Japanese business culture: the government,mainstream enterprises and ‘mavericks’ in the steel industry

Some scholars have argued that Japanese business epitomizes organized capitalism, and no-one would deny that the government and trade associations were pivotal in the distinctive development of Japanese capitalism. But it is frequently emphasized that competition between firms was fierce. One interpretation is that Japanese firms co-operated in developing technologies, and also collaborated in pricing policy, output allocation and capital investment. This collaborative endeavour gives the impression of a business environment that was static and collusive. By contrast individual firms competed aggressively in the improvement of the product quality, in productivity and in marketing. Infrequently a few determined firms refused to follow government guidance and openly challenged it. Two examples, Kawasaki Steel in 1950 and Sumitomo Metal in 1965, require a wider perspective than business-government relationships. It is the triangular matrix of government, mainstream firms, and ‘mavericks’ that has to be considered. Mainstream firms have a close relationship with government and try to impede the aggressive behaviour of ‘mavericks’. Exploring these tripartite interactions is crucial to any understanding of Japanese industry.     

Tied Aid and Welfare

In this paper we present a model of tied aid to shed light on the dispute between Kemp and Kojima (1985 ) and Schweinberger (1990 ) and to complement their analyses. We show that if the households of the recipient country are not informed of the transfers at their consumption decision, they have an incentive to trade the purchased goods from their domestic production income whenever transfer paradoxes occur. We also demonstrate that when they are aware of the transfers and can trade the purchased goods from their production income, there are no transfer paradoxes under the normality condition of commodities.     

Incumbent’s price response to new entry: The case of Japanese supermarkets

Large-scale supermarkets have rapidly expanded in Japan over the past two decades, partly because of zoning deregulations for large-scale merchants. This study examines the effect of supermarket openings on the price of national-brand products sold at local incumbents, using scanner price data with a panel structure. Detailed geographic information on store location enables us to define treatment and control groups to control for unobserved heterogeneity and temporary demand shock. The analysis reveals that stores in the treatment group lowered their prices of curry paste, bottled tea, instant noodles, and toothpaste by 0.4–3.1% more than stores in a control group in response to a large-scale supermarket opening.     

A geometric approach to temptation

We provide a simple geometric proof of the Gul and Pesendorfer’s (Gul and Pesendorfer, 2001) utility representation theorem about choice under temptation without self-control. We extract two incomplete orders from preferences: temptation relation and resistance relation. We characterize those relations geometrically and obtain temptation utility using a separation method à la Aumann (Aumann, 1962).     

IS THERE A SIGNALING EFFECT OF UNDERWRITER REPUTATION?

In this article we examine the effect of underwriter reputation on the abnormal return due to an announcement to issue seasoned new equity. After controlling for other factors that relate asymmetric information to abnormal returns, underwriter reputation still significantly reduces the magnitude of the negative announcement effect. We also develop a procedure to extract a signaling component from the measure of underwriter reputation. We show that the signaling component of underwriter reputation positively and significantly affects abnormal returns. This result supports the notion that issuing firms use underwriter reputation as an effective instrument to signal that their stocks are not overvalued. JEL classification: D82, G24, G30     

Micro and macro price dynamics in daily data

Using Japanese daily scanner data with three billion observations of prices and quantities from 1988 to 2005, this paper investigates micro and macro price dynamics. These data reveal that the frequency of price changes is much larger than that found in standard monthly datasets. The price change frequency exhibits a clear trend and strong across-store heterogeneity, which casts doubts on standard New Keynesian assumptions. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) based on scanner data appears to track the official CPI relatively well, except for a period in which the latter arguably had an upward bias.     

Catch More to Catch Less: Estimating Timing Choice as Dynamic Bycatch Avoidance Behavior

Environmental and Resource Economics - We model harvesters’ temporal participation behavior in a fishery with individual quotas for both a target and bycatch species. Harvesters make...