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...

This paper examines the managerial incentives of oligopolistic firms with Cournot competition when they have an opportunity to form a coalition for cost reduction. The analysis shows that the introduction of managerial incentives reduces a firm’s incentive to form a coalition. Moreover, a firm...

We reexamine the properties of access regulation and an incumbent’s incentive for infrastructure investment under regulatory non-commitment and spillovers through access. The results show that when the degree of spillover is small, the incumbent’s strategic opportunity to invest in...

In our model, an entrant has two effective strategies for profit maximization: collaboration with incumbents and location choice. We analyze the effect of allowing an entrant the opportunity to collaborate with incumbents on its location choice. First, we show that when collaboration requires...

We empirically examine the effect of product market deregulation on wages. The difference-in-difference approach is used with wage data from three motor carrier industries (the taxi, bus and trucking industries) in Japan to obtain the following findings. First, deregulations in the 1990s and...

<Para ID="Par1">We explain how underinvestment in infrastructure upgrades is aggravated under access regulation with a cost-based access charge. When a cost-based access charge is imposed on an incumbent, the incumbent has a weak incentive to invest in infrastructure upgrades due to insufficient rewards for the...</para>

This article examines the welfare implications of an incumbent's pre-commitment to an exclusive contract in a partially regulated environment. It shows that the contract offered to customers in a competitive market makes the first-best allocation infeasible in the partially regulated...