Several empirical studies have supported the hypothesis that bank relationships have economic value. By examining the effect of a Japanese bank failure on the profitability of client firms, this paper shows that the impact of a bank failure on clients depends on clients depends on the client's...

This paper rigorously justifies the approximation of aggregate imitational behavior in large populations by the deterministic dynamics given by Bjonerstedt and Weibull. We first clarify what models fit their formulation, in which the stochastic dynamics depends only on the average frequencies of...

Japan's economic growth rate has dropped from three percent in the first half of the 1980s to one percent in the 1990s. We can call this decline the "Great Stagnation." In spite of its importance, there is no agreement on what caused the Great Stagnation. First, we briefly surveyed various...

The objective of this paper is to empirically test the following: (a) the tendency of per capita income gaps between the countries worldwide, (b1) the relationship between the level of per capita income and the degree of income inequality to verify Kuznets's inverted-U curve hypothesis-...

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...