This paper empirically examines how productivity distributions of firms vary across regions based on Japan's manufacturing census data. We find that firm productivity is distributed with wide dispersions, especially in core regions. Our firm-level estimates demonstrate that the productivity...

The paper examines seasonal productivity variations by using monthly plant-level physical output and capacity data. The regression results confirm that seasonal output elasticity is substantially larger than non-seasonal elasticity not only at the industry level, but also at the plant level. The...

This article provides empirical evidence on the product cycle and the firm's make-or-buy decision by using a firm-level data set with a direct measure of foreign outsourcing. Across industries, foreign outsourcing tends to be inactive in R&D-intensive industries. Within each industry, products...

This paper reexamines the relationship between FDI and R&D by exploiting firm-level data for 118,300 Japanese manufacturers with no threshold. Our study confirms that the positive association between FDI and R&D is robust even if firms undertaking no FDI and/or no R&D are included. The inclusion...

This paper first of all develops a theoretical model to examine a number of heterogeneous firms' choice between making export-oriented foreign direct investments (FDI) in a host country and making FDI in another country to serve the market there. It is shown that all firms below a critical level...