The introduction of pharmaceutical product patents in India and other developing countries is expected to have a significant effect on public health and local pharmaceutical industries. This paper draws implications from the historical experience of Japan when it introduced product patents in...

This chapter evaluates whether standards and labeling programs aimed at improving the energy efficiency of electrical appliances have been successful at achieving their goals. Standards and labeling programs work to reduce energy consumption by (a) influencing consumers’ choice of appliance...

This paper focuses upon the unfolding lives of Overseas Performing Artists and Japanese wives from a barangay in Pangasinan. Their life stories, as told during our interviews conducted in the Philippines and in Japan between 1994 and 2004, were enhanced with information on their families...

Previous research shows no consensus as to whether and how natural disasters affect suicide rates in their aftermath. Using prefecture-level panel data of natural disasters and suicide in Japan between 1982 and 2010, we estimate both contemporaneous and lagged effects of natural disasters on the...