There are a number of indications that Japanese job security laws have been relaxed since the end of the 1990s. The purpose of this paper is to establish causality between job security laws and firing costs in the Japanese labor market. The analysis first investigates when and how firing costs...

Japan consists of many small inhabited islands in addition to four main islands. We examine the impact of fiscal expenditure and the number of tourists on per capita taxable income in remote islands using panel data analysis. The results show that both fiscal expenditure and population size have...

We have analyzed the determinants of the Gini coefficient for income and expenditure. In both cases, we do not find support for the Kuznets inverted-U hypothesis. From economic globalization viewpoint, the opening of goods markets reduces income inequality both in the short run (the Gini...

In Japan, some fishery cooperative associations use their fishery harbor names as a brand to differentiate their own shore fish. Most notable is the branding of mackerel. In this paper, we analyze the effects of branding using a discrete/continuous model. The results are as follows. First, there...