The number of suicides in Japan has substantially increased during its low growth period. The main argument of Durkheim’s (1951) seminal work in the field of sociology is that suicide is under influences of not only individual traits but also of the society one belongs to. 　Recently it was...

This paper uses Japanese prefecture-level data for the years 1979 and 1996 to examine how the relationship between government size and life satisfaction changes. The major findings are: (1) Government size has a detrimental effect on life satisfaction when government size impedes economic growth...

This paper uses panel data from Japan to decompose productivity growth measured by the growth of output per labor unit into three components of efficiency improvement, capital accumulation and technological progress. It then examines their determinants through a dynamic panel model. In...

This paper attempts to analyze the results of Japan’s new bar examination, so far held in 2006 and 2007, and to investigate why the new bar examination had unanticipated outcomes. The major findings from regression analysis are: (1) The ratio of professor committee members affects the pass...

This paper explores, using Japanese panel data for the years 1988-2002, how externalities from congestion and human capital influence deaths caused by chronic illnesses. Major findings through fixed effects 2SLS estimation were as follows: (1) the number of deaths were smaller in more...

Using Japanese prefecture-level data for the years 1979 and 1996, I explore the extent to which inequality, age heterogeneity, and human capital have an effect upon neighborhood trust, which is ordinarily considered as a kind of particularized trust. The major findings are as follows: (1) Income...

This paper explores, using panel data of Japan, whether automobile inspections help to reduce accidents. Two innovations introduced by this paper are the control of endogeneity by the 2sls fixed effects model and the taking into account of norm enforcement in order to control the omitted...

In the present paper, the inverted-U shape relationship between growth and inequality found in Chen(2003), is reexamined. We decompose productivity growth into efficiency improvement, capital accumulation and technological progress and then ascertain their determinants by employing a fixed...

This paper uses prefecture-level panel data from Japan, spanning the period 1989–2003, to examine the influence of social norms and fractionalization on voting behavior. The key findings obtained from analysis via the fixed effects estimation, which controls for unobserved prefecture-specific...

This paper examines the cubic form hypothesis and the flying geese pattern hypothesis of income distribution. We use time series data for the Gini coefficients of Korea for 1961-2006 and panel data calculated based on a household income survey for the period 1998-2003. We show; (1) The Korean...