Knowledge capital and the private rate of return to R&D in Japanese manufacturing industries

This paper examines the relationship between R&D investment and the rate of increase of labor productivity in Japanese manufacturing industries, and derives the rate of return to such investment through a Cobb-Douglas production function which explicitly includes knowledge capital stock. It is argued that the rate of return to R&D investment has been much higher than those of alternative investments but has declined in recent years as the dependence on imported technologies has been diminishing after the last half of the 1970's.     

Accountics: Impacts of internationally standardized accounting on the Japanese socio-economy

This is a case study of the dissemination of internationally standardized accounting to a nation where standardized accounting was hitherto only loosely practised under domestic conditions. Soon after World War II, a growing interest in socio-economic management, rather than microeconomic or corporate financing, accelerated the implementation of standardized accounting in Japan. In order to make unintelligible delineations of the economy and its constituent firms comprehensible, official and governable, both national and corporate accounting came to occupy an important position as a formal mode of economic data and management. The actors were the officials of the Allied Powers, economic statisticians and academic accountants; whose motives, political manoeuvres and consequences are here reconstructed based on the primary archives of, and interviews with, those who were directly involved in this revolution. The revolution directed new courses of the Japanese economy and firms through the development of “statistical habits of thought”. In order to clarify the relevance of this history to today’s international accounting issues, a few comparative references are also made to the recent development and implementation process of International Accounting Standards and International Financial Reporting Standards (IAS/IFRS).     

On the Predictability of Japanese Stock Returns Using Dividend Yield

The aim of this paper is to provide a critical and comprehensive reexamination of empirical evidence on the ability of the dividend yield to predict Japanese stock returns. Our empirical results suggest that in general, the predictability is weak. However, (1) if the bubble economy period (1986–1998), during which dividend yields were persistently lower than the historical average, is excluded from the sample, and (2) if positive autocorrelation in monthly aggregate returns is taken into account, there is some evidence that the log dividend yield is indeed useful in forecasting future stock returns. More specifically, the log dividend yield contributes to predicting monthly stock returns in the sample after 1990 and when lagged stock returns are included simultaneously.     

The deterioration of the terms of trade by a tariff

The paper investigates the classic problem of the effect of a tariff on the terms of trade for a country with monopoly power in trade. It shows that the terms of trade may deteriorate in the presence of a tariff, by using a three-traded-goods model as against the earlier analyses in terms of the two-good model. An earlier analysis by Gruen-Corden of such a model used unnecessarily restrictive assumptions to discuss this problem; the present model is perfectly general.     

The Strategy and structure of top 100 Japanese industrial enterprises 1950–1970

This paper examines the strategic and structural development of the 100 largest Japanese manufacturing enterprises between 1950 and 1970. Unlike other studies of Japanese business the author focuses not only on some of the key differences between Western and Japanese firms such as the emergence of widely diversified industrial groups, but also on similarities. Using the model developed originally by Channon the author traces the development of diversification in Japan and the emergence of the multidivisional forms of organization which as in the West prove to be the major strategic and structural forms in Japan by 1970.     

China's Non-Performing Bank Loan Crisis: the role of economic rents

Various reasons have been put forward to explain the massive accumulation of non-performing loans in China. This paper applies the financial-restraint model as the analytical framework and argues that failure to create sufficient economic rents is the chief reason underlying the current dismal performance of banks. While the formal financial system is less important than the informal system—especially for financing the private enterprises that are playing a crucial role in economic growth—not addressing the non-performing loan crisis in the formal financial system will likely invite an economic slow-down.     

Potential cost savings of frequent flyer miles for business travel

The mileage redemption strategy is a procedure used by many business firms to reduce air travel costs, in which the frequent flyer miles of traveling employees accumulated during business trips are applied to their future business trips to obtain “free” air tickets. This paper presents a framework that investigates how the frequent flyer miles can be used in the most effective way to reduce air travel costs by those firms that are either using the mileage redemption strategy or considering the use of the strategy. The framework can be implemented quite easily by a spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel.     

Willingness to pay for managerial training: A case from the knitwear industry in Northern Vietnam

Managerial capital has received attention in recent years as one of the major determinants for enterprise productivity, growth, and longevity. While recent empirical studies make it clear that training intervention can improve the management level, it remains unclear why the managers had not made efforts to obtain these basic knowledge. To test the hypothesis that the reason lies in low valuation for obtaining knowledge, we conduct experimental training programs for the managers of SMEs in a knitwear cluster in rural town in Vietnam. We find that the demand for these training was indeed low prior to training, but increased greatly with own learning experience, and that those with a higher prior demand tended to benefit more from the training.     

An Agent that Facilitates Crowd Discussion

Group Decision and Negotiation - Online discussion platforms are perceived as the next-generation method of citizen involvement. Such platforms can collect, integrate, and synthesize opinions to...     

Using managers' expectations for ex-ante policy evaluation: Evidence from the COVID-19 crisis

Evaluation of the impacts of government policies during an economic crisis is often delayed until the outcomes are realized. Policies can be better guided if they can be evaluated amid a crisis, before the realization of outcomes. This study examines whether survey data on the expectations of small business managers can help evaluate two high-stake subsidies for firms amid the COVID-19 crisis in Japan, namely, Subsidy Program for Sustaining Businesses (SPSB) and Employment Adjustment Subsidy (EAS). We evaluate the accuracy of managers' expectations, estimate the impact of subsidies on the expected firm survival, and compare it with the estimated impact on realized survival. We find that the managers' expectations on their future sales, survival rate, and the possibility of receiving these subsidies predict the realized outcomes, although they were highly pessimistic about their survival rates. We find that the estimated impacts of the SPSB on the expected survival rates have the same sign as the estimated impact on the realized survival rates, but the size is more than twice because of the pessimism on survival. The estimated impacts of the EAS are both insignificant. Therefore, although its impact may be overestimated, managers' expectations are useful for selecting an effective policy.