This paper analyzes "attribute-based regulations," in which regulatory compliance depends upon some secondary attribute that is not the intended target of the regulation. For example, in many countries, fuel-economy standards mandate that vehicles have a certain fuel economy, but heavier or...

This paper compares the wage structure between the public and private sectors in Japan by using a large microdata set covering public and private sector employees. Rather than comparing overall wage levels, we examine the differences in relative wages by gender, age, education, and region....

Although there is widespread recognition of the importance of investment in intangibles, this is difficult to observe from the published data, even for listed companies. This study investigates the extent of investments in intangibles and their consequences for unlisted companies in Japan. For...

Since the Chinese government's rapid increase in expenditure on science and technology (S&T) during the 2000s, numerous related policies have been implemented by national-, provincial-, city-, and prefecture-level governments in China. Each level of government aims to promote innovation...

Using the data of individual loan contracts extended by the Japan Finance Corporation for Small and Medium Enterprise (JASME), which is one of the predecessor institutions of the Japan Finance Corporation (JFC) that aimed at lending to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), we examine whether the...

It is assumed in new trade theory and new economic geography that the supply of labor is fixed, which is not true in real labor markets. We develop a model of new trade theory by incorporating an elastic labor supply and analyze the impacts of technological progress on the equilibrium outcomes...

This paper examines how Japanese firms' export decision is affected by the availability of information on export markets, focusing on whether the availability of such information has a different impact on the export decision between large firms and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In...

A decomposition of the gender gap in earned income among white-collar regular employees in Japan was conducted using the DiNardo-Fortin-Lemieux method based on propensity-score weighting. The results show that gender differences in three human-capital variables, namely, education, age, and the...

This paper has constructed a theoretical model to explain why the share of those who remain unmarried has increased in Japan. It is still common for women to leave the labor market due to marriage and thereby see an irreversible decrease in their income. Taking into consideration of the...

Employing massive contract- and firm-level data provided by the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Unit of the Japan Finance Corporation (JFC), one of the largest government lending institutions for SMEs, and linking the data with other firm-level data from a business credit information company,...