This paper empirically investigates the effects of patent thickets. One unique feature of our study is to identify two sources of patent thickets: (1) complementarity as measured by the number of the patents to be used jointly with the focal patent in commercialization, and (2) ownership...

In this paper, we analyze the implications of demographic change, i.e., the aging of society, on the direction of technological change and the rate of economic growth.Taking demographic change as an exogenous event, the simple variant of Acemoglu's theory of directed technical change implies...

To utilize the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM) for crisis management, macroeconomic surveillance of the member economies should be ex-ante conditionality. Hence, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) plus Three Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO) was established to...

In this study, we construct an interregional trade model that includes endogenous fertility rates. The presented model shows that the agglomeration of manufacturing firms in a large region causes fertility rates to become lower than that in a small region. The agglomeration of firms in a region...

In a country such as China, which maintains strict controls on foreign exchange and frequently intervenes in the currency market, it is not surprising that the local currency is persistently undervalued in nominal terms. Normally, one would expect such a policy of deliberate currency...

In this paper, we develop an endogenous growth model with two countries in which the international trade of differentiated goods requires trade costs and equilibrium wages in the two countries are different. With this model, we show that both wage differences and market size have important...

Wholesalers are considered to play an important role in ensuring efficient transaction networks. Using unique data on Japanese domestic transactions compiled by Tokyo Shoko Research, we investigate wholesalers' roles in transaction networks for intermediate manufacturing goods. Comparing...

Using establishment-level data in Japan, we examine the effects of new business entries on the probability of incumbents exiting the market. In particular, we estimate how the effects vary depending on the size of both the entrants and incumbents, which has not been explored in the literature.We...

In this paper, using a large-scale dataset covering both Japanese and Korean firms, we examine the differences in performance and research and development (R&D) activities between them. We find that Japanese firms tend to be more productive in terms of total factor productivity (TFP), and that...

In this paper, we investigate export competitiveness based on unit labor costs (ULCs) and nominal effective exchange rates (NEERs) for Japan, China, and Korea for the 12 two-digit manufacturing industries for the period 2001-2009. Japan's ULCs either are relatively stable or declining in most...