The Pigovian rule for the optimal public goods provision with distortionary taxation is given a new interpretation. It relates the Pigovian rule to project evaluation rules in terms of shadow prices discussed by Diewert (1983) and Hammond (1986). Our formula for the Pigovian rule is compared...

The purpose of this article is not to analyze or evaluate the performance of the Japanese employment custom directly. This article discusses the relationship between Japanese labor law and Japanese employment customs.

We examine auction data to determine if bid rigging presents in procurement auctions for paving works in Ibaraki City, Osaka, Japan. We first show that sporadic bidding wars are caused by the participation of potential "outsiders." Assuming that the ring is all-inclusive if the auction is not...

This paper examines empirically some of the reasons why Japanese manufacturing firms frequently fail to satisfy concavity conditions of the cost function. We focus on the "bubble period" in the 1980s when land was in great demand for reasons related to both production and speculation, and land...