Growth and inequality in the great and little divergence debate: a Japanese perspective

This article addresses the question of growth and inequality in the great and little divergence trajectories on both sides of Eurasia. A social table constructed for Tokugawa Japan in the 1840s is compared with two cases with high levels of inequality, Stuart England and Mughal India, and the subsequent changes in the three countries are traced to the modern era of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Japanese pattern in the early modern period can be characterized by comparatively modest growth with a relatively egalitarian distribution of income between the social classes, but the pattern changed during the subsequent half‐century to one with an increased tempo of growth and a substantial rise in the level of income inequality. The implications of this finding are discussed in terms of the concept of Smithian growth and are placed in the comparative context of the divergence debate.     

The labor market in Tokugawa Japan: Wage differentials and the real wage level, 1727–1830

Tokugawa economic history provides quite an interesting example of the workings of the labor market: In the Tokugawa period a contraction in occupational wage differentials occurred concurrently with a rise in real wages. This paper deals with these aspects of wage change and a general set of problems which has arisen about them. The first section sets out these problems; the second deals with the evidence on wage differentials and real wages in Kinai from 1727 to 1830. The third provides a theoretical framework to explain the findings; finally the last section examines the implications of the findings.     

A comparative analysis of new product development by Italian and Japanese manufacturing companies: A case study

Based on survey data from Italian and Japanese companies, six measurement scales are developed for practices, process, strategic guide, and capabilities for new product development as potential determinants of its financial performance, that is, attainment of profit goals and revenue goals. By employing a regression model with a country dummy variable, the differential determinants of financial goals attainment between Italian and Japanese samples are estimated. A significant difference can be found in the impact of new product development capabilities on profit goals attainment only. Then, we evaluate the level of improvement in explanatory power by dividing the pooled sample into two and enabling regression coefficients to take different values, and find no evidences of the significant improvement. Technology and marketing capabilities concerning new product development are demonstrated to be overwhelmingly important to financial performance.     

SIZE DISTRIBUTION OF WORKERS' HOUSEIIOLD INCOME AND MACROECONOMIC ACTIVITIES IN JAPAN: 1963–88

An attempt is made to examine empirically the relationship between the size distribution of workers' household incomes and the variables expressing macroeconomic activities. As a preliminary implementation, the income shares are first estimated by decile groups and several subdivided top income groups. Applying Blinder and Esaki's regression approach to the estimated data, the ratio of job offers to applicants, inflation rate, and the terms of trade arc found to significantly affect the distribution. Of these variables, the terms of trade should be taken into account to ascertain precisely the income distribution in Japan where foreign trade heavily affects economic conditions.     

Tradition and interaction: research trends in modern Japanese industrial history

This paper surveys research findings since the early 1970s, focusing on the growth processes of both traditional and modern industries and their relations with government activity in the period between the 1870s and 1940. Most of the surveyed research can be seen as a response to two theses: first, that pre-1940 Japan was essentially a market-led economy; and second, that the traditional sector did not decline in the industrialisation process, but in fact prospered. The survey argues that there were a good deal of interactions between the modern and traditional sectors at regional levels and that the regional economy occupied a significant place in the ways in which government business relations were structured.     

Mixed Oligopoly at Free Entry Markets

We investigate the optimal behavior of a public firm in a mixed market involving private firms and one public firm. Existing works show that welfare-maximizing behavior by the public firm is suboptimal when the number of firms is given exogenously. We allow free entry of private firms and find that, in contrast to the case with the fixed number of firms, welfare-maximizing behavior by the public firm is always optimal in mixed markets. Furthermore, we find that mixed markets are better than pure markets involving no public firm if and only if the public firm earns nonnegative profits.