This paper empirically examines how productivity distributions of firms vary across regions based on Japan's manufacturing census data. We find that firm productivity is distributed with wide dispersions, especially in core regions. Our firm-level estimates demonstrate that the productivity...

Although previous studies of the effect of imports on Japanese employment relied on relatively aggregate data, the variability among industries is substantial within each two-digit sector. This paper exploits recently available longitudinal data of 390 manufacturing industries and controls for...

This paper reexamines the relationship between FDI and R&D by exploiting firm-level data for 118,300 Japanese manufacturers with no threshold. Our study confirms that the positive association between FDI and R&D is robust even if firms undertaking no FDI and/or no R&D are included. The inclusion...

This paper first of all develops a theoretical model to examine a number of heterogeneous firms' choice between making export-oriented foreign direct investments (FDI) in a host country and making FDI in another country to serve the market there. It is shown that all firms below a critical level...

This paper compares the productivity of firms active in foreign outsourcing, exporting, foreign direct investment, or only in domestic operations by a firm-level data of more than 118 thousand Japanese manufacturers. Only a small fraction of firms outsource, export, or invest across borders. The...

In Japan, the manufacturing has become geographically dispersed in the 1990s, when the import has drastically increased after the historic exchange rate appreciation. This suggests the possibility that regional input-output linkages are undermined by import penetration. The regression results...