Japan's slow growth in the 1990s has raised concerns that Japanese political and economic institutions are not responding effectively to domestic problems and increased global competition. But Japan's stagnant macroeconomic performance masks structural changes and economic reforms now underway....

Teams in Japan’s two professional baseball leagues began to add foreign players to their rosters in the early 1950s, with the average number of foreign players per team reaching 5.79 in 2004. One reason for their increased use of foreign players was that foreign hitters substantially...

All but two professional baseball leagues have adopted the “designated hitter” (DH) rule, which allows a team’s manager to designate a player to bat at the plate and run the bases in place of another player, usually the team’s pitcher. Unlike the team’s other players, the designated...