The lay judge system, a quasi-jury system, was introduced in Japan from May 2009. This paper attempts to analyze Japanese people’s attitude towards this system by examining whether they show a willingness to serve as a lay judge. The major findings from regression analysis are: (1) In general,...

We use OECD members' data to ascertain that new-born technological inventions increase the degree of inequality but that this declines as the technology disperses into the overall economy (e.g., Galor and Tsiddon, 1997; Weil, 2005). Therefore, we show explicitly that Kuznets curve does not converge...

This paper attempts to examine how social trust influences human capital formation using prefectural level data in Japan. To this end, I constructed a proxy for social trust, based on the Japanese General Social Surveys. After controlling for socioeconomic factors, I found that social trust...

It is widely and increasingly acknowledged that social capital plays a crucial role in the economic performance, which covers various facets of　human behavior. A growing body of literature has sought to investigate the role of social capital mainly in heterogeneous societies such as USA,...

This paper uses data from Japan to ascertain the determinants of government information disclosures by considering the role of special interest groups and government size. A IV-Tobit model is employed to control for endogeneity bias of government size. The major findings are as follows: (1)...

This paper explores how individual preferences for income redistribution are influenced by social capital, which is measured by rates of participation in community activities. Individual-level data and place of residence data were combined to examine how social capital accumulated in residential...

Ethnic heterogeneity influences economic growth through various channels such as efficiency improvement, capital accumulation, and technological progress. However, it is open to discussion exactly how ethnic heterogeneity affects these channels. Hence, this paper attempts to examine the effects...

Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan are the only cities in the world that have experienced an atomic bomb attack. This paper explores how this devastating experience affected victims’ tendency to trust others. Individual-level data were used to examine the long-term influence of experiencing an...

Previous research shows that the effect of decentralization on damage caused by natural disasters will differ according a country’s level of economic development. To investigate this matter further, this paper uses cross-country data from 1990 to 2001 to examine how decentralization,...

Using individual-level data for China, Korea, and Japan for 2006, this research examines how life satisfaction for married males and females in East Asian countries is influenced by the age of their children. Our results show that the life satisfaction of males is barely affected by a child of...