Who explores further? Evidence on R&D outsourcing from the survey of research and development

Building off the resource‐based view and the knowledge‐based view, our study aims to examine determinants of firms’ R&D outsourcing, using annually‐conducted firm‐level survey data of Japanese R&D companies from 1984–2012. This survey allows us to measure strategic R&D outsourcing, isolated from those more for cost‐reducing, such as prototyping, testing and inspecting. The results corroborate the argument of complementarity in scale between internal R&D and R&D outsourcing. We also find that firms employing more doctorate holders and diversifying in knowledge spaces tend to make more use of R&D outsourcing. This study sheds light on firms’ absorptive capacity, associated both with higher‐order R&D human capital and diversified knowledge spaces, as determinants of R&D outsourcing.     

PRINTEPS: An Integrated Intelligent Application Development Platform based on Stream Reasoning and ROS

Although AI and service robot applications have become very popular in many domains recently, many of them are specific applications and it is still difficult to develop integrated intelligent applications such as a robot teahouse and teaching assistant robots. To develop such integrated intelligent applications, we need integrated intelligent application platforms that have AI integration and agile process facilities. From the above background, we are currently developing PRactical INTElligent aPplicationS (PRINTEPS), which is a platform for developing integrated intelligent applications by combining only five types of modules, namely knowledge-based reasoning, spoken dialogue, image sensing, motion management, and machine learning. This paper proposes a workflow editor in PRINETPS based on a service-oriented architecture and a Robot Operating System that enables real-time parallel processing for multiple robots and sensors by integrating the five types of modules. The editor also supports not only developers but also domain experts in updating workflows frequently. This paper also proposes a novel method to integrate signals acquired through image sensing with knowledge (ontologies and business rules) using C-SPARQL and Semantic Web Rule Language. To evaluate PRINTEPS, we developed a robot teahouse application including customer reception and guidance to table services using a humanoid robot with PRINTEPS. Through this case study, we demonstrated that the behaviors of the robot can be modified by changing the workflow, the ontology, and the rules.     

Inflexibility of Share Repurchases*

This paper investigates the flexibility inherent in open market share repurchases. Open market share repurchases are recognized as being flexible, since managers believe that they are not an ongoing commitment. However, I find that such returns significantly decrease upon announcing the completion of a repurchase program if firms do not concurrently announce new program authorizations. I also find that announcement returns significantly decline with completion rates and that a high completion rate acts as a negative signal, revealing that firms have finished the repurchasing activities and do not intend to continue share repurchasing in the foreseeable future. These results indicate that share repurchases are less flexible than they were previously thought to be.     

Discounting,Distribution and Disaggregation: Discount Rates for the Rich and the Poor with Climate as a Source of Utility

To consider the implications of disaggregated consumption and discounting in the context of climate change, we study discounting in a world composed of the rich and the poor; a standard setting in the literature of cost–benefit analysis with distributional considerations. We derive several discount rates for different numéraires, which allow us to discuss intergenerational and intragenerational equity in common terms. In the example of CES‐CRRA utility, we also show that disaggregated discount rates may vary owing to several factors. One important parameter, inequality aversion, can be determined in the weighting of intergenerational and intragenerational concerns.     

Technological Constraints,Firm Heterogeneity,and Location Choice of Multinational Enterprises

This paper aims to examine the relationship between the location choices of multinational enterprises and their productivity considering the North–South differences in regard to technological constraints. We find that home firms with the highest level of productivity choose to undertake foreign direct investment (FDI) in the developed countries and they choose to export to, rather than do FDI in, developing countries. This result explains why not many high tech industries exist in developing countries. Using Japanese firm level data, we also confirm that Japanese high tech firms tend to undertake FDI in developed countries, but hesitate to invest in developing countries empirically.     

Important attributes of lodgings to gain repeat business: A comparison between individual travels and group travels

The purpose of this study is to investigate the attributes of the satisfaction that are related to the lodging-guests’ tendency to revisit the lodgings and to compare these attributes among the different travel styles, such as individual travel, travel with friends or as a couple, and travel with family. We examine 6351 guest evaluations from a highly popular travel reservations website. Multinomial logistic regression analyses are performed and they show that the important attributes for lodgings to gain repeat business vary among their guest's travel styles.     

Foreign direct investment,international trade,and firm heterogeneity

We present an asymmetric model with firm heterogeneity and foreign direct investment (FDI) from a developed country to a developing country. We found that the successful entry firms could be sorted from highest to lowest according to productivity as reimport firms, FDI firms, export firms, and domestic firms. We also found that FDI decreases (increases) the gross national income of the developed (developing) country, but it can either increase or decrease the world income according to the level of the relative propensity to spend. In addition, we demonstrated that FDI influences welfare through variations in average price, national income, and the number of types of goods.     

Logit and multinomial logit models for discrete-time event-history analysis: a causal analysis of interdependent discretestate processes

This paper introduces a new direction of methodological elaborations in event-history analysis based on discrete-time logit and multinomial logit models. The methodological elaborations address (1) simultaneous analysis of two-way transitions between two states, and (2) its extension for a causal analysis of two interdependent two-state processes. The former elaboration permits a more parsimonious and unambiguous expression for the effects of covariates on the dependent process than can be obtained by separate analyses of each direction of transition. The latter elaboration provides an extension for a log-linear causal analysis of 16-fold tables presenting two-wave-two-variable panel data, and relates the log-linear analysis to event-history analysis. An illustrative application, focusing on the dynamic relationship between premarital cohabitation and marijuana use, demonstrates the usefulness of the new models and methods.     

Family Policies and Female Employment in Japan

This paper discusses how childcare and parental leave policies affect female employment by reviewing the international evidence and recent papers on Japan. These papers estimate causal effects of policies by exploiting policy changes, which is a more credible identification strategy than those applied in earlier observational studies. The literature on parental leave finds that a more generous leave package tends to delay mothers’ return to work, but it does not have detrimental effects on maternal labour supply in the medium to long run. Some papers also find that provision of job protection for around 1 year can increase maternal employment, but longer job protection has little additional effects. The literature on childcare policies finds that maternal employment does not necessarily increase, because the expansion of childcare may crowd out informal childcare arrangements, such as care provided by grandparents. Findings by recent papers on Japan are largely consistent with the international evidence.     

Asset valuation and accounting strategy within the Japanese shipping industry c.1876-c.1950

The Japanese shipping industry adopted European-style book-keeping in the 1870s. Before 1937, there were few regulations on accounting practices in Japan and we can observe their natural evolution at the Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK). NYK, which prospered to become a blue-chip company, developed its accounting techniques in asset valuation exploiting a policy that income and expense from selling securities or vessels should not go directly to the profit and loss account. Asset revaluations were undertaken not to reflect market value but to implement accounting strategy.