Corporate Restructuring in Japan Part I: Can M‐Form Organization Manage Diverse Businesses?

The purpose of this paper is to examine the recent organizational restructuring in Japan in the framework of organizational economics, assuming that the product/market portfolio of the firm is fixed. How does a firm set about organizing its internal divisions? I first summarize some stylized facts on corporate diversification strategy and multi‐divisional (M‐form) organization in large Japanese firms from different perspectives. I then analyse the problem of choosing an organizational form. In particular, I argue that, precisely because of its related diversification, the multi‐business Japanese firm adopting the M‐form finds it difficult to differentiate its diverse businesses internally.     

Second-best efficiency of allocation rules: strategy-proofness and single-peaked preferences with multiple commodities

We study strategy-proof allocation rules in economies with perfectly divisible multiple commodities and single-peaked preferences. In this setup, it is known that the incompatibility among strategy-proofness, Pareto efficiency and non-dictatorship arises in contrast with the Sprumont (Econometrica 59:509–519, 1991) one commodity model. We first investigate the existence problem of strategy-proof and second-best efficient rules, where a strategy-proof rule is second-best efficient if it is not Pareto-dominated by any other strategy-proof rules. We show that there exists an egalitarian rational (consequently, non-dictatorial) strategy-proof rule satisfying second-best efficiency. Second, we give a new characterization of the generalized uniform rule with the second-best efficiency in two-agent case.     

Monopoly,product differentiation and economic welfare

This paper discusses the pricing behavior of a monopolistic producer supplying several quality-differentiated goods by using a model of a Lancasterian characteristic approach with consumer's taste pattern dispersed. It examines how finer product differentiation, which is made by the producer by means of the introduction of a new good, changes the price structure and consumer's welfare. It will be establised that the entry of a new good imposes quite different impacts on the price of the goods of higher quality and on those of lower-quality goods.     

The Economic Impact of Herd Behavior in the Japanese Loan Market

This paper investigates whether inefficient herd behavior of Japanese financial institutions in the domestic loan market affected the real economy during the period between 1975 and 1999. By using Japanese loan data, arranged by geographical area, we show that loans stemming from inefficient herd behavior of Japanese financial institutions tended to have destabilizing effects on the GDP and land prices in the following years, while ordinary loans of those financial institutions had a more positive impact. Our results indicate that the deterioration of the real economy in the 1990s may have been attributable partly to the inefficient herd behavior in the Japanese loan market during the period of the economic bubble in the late 1980s.     

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.     

ENDOGENIZING CONSUMPTION IN THE INPUT‐OUTPUT MODEL: THEORY AND APPLICATION

Since the basic model of input‐output analysis does not take into consideration the income effect on consumption expenditure, we constructed a model which endogenizes consumption and breaks down integrated production inducement into Leontief and Keynesian effects in a generalized context and in two solution approaches. Using short‐term marginal consumption propensities, we estimated that Keynesian effects make up about 14% of the integrated inducement effects for Japan. The public services sector, which is not influential in the basic model, becomes very influential in consideration of Keynesian effects. Manufacturing and service sector products are the main targets of the expanded consumption. The impact of a change in exogenous final demand can be easily simulated by applying the suggested apparent input coefficient matrix to the integrated inverse matrix.