Bloom and Van Reenen (2007) show that differences in management practices are correlated with productivity differences at the firm level. In this paper, we conducted similar interview surveys on management practices in Japanese and Korean firms in 2008 and 2012. We find that overall management...

We examined the relationship between human resource development and firm performance using two sets of data, one obtained from a questionnaire survey mailed to firms' personnel departments and another—human resource management scores based on interviews with Japanese firms—used in Miyagawa...

In tandem with the advance of IT usage in the economy and society, it is becoming more widely recognized that for greater IT usage to lead to higher productivity it is essential not only to increase the amount of IT equipment, but also for corporate organizations and human resources to...

Following Corrado et al. (2009), we measure intangible assets at the listed firm level in Japan. Compared to the conventional Tobin's Q, the revised Q including intangibles is almost 1 on average, as suggested by Hall (2000 and 2001). The standard deviation of the revised Q is smaller than that...

The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011 had a serious negative impact on the Japanese economy. The earthquake reduced production substantially not only in the regions that were directly affected but also throughout Japan via the disruption of supply chains. The meltdowns at the...

The US economy had accelerated economic growth since the late 1990s. At first, many economists and policy makers believed that the rapid growth in the IT industry and IT investment contributed to the acceleration in US economic growth and many advanced countries supported the IT industry and IT...

We investigate whether previous findings of only limited effects of investing abroad on the performance of parent firms can be explained by the aggregation of heterogeneous effects depending on the motive for foreign direct investment (FDI), sector, and location. Our results suggest, in line...

This paper empirically examines the impact of board diversity on firms' innovative activity, taking advantage of the unique firm-level dataset in the period 2000-2011 in Japan. We constructed measurements of the degree of board diversity by using various characteristics of board members such as...