Panel data regressions for 24 OECD countries showed that the less corrupt a society is, the lower the total suicide rate. This effect was approximately three times larger for males than for females. It follows that corruption has a detrimental effect on social well-being.

Using individual data of Japan, this paper investigates how frequency of contact with foreigners is associated with the perceived outcomes of foreigner increases. Results showed that frequency of contact has a critical effect on perceptions and that its influence varies according to household...

This study explored how social pressure related to parental preference for the sex of their children affects fertility. Pre-war and post-war generations were compared using individual level data previously collected in Japan in 2002. In the pre-war generation, if the first child was a daughter,...

There is controversy between Putnam and Olson concerning the role of group. Putnam argued that small group makes a contribution to economic growth whereas Olson asserted that small group hampers the economic growth through rent-seeking behavior. Since the end of the 1990s in Japan, there has...

Using individual level data (the Japanese General Social Survey), this paper aims to explore how interaction between genders contributes to the cessation of smoking in Japan, where females are distinctly less inclined to smoke than males. Controlling for various socioeconomic factors and...

Japanese household-level data describing a husband's earnings, his wife's working status, and their schooling levels are used to test the implications of a model proposing a time-consuming process of human capital accumulation within marriages, in which an educated wife is more productive. The...

This paper uses individual-level data from Japan (2003) to examine the effects of government size and the disclosure of official government information on happiness. The major findings are as follows. (1) Disclosure of official information is positively associated with the happiness of workers,...

This paper used Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) world ranking points data to examine how linguistic heterogeneity has an impact on technology transfer from the most developed countries. The major findings were that the learning effect from the most developed countries...

The changing effects of wage disparity on team performance during the process of industry development are examined using data sourced from the Japanese professional football league. The results show that wage disparity leads to a reduction in team performance during the developing stage but does...

Since the end of the 1990s, local governments in Japan have enacted Information Disclosure Ordinances, which require the disclosure of official government information. This paper uses Japanese prefecture-level data for the period 1998–2004 to examine how this enactment affected economic...