Macroscopic and microscopic statistical properties observed in blog entries

We observe the statistical properties of blogs that are expected to reflect social human interaction. Firstly, we introduce a basic normalization preprocess that enables us to evaluate the genuine word frequency in blogs that are independent of external factors such as spam blogs, server-breakdowns, increase in the population of bloggers, and periodic weekly behaviors. After this process, we can confirm that small frequency words clearly follow an independent Poisson process as theoretically expected. Secondly, we focus on each blogger’s basic behaviors. It is found that there are two kinds of behaviors of bloggers. Further, Zipf’s law on word frequency is confirmed to be universally independent of individual activity types.     

The location of American and Japanese multinationals in Europe

This paper examines the determinants of location choice of American and Japanese foreign direct investment in European manufacturing industries in the early 1990s. The new data used in this study covers 340 Japanese-owned affiliates and 2,312 US-owned affiliates distributed across 38 regions and 7 member states in the European Union. The statistical analysis finds, most importantly, that the location decisions of US and Japanese MNEs are not the same. The Japanese results are consistent with the behavior that firms consider production-cost factors more important than demand-side factors, suggesting Japanese firms’ motive to establish local production capacity to export within the EU market. On the contrary, both cost-side and demand-side factors are found important determinants of location choices for US firms. The results also suggest that location decisions are industry-specific.

A credit market in early stages of economic development

Even if the relatively rich and the poor are initially caught in a poverty trap, the relatively rich can escape poverty by receiving payments from the poor. Further accumulation of wealth by the rich allows the poor to escape poverty.     

Market structure,capacity expansion,and pricing: A model applied to the Japanese iron and steel industry

The main objective of this paper is to study empirically the simultaneous and recursive relations between short-run pricing, capacity decision, and fluctuations in the elements of market structure. For this purpose, a time-series industry model was constructed and applied to the Japanese iron and steel industry for 1957–1975. The statistical results imply that over time industry market structure — especially seller concentration — might change endogenously in the system. The model also indicated that seller concentration as an element of market structure was a significant determinant of short-run domestic and export prices and also had a significant effect on the capacity decisions. These findings support the proposition that market structure affects market conduct at any moment in time while it is some degree shaped by past market conduct or behavior and structure.     

Why does scholastic achievement differ across prefectures in Japan?

Using prefecture-level data on scholastic achievement tests in Japan, we found that parental income and education level positively affect student achievement. The effect of income on achievement is stronger for the high-scoring prefectures than for the low-scoring prefectures. The presence of grandparents also has a strong positive effect on student achievement. While the cross term between the percentage of absentees and the quantity of teachers is important in identifying the positive effects of teacher quantity, the effects of this quantity on elementary school achievement is nonlinear. We confirm the importance of teacher quality in determining junior high school achievement.     

Dominant strategy implementation in economic environments

We study dominant strategy implementation especially in economic environments. We first show that in general environments, strategy-proofness and quasi-strong-non-bossiness together are necessary and sufficient for dominant strategy implementation via the associated direct revelation mechanism. We next prove that in weak separable environments, strategy-proofness is sufficient for dominant strategy implementation, by using an augmented revelation mechanism similar to the one devised by Jackson, Palfrey, and Srivastava [Jackson, M.O., Palfrey, T.R., Srivastava, S., 1994. Undominated Nash implementation in bounded mechanisms. Games Econ. Behav. 6, 474–501]. Moreover, we focus on pure exchange economies without free disposal, and try to construct another augmented revelation mechanism that satisfies balancedness in and out of equilibrium, and which implements all strategy-proof social choice functions in dominant strategy equilibria.     

Making Ethical Judgements: A Cross-Cultural Management Study

This article reports the results of a cross-cultural empirical study across seven countries which investigates the differences in the way managers structure their ethical judgements regarding the loyalty of a corporation to its employees, the loyalty of employees to the corporation, and the loyalty of employees towards their co-workers. Managers' ethical judgements from the East Asian tiger countries of Japan, Korea and Hong Kong are compared with those from the Anglo countries of the United States and Australia, and with those from the transitional countries of Asiatic Russia and Poland. An adapted version of the well documented Reidenbach-Robin instrument is used, and its cross-cultural application investigated. As hypothesized, cross-cultural differences were indicated for both the structure and content of managers' ethical judgements, which have important implications for the way organizations are effectively managed both nationally, regionally and internationally. Weaknesses in the a priori constructs of the research instrument were also indicated, and recommendations made for future development of methodology in this area.     

Spending cuts or tax increases? The composition of fiscal adjustments as a signal

This paper shows that the composition of fiscal adjustments, spending cuts versus tax increases, serves as a signal of the government's degree of collusion with special interests. The politico-economic model of fiscal policies, combining retrospective voting with common-agency-type lobbying, presents undominated separating equilibria and intuitive pooling ones, in both of which fiscal adjustments with sufficiently large spending cuts lead to incumbent reappointment whereas those with only tax increases lead to incumbent defeat. These findings are consistent with the recent empirical evidence of voters behaving as fiscal conservatives. The efficiency-enhancing aspects of the signaling mechanism and the effects of imposing a deficit limit are also analyzed.     

On the constancy of bribe-proof solutions

Summary. We consider the problem of choosing one point in a set of alternatives when monetary transfers are possible. In this context, Schummer (2000) shows that a social choice function must be a constant function if manipulation through bribes is ruled out. But he requires two kinds of domain-richness conditions. One is either smooth connectedness or the finiteness of the set of alternatives and the other is monotonical closedness. However, dispensing with the former condition, we alternatively prove the same result under a weaker condition than monotonical closedness. Received: April 11, 2000; revised version: February 25, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" This paper received the Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Moriguchi Prize in January 2001. I am grateful to Prof. Ryoichi Nagahisa, Prof. Tatsuyoshi Saijo, Prof. Ken-ichi Shimomura, Prof. Ken Urai, and especially two anonymous referees for their useful and helpful comments and suggestions. I am a Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.     

Distribution: Japan's Hidden Advantage

For the exporter the distribution channel is critical. It determines the presentation of products to the customer. It is often argued that the complexity of Japanese distribution channels is an important barrier to Western exporters. Whilst this is true, Japanese exporters faced an equal hurdle in exporting to the West. The key to overcoming this hurdle has been a strategy of significant investment by Japanese companies in distribution. This strategy is a central – although often unrecognised – factor in the success of Japanese exporters to the West. It is Japan's "hidden advantage".