Price versus Quantity in a Duopolistic Market with Bargaining over Managerial Delegation Contracts

This paper studies the endogenous choices of strategic contracts in a duopoly with bargaining between the owner and manager of each firm over the content of the managerial delegation contract. We show that when the bargaining power of the manager relative to that of the owner within each firm is sufficiently high, quantity competition based on the quantity contracts chosen by the owners of both firms can be uniquely observed in the equilibrium, whereas quantity competition and price competition can be observed in the equilibrium when this relative bargaining power is sufficiently low. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Transitioning to IFRS in Japan: Corporate Perceptions of Costs and Benefits

This paper examines the ongoing transition to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in Japan with a particular focus on recent institutional developments and corporate concerns. While Japan has committed to the convergence of Japanese generally accepted accounting principles (J‐GAAP) with IFRS it has not as yet formally adopted IFRS. This paper reports on Japanese corporate perceptions of the likely costs and benefits of adopting and implementing IFRS using survey data collected from senior financial executives of 292 Japanese listed companies in 2013–14. Our findings reveal that Japanese companies identify a number of major areas of general concern with the adoption and implementation of IFRS. Most importantly, uncertainty regarding the interpretation of standards followed by staff training, IT systems, technical knowledge and differences between J‐GAAP and IFRS were reported as major concerns. Our survey also highlights that revenue recognition, depreciation, consolidated financial statements, financial statement presentation and the retrospective application of IFRS were viewed as key IFRS accounting issues. While the large majority of companies expected a moderate degree of benefits to arise from IFRS, substantial benefits were perceived more likely to apply to large and overseas listed companies mainly arising from improvements in the international comparability of financial statements.     

Technical change in a bubble economy: Japanese manufacturing firms in the 1990s

An important economic policy issue is to ascertain when and if technical change (TC) is driving measured growth in productivity. Was this the case for Japan during the late 1980s when a massive financial bubble was being formed? This paper addresses this question, after first further developing methods needed for this purpose. The movement of firms’ TC is of particular policy interest to Japan whose economy has been suffering from a prolonged recession for more than a decade since the burst of the bubble in 1990. In the period of time immediately prior to the burst of the bubble, our estimation results show a significant drop in technical progress. What we believe these results reflect is that Japanese manufacturing firms made excessive investments in production inputs in the years when the bubble was being formed. This excessive investment in inputs did not contribute positively to TC and hence the measured productivity and economic growth of the bubble period in the late 1980s was unsustainable.     

Endogenous Choice of Strategic Contracts in a Mixed Duopoly with Bargaining Over Managerial Delegation Contracts

We revisit the endogenous choice problem of strategic contracts for the public firm and the private firm in a managerial mixed duopoly with differentiated goods. We consider the situation wherein the managerial delegation contracts are determined by maximising social welfare within the public firm, which is equal to the objective function of its owner, and through bargaining over the content of managerial delegation contracts between the owner and manager within the private firm. We show that, in equilibrium, when the manager of the private firm has high bargaining power relative to that of the owner, the public firm chooses a price contract, while the private firm chooses a quantity contract. However, there is no equilibrium market structure under the pure strategic contract class when the manager has sufficiently low bargaining power relative to that of the owner.     

Environmental Management in Japan: Applications of Input–Output Analysis to the Emission of Global Warming Gases

Environmental management requires, among other things, the incorporation of environmentally friendly technologies into production processes of environmentally friendly technologies into production processes at the producer level and the adoption of energy consumption patterns which save energy use at the household level. The systemwide approach involving both technology choice and consumer preference seems particularly essential for controlling the total emission of global warming gases. CO₂ and other global warming gases, as well as certain pollution causing gases, are produced when fossil fuels are burnt; and the consumption of fossil fuels occurs in both the production and consumption of goods and services. In this paper we discuss how input–output analysis can be used to estimate the entire production and consumption of global warming gases conditional on production technology and consumer preferences. We also present estimation results and their application to some environmental management issues in Japan. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.