Market openness improves the efficiency of business operations through various channels, and firms' usage of imported intermediate goods is one of such conduits. This paper empirically examines the effects of import of intermediates on Japanese manufacturers' productivity and profitability by...

This paper investigates the effect of export activities on firm performance by taking into account whether or not exporter firms' affiliated companies (i.e., their own subsidiaries and parent companies' branches) are located in the export markets. To single out a causal impact on firm...

This paper aims to investigate whether there exist international integrated markets among East Asian economies by employing the generalized purchasing power parity (G-PPP) model, which then would help to suggest whether or not the East Asian region is an optimum currency area (OCA). The...

In this paper, we examine whether consumption is in response to the change of expectations of income in urban China, namely, testing for excess sensitivity of consumption using subjective income expectations from the panel "Survey of Living Preferences and Satisfaction," conducted at Osaka...

In this paper, we investigate the causes and impacts of the recent changes in the inter-firm business relationships in the Japanese automobile industry from 1994-2010. Our main results are the following: First, we find that buyer-supplier relationships in the automobile industry in Japan have...

The issue on the growth and its variation of intra-firm trade of intermediate inputs is of great interest in international economics. This paper examines the determinants of intra-firm trade by shedding light not only on factor price and trade cost but also on the organizational form in terms of...

This paper examines whether overtime regulations have a significant impact on the hours worked and hourly wages, by focusing on so-called name-only managers in Japan. The term name-only manager refers to an employee who has essentially the same job description as other employees, but who is...

Firm-level data often show different modes of market access by firms with the same productivity levels, which is a mere knife-edge case in the basic firm heterogeneity model. This paper examines the foreign direct investment decisions of individual firms with a simple framework where firms and...

This paper considers whether minimum wage is a well-targeted anti-poverty policy by examining the backgrounds of minimum-wage workers, and whether raising the minimum wage reduces employment for unskilled workers. An examination of micro data from a large-scale government household survey, the...

Human resources are increasingly seen as a key to innovation competitiveness, and there is a need for detailed, systematic data on the demographics of inventors, their motivations, and their careers. To gain systematic data on who invents, we collected detailed information on a sample of...