How did post-War newer democracies, whose governments faced both pressures from vested special interests and voters, achieve trade liberalization ? Exploiting the case of trade liberalization in 1960s Japan, this paper addresses this question. Because the benefits and costs of trade...

This paper provides novel evidence on the long-term effect of the Great Recession on the quality of jobs, in particular whether the Great Recession results in the replacement of “good jobs” (characterized by high wage/benefit, job security, and opportunity for training and development) with...

This paper explores the structure and function of the intra-firm trade network in Mitsubishi Corporation (Mitsubishi Shoji) from 1928 to 1936. In this period, Mitsubishi Co. substantially expanded its global branch network. Using original documents of Mitsubishi Co., we obtained the data on the...

As service sectors account for a growing share of economic activity in advanced economies, economists claim that the quality and cost of producer services supplied by the service sectors are crucial in supporting the competitiveness of manufacturing firms. This paper provides an empirical...

This paper estimates the contribution of R&D spillovers to productivity growth Japanese manufacturing industry by estimating two alternative measures of productivity growth and two different types of R&D spillovers. The results suggest that TFP growth is affected neither by rent R&D spillovers...

Behind rising natural rate of unemployment, they often point out the decline in matching efficiency of the labor market. We empirically examine the cause of matching friction based on the theory of directed search model such as Burdett, Shi and Wright (2001). From rich micro data on vacancy size...

Wage increases, along with job tenure, are one of the most robust empirical regularities found in labor economics. Several theories explain these empirical regularities, and such theories offer sharp empirical predictions for the relation between productivity-tenure and wage-tenure profiles. The...

What happened to the traditional, long-term employment practices in Japan after the 1990s has remained unexplored. We take advantage of a micro data set from the Basic Survey on Wage Structure to provide new evidence regarding the years of tenure for Japanese male workers after a decade-long...

This paper examines the hypothesis that expansion of overseas operations of Japanese manufacturing multinational enterprises (MNEs) reduces home employment. While the existing studies are mainly based on the industry level, this paper presents the evidence using newly constructed firm-level...

This paper examines the relations between the disciplinary role of Japanese relationship-oriented corporate governance mechanisms, such as keiretsu memberships and bank-appointed directors, and pay-performance sensitivity in Japan. Previous studies show that pay-performance sensitivity is...