Since its first appearance in the late 1950s, Neoclassical economic theory of fertility, especially as exemplified by Gary Becker's model of household production function that assumed a unitary utility function of the household, has become one of the most popular paradigms to examine fertility...

Using the Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement (JSTAR), a Japanese panel survey of people age 50 or older, we find that many Japanese in their early 50s—compared to those in their late 50s and early 60s—expect their level of public pension benefits to decline. We find that recent pension...

Bilateral or multilateral trade and investment agreements have strengthened the ties among national economies all over the world. Against this backdrop, direct taxation of each country may influence or distort cross-border investment flows between or among the countries participating in such...

Using a Melitz-style model of heterogeneous firms, Baldwin and Okubo (2006) recently presented a theoretical model in which self-sorting occurs and more productive factories choose to locate in more productive areas. The model suggests that firm-specific factors and regional factors affect each...

This paper is an empirical examination of the existence of the inside bank premium arising from relationship banking, which is predicted in the extant theoretical models. These models predict that the contracted interest rate of a loan extended by an inside bank when there exist asymmetries...

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 examines the ex-post performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that obtained small business credit scoring (SBCS) loans. Using a unique Japanese firm-bank matched dataset, we identify whether an SME has obtained an SBCS loan and, if so, from which type of bank: a...

Although numerous studies have evaluated the effect of tax credits on R&D, many have neglected the problem of selection bias. Furthermore, empirical studies have found that Japan's total factor productivity (TFP) growth has slowed since the 1990s, and Kim et al. (2010) have attributed this...

While the average retirement age is higher in Japan, the retirement process has not been in-depth explored from multiple factors including economic, health and family statuses. We examine the transition of work status and working hours for Japanese males and females using JSTAR (Japanese Study...

China's trade surplus is entirely in processing trade. Processed exports are final goods produced using parts and components coming from East Asian supply chain countries. Many claim that because much of the value added of China's processed exports comes from East Asian countries, exchange rates...