The Changing Nature of Japanese Production Systems in the 1990s and Issues for Labour Studies

The authors discuss the changing character of production strategies and organizational arrangements at three leading Japanese automotive assemblers against a background of concern with the impact of work regimes upon employees. Innovations in production line organization are compared within and between the companies, and the argument advanced suggests that the attempt to ‘humanize’ work routines and procedures, by the leading company especially, has met with mixed results. Sornetimcs more ‘efficient’ technologies and forms of organization have been inhibited in the pursuit of ‘human-centred’ forms of work organization. Nevertheless, the article points up the considerable variations which exist both between and within Japanese companies and trade unions with respect to the understanding of the role played by labour.     

Time Preference and Trade Imbalance

This paper presents a unified theory of trade and investment in a world where the rate of time preference varies between countries. In the framework proposed by Buiter (1981 ), we can analyze a situation wherein two countries have different rates of discount. Here, the value of the debt to income does not converge to zero but remains constant even in the long run. Furthermore, we show that the existence of less‐capital‐intensive nontradables promotes capital movements: since a more patient country incompletely specializes in less‐capital‐intensive nontradables, capital must flow out of it.     

Equity and efficiency effects of redistributive policies

How do various forms of redistribution affect the distributions of earnings and consumption and their intergenerational mobility? Do redistributive policies enhance efficiency by mitigating market imperfections? Or do they create a trade-off between equity and efficiency? To address these issues, a dynamic general equilibrium model is constructed and solved numerically. The effects of the degrees of targeting of money transfers and educational transfers and the relative performance of the two types of transfers are examined.     

Public capital and patterns of growth in the presence of threshold externalities

This paper studies the relation between public capital accumulation and long-run economic growth. We emphasize three phenomena that may be accompanied by the presence of public capital: increasing returns, rivalry, and threshold externalities. We formulate a simple growth model that captures these features of public capital in a tractable manner. Assuming that investment for public capital financed by income taxation, we show that the threshold externalities may generate multiple equilibria, so that the pattern of growth and the realization of a specific steady-growth equilibrium are quite sensitive to the rate of income tax as well as to expectations of agents.     

Patent Policy in an Endogenous Growth Model

We investigate how the patent policy affects economic growth and social welfare based on an endogenous growth model with R&D activities. We show that the patent length that maximizes the social welfare is finite. Moreover, by introducing compulsory licensing, we also show that the patent length that maximizes the social welfare is not infinite even if the royalty rate can be controlled. Received June 29, 2001; revised version received February 5, 2002 Published online: February 17, 2003 We wish to thank two anonymous referees for their constructive comments. We also thank Akira Yakita for his helpful comments.     

Recovery Process Model for Two Companies

The quantification of the recovery rate for the debt of the defaulted small company is one of the most important problems for banks and their supervisors. However, the data of the real recovery rates is seldom available for academic study. Therefore, there have been a few studies for the recovery rate for the debt. The recovery process model for a single company is introduced by Itoh (Asia Pac Financ Mark 2008). In this paper, we extend the model of Itoh (Asia Pac Financ Mark 2008) to two defaulted companies, and we model the recovery processes using an inhomogeneous bivariate compound Poisson process with the delays. In other word, we assume that the recoveries are occurred by the shocks, and that there are individual shocks that affect only one company and common shocks that affect two companies. Moreover, we assume that there are delays between the shock points and the recovery points. Therefore, the recovery points of two companies are correlated, but the recoveries do not occur synchronously almost surely. We derive the correlation of the recovery rates of the debts of two defaulted companies, and the expected value and the standard deviation of the recovery rate for the defaulted debt portfolio. Furthermore, we present two methods based on the Vernic recursion formula and the Monte Calro simulation for calculating the probability distribution function of the recovery process, and illustrate several numerical results.     

Portfolio Insurance with Liquidity Risk

This paper studies a portfolio insurance problem with liquidity risk. We consider an investor who wants to maximize the expected growth rate of wealth in a low liquid market. The investor can trade assets only at random times and his wealth must not fall below a predetermined floor. We find the optimal expected growth rate and an optimal strategy. The optimal strategy is closely related with a traditional constant proportion portfolio insurance strategy. Also we show that the same strategy maximizes the growth rate almost surely. Further we study the floor effect on the growth rate.     

Business process semi-automation based on business model management

It is important to respond to customers' requirements more rapidly than ever before due to the recent trend in e-business and its technologies. In order to achieve an agile response, we have to manage business models, to reflect the changes in the models and to develop or modify IT systems for further chances. This paper proposes a management framework of layered enterprise models. The proposed framework consists of a business model repository and a software repository, and defines three different grain sizes of modeling layers, namely business modeling, business process modeling and business application modeling, in order to support business modeling and application development. This framework helps us to develop business application in incremental deployment of analysis, design, and implementation to execute business processes. We have implemented a prototype environment using Java. Each repository's contents are described using XML so that the repositories are interoperable. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Choice Between Flexible Exchange Rates, Capital Control and the Currency Board in Asian Countries: A Perspective from the "Impossible Trinity"

We attempt to compare adjustment costs under exchange rate regimes in East Asian economies during their recovery processes. The criteria are the degree of overshooting in exchange rates, the changes in country risks, and the severity and duration of the recovery processes. Linear ranking is difficult. Managed rates with capital control worked for macroeconomic performance despite the welfare loss due to blocking capital flows. The currency board system worked well for stability, but recent experiences of Argentina and Hong Kong were deflationary. Under flexible rates, many economies that received IMF grants suffered a drastic initial downturn but later recovered vigorously. JEL Classification Numbers: F31, F32, F33.