Ports and harbors (hereinafter "ports") have been developed at many locations in Japan as important public infrastructure through a government redistribution policy designed to achieve the balanced development of the national territory. Given low growth and fiscal reconstruction, however, the...

Under the impact of continuously sharp rises in crude oil prices since 2005, the Japanese economy has been facing severe increases in costs such as those related to energy. Nevertheless, in regard to the pass-through of these increases in energy-related costs to the price of goods and services,...

What can companies do and what can't they do? It is essential for the nation as a whole to give calm consideration to this question once again. The Regulatory Reform Committee at the end of the last century stated that what is required of us is calm debate based on the evidence rather than...

This paper clarifies the structure and determinants of overemployment and its two elements, involuntary fulltime employment and involuntary overtime work, after demonstrating the fact that for the mismatch of work hours that includes both overemployment and underemployment, overemployment...

This paper empirically analyzes the relationship between union presence and firm performance in areas such as productivity and profitability by using data on a large number of Japanese firms, covering both manufacturing and non-manufacturing industries.Results indicate that the presence of labor...

This paper examines an optimal rate for the national burden to establish guidelines for fiscal reform in Japan's graying society. The paper looks at the Japanese tax and social security systems through an extended life-cycle general equilibrium simulation model. It explicitly considers the...

Bilateral investment treaties (BITs) typically obligate a contracting country to grant "fair and equitable treatment" (hereinafter referred to as "fair treatment") to the investments of other contracting country's investors, such as their subsidiaries. In the past, the fair treatment obligation...

This paper examines the effect of speculative motives in agricultural land on farm size and labor productivity in Japan, by use of the prefecture- and size-level census panel data in the period from 1990 to 2005. When agricultural land is sold for alternative uses, such as for residential land,...

In this paper I conduct selective surveys of research, including some of my own studies, relating to the productivity of service industries. After giving an overview of observations based on aggregate data relating to the productivity of the Japanese service sector, I then identify what is known...

In this paper we consider the implications for Japan's aging society and low birth-rate with respect to the enhancement of efficiency in the retail sector. While it is, in general, difficult to measure the productivity of the retail sector, we made it possible, using a deregulation as a natural...