Japan's development of information technology (IT) is said to have lagged behind the U.S. throughout the "lost decade", as the 1990s are often described. However, if we harmonize the national accounts for the two countries, the contribution of IT to economic growth turns out to be nearly...

Recently, many countries have introduced economic instruments to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. Although Japan has been regarded as one of the most backward-looking countries for the use of economic instruments, its municipalities are now eager to introduce local environmental taxes...

This paper surveys the body of research grounded on a basic question "Did the total factor productivity (TFP) growth rate in Japan decline in the 1990s?" In addition, using industry-level data of the Japan Industrial Productivity Database (JIP database) we estimate the mark-ups and the degree of...

This paper attempts to introduce forward-looking expectations to the ESRI Short-Run Macroeconomic Model. The effects of changes in fiscal and monetary policy are evaluated under two alternative expectation formations, namely, adaptive expectations and forward-looking ones. For the latter,...

Due to rapid aging of the country's citizens, Japan faces an enormous long-term care future demand. To control care demand and maintain the current long-term care insurance, policies should be based on price and income elasticities obtained from empirical studies in Japan. This study is meant to...

It is not well known that Okinawa suffers from a severe shortage of child care services, even among non-urban areas in Japan. This study is the first micro-level examination of wage determinants of child care workers in Okinawa. We focus especially on two issues, which motivate us to draw...

We have developed a computable two-country general equilibrium model with overlapping generations of agents. Two main issues are addressed: (i) how does the differential ageing process across countries affect international capital flow, and (ii) to what extent do the policy reforms play a...

This paper describes the basic structure and multipliers of the 2015 version of The ESRI Short-Run Macroeconometric Model of the Japanese Economy, which was first released in 1998. The model is basically a demand-oriented, traditional Keynesian model with IS-LM-BP framework; however, it adopts...

This study analyzes the educational achievement of immigrant children in Japan. Since foreign migrants began to enter Japan in large numbers in the early 1990s, their children, or the second generation born or raised in Japan, have largely come of age. A growing number of studies have pointed...

It is not well known that Okinawa suffers from a severe shortage of child care services, even among non-urban areas in Japan. This study is the first to take advantage of some unusually rich micro-level data to address to quantitative assessment of quality of child care and estimates of...