We investigate the determinants of the end of lending relationships with banks using small business data. We also investigate how small businesses without lending relationships financed credit demand during the global financial shock. First, we find that firms with high internal cash holdings,...

This study empirically investigates the determinants of the productivity of knowledge creation by collaboration. By using the Japanese patent database, we extracted establishment-level patent co-invention information and found the following results. First, we find an inverse U-shaped pattern in...

In 2009, the European Union (EU) introduced a regulation prohibiting the importation and marketing of seal products except for those originated from the hunts by indigenous people or from the hunts for maritime resource management. The measure relates to animal welfare as it is concerned about...

Market openness improves the efficiency of business operations through various channels, and firms' usage of imported intermediate goods is one of such conduits. This paper empirically examines the effects of import of intermediates on Japanese manufacturers' productivity and profitability by...

This paper investigates the effect of export activities on firm performance by taking into account whether or not exporter firms' affiliated companies (i.e., their own subsidiaries and parent companies' branches) are located in the export markets. To single out a causal impact on firm...

This paper aims to investigate whether there exist international integrated markets among East Asian economies by employing the generalized purchasing power parity (G-PPP) model, which then would help to suggest whether or not the East Asian region is an optimum currency area (OCA). The...

In this paper, we examine whether consumption is in response to the change of expectations of income in urban China, namely, testing for excess sensitivity of consumption using subjective income expectations from the panel "Survey of Living Preferences and Satisfaction," conducted at Osaka...

In this paper, we investigate the causes and impacts of the recent changes in the inter-firm business relationships in the Japanese automobile industry from 1994-2010. Our main results are the following: First, we find that buyer-supplier relationships in the automobile industry in Japan have...

To elucidate the relationship between the great trade collapse of 2008-09 and financial shocks, existing literature has focused on the channel of trade credit. Because exporting activities are more working-capital dependent than domestic sales, firms may reduce their exports when their banks'...

With rising labor costs in China, some scholars assert that its labor-intensive industries will succumb to latecomer economies, and China's era as the "workshop of the world" will end. There is, however, little agreement regarding whether labor-intensive industries, now concentrated along the...