Due to the steady increase in the use of private autos in Japan, the bus business is facing hard times. In particular, bus services owned by public organizations have been struggling with increases in operating deficits and subsidies, so that recently in many cities there has been a call for...

Although it has for years had a lower unemployment rate than other industrialized countries, Japan has begun to see an increase in unemployment since its economy was hit by the recession of the late 90?s. The level of a nation?s unemployment is commonly seen as a barometer of its economy?s...

Within this analysis we determine the optimal size (that is, with the minimum average cost) of a water supply enterprise and reconsider the matter of scale economies, using sample data from Japanese water supply organizations. After surveying evidence from previous studies of scale economies in...

For many years, bus and railway companies in regional areas in Japan have been struggling to stop decreases in passenger numbers. Although motorization and the construction of road networks have caused declining ridership in public transportation, deregulation in the transportation industry has...

We provide a theoretical framework to discuss the relation between market size and vertical structure in the railway industry. The framework is based on a simple downstream monopoly model with two input suppliers: the labour force and the rail infrastructure firm. The operation of the downstream...

Covering issues such as deregulation, privatization, organizational reforms, and competition policy, Regulatory Reform of Public Utilities provides a comprehensive summary of regulatory reforms in Japanese public utility industries.

This study aims to investigate two important issues: whether or not public infrastructure contributes to production in the private sector, and whether or not political economy factors such as political situations, lobbying factors, and the availability of national grants for investment affect...

The main purpose of this study is to investigate how regulation, competition, governance structure, and business diversification strategy affect the cost structure of firms. By using 358 observations comprised of public utility firms and manufacturing firms from 1989 to 2002, we estimate the...

The main purpose of this study is to investigate, by using regressions analysis, the DR effect on households' electricity consumption. We employ three kinds of estimation models: a pooled OLS model, a random effect model, and a fixed effect model. Major results are as follows. First, the DR...