary experiments. In the...