Like other developed countries, Japan currently has been experiencing a rapid increase in medical care costs. It is one of imperative interests for the government to find an effective way of balancing the quality and costs of medical care. As of 2003, the Economic and Social Research Institute...

The relationship between the R&D and the productivity improvement in Japanese manufacturing firms is examined. Using more accurate and the more recent data on the individual firm's R&D activity rather than the data used in the previous research, we estimated a Cobb-Douglas production function,...

Although the Bank of Japan has recently (in 2003) conducted an expansionary monetary policy that targets the current accounts balance, additional monetary policies aimed at overcoming the deflationary situation may be necessary. No monetary vehicle to stimulate the economy under the "zero...

As a part of the study towards an improved methodology for current estimation of quarterly GDP, a Monte Carlo analysis on the methods of distribution and extrapolation is executed, taking an explicit account of the statistical situation in Japan. The performance of estimation methods is shown to...

We extend the "fundamentals model" of currency crisis by incorporating the currency substitution effects explicitly. In a regime of free foreign exchange markets and free capital movements the reserve (hard) currencies are likely to substitute for the local soft currency in agents' portfolia...

Providing universal access to the Internet has become an important policy issue; today the Internet is indispensable to political, economic, and social activities. On the other hand, as a result of the slowdown of the spread of the personal computer to the home and the speed-up of the spread of...

It is often argued that Japan's deteriorated banking sector continues to seriously affect its economy, but few empirical studies support that argument. Still, it is useful to examine the relationship between the weakness of the banking sector and Japan's low economic performance. In this study,...

Japan has experienced prolonged economic stagnation throughout the 1990s and beyond. The government's monetary policies do not to seem to have been effective in eradicating deflation and increasing the money supply. A decrease in the money multiplier is said to be one reason for this. This paper...

Deflation continues in Japan. The domestic corporate goods price index, excluding the effect of the consumption tax, has continuously declined since 1992. Moreover, the consumer price index (excluding fresh food) has declined since 1998. Why, then, does deflation continue? What do economists...

This paper surveys the growing empirical literature on the production effects of public capital in Japan. Our survey is rather methodological, and focuses on the issue of simultaneity of public capital, or 'reverse causation' from output to public capital. Our purpose is to highlight how the...