THE IMPACT OF THE MINIMUM WAGE ON FEMALE EMPLOYMENT IN JAPAN

This article examines the impact of the minimum wage on employment, focusing on women in their 20s and 30s, who are known to be typical low‐wage workers in Japan. The results, based on a panel estimation, suggest that the minimum wage has a measurable impact on employment; the workers whose current wage is below the revised minimum wage are about 20–30 percentage points less likely to be employed in the following year than comparable low‐wage workers who are not affected by the revision of the minimum wage. The estimation results are sensitive to the choice of the control group. (JEL J23, J38, J88)     

Revenue Recognition in the Construction Industry: An Experimental Study

There have been suggestions that loan officers do not consider there is a problem in the availability of alternative revenue recognition methods, provided that sufficient disclosure of recognition procedures is made to enable adjustment of financial statements. On the other hand, the accounting literature on'functional fixity' suggests such adjustments are not made. The functional fixity literature has relied exclusively on testing for an accounting method effect on user predictions and decisions. As a result, the evidence can be interpreted as users being fixated on earnings and ignoring information about accounting methods or alternatively they may have given attention to that information and attempted a transformation although the extent of the adjustment was'inadequate'. This paper suggests that the previous evidence on functional fixity is inconclusive about lenders' suggestions that they adjust financial statements and that different actions may be required by lending institutions depending on which interpretation of the functional fixity literature is made. This study uses the joint methodologies of analysis of variance and protocol analysis to focus on both whether adjustments are made as well as whether alternative methods of recognizing profit from longterm contracts affect the judgements of experienced lenders. The results show that the majority of subjects did not attempt to adjust for alternative methods of recognizing revenues.     

LONG-RUN IMPACTS OF AIDS

Over the next century, the impact of the AIDS epidemic on the supply of and returns to factors of production may be significant. Public policies might offset some of the long run impacts, especially if initiated early in the epidemic. History suggests the types of economic effects that can occur in the long run and the limits of public policies' effectiveness in controlling diseases of this type. The models developed here to show possible long run time paths for the epidemic also imply a long-run equilibrium, a concept not appreciated in most disciplines. Because data defciencies make long run numerical forecasting highly controversial, this paper uses history and modeling to emphasize qualitative understanding of the epidemic.     

The CCA Depreciation Problem — An Analysis and Proposal*

The question of Depreciation is one upon which so many articles have been written, and so many opinions expressed, that there would not appear to be much more which could profitably be said upon the subject. (John H. Armstrong, The Accountant, 8 August 1903.)