Sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures are important policy instruments to regulate food safety and to protect the domestic ecosystem from biological invasions. However, these measures may also be used to protect domestic producers from international competition. The World Trade...

Illegal extractions of renewable resources threaten sustainable use of those resources. The world community has recently paid increasing attention to the issue of illegal logging. This paper tries to explain why it is important to exclude illegally logged timber from the international market by...

In this paper, we investigate empirically how firms' choices of globalization mode differ according to their productivity and Tobin's q using firm-level data of Japanese firms. Our findings support predictions by Helpman, Melitz, and Yeaple (2004) and by Chen, Horstmann, and Markusen (2008)....

We examine how the structure of multinational enterprises' (MNEs') activity affects technology spillovers between MNEs and their host economies by using firm-level data of Japanese MNEs and patent citations data. We construct new measures of foreign direct investment (FDI) by exploiting...

The WTO members are conducting negotiations to clarify and improve disciplines on fisheries subsidies at the Doha Round. In this paper, I investigate how worldwide subsidy reform in the fisheries sector could affect fisheries output and resource stocks in a trading equilibrium. Using a simple...

In this study, we investigate how the innovative performance of local firms in host countries affects the structure of foreign direct investment (FDI) by multinational enterprises (MNEs) using Japanese firm-level data and patent application data for host countries of Japanese FDI at the United...

In this study, we overview the current situation of international trade in creative goods and investigate the determinants of trade in cultural goods. According to the statistical data provided by the United Nations, China is currently the world's largest exporter of creative goods and also...

This paper examines whether the rank of Japanese firms’ (using 12,504 firm level dataset) productivity sorts the modes of their internationalization and how firms’ productivity affects their choice of export and FDI to destinations with similar income level. The empirical results...

The 2011 mega-quake in East Japan seriously affected Japanese manufacturers in the Tohoku region. Disaster-hit firms shutdown their operation for a long period after the quake. This article examines what factors prolonged the recovery of plants, using Research Institute for Economy, Trade and...

This study is the first attempt to examine the impacts of a natural disaster at the plant level, focusing on the Great Hanshin-Awaji (Kobe) earthquake, which occurred in 1995 and affected numerous plants in Kobe city. In this study, I use plant-level data to re-examine the creative disaster...