市场化进程中社会资本还能够充当保险机制吗?——中国农村家庭灾后消费的经验研究

本文研究了在中国农村的市场化过程中,社会资本为遭受自然灾害的家庭的消费平滑提供保险的作用。我们基于2002年中国家庭收入调查(CHIPS)的农村数据进行经验研究,结果显示,互助、公民参与及信任这三种社会资本并没能帮助中国农村家庭抵御自然灾害对于消费的冲击。我们的发现并不依赖于同村家庭遭受自然灾害的同质性程度。我们进一步找到证据表明:社会资本在帮助农户分担风险和平滑消费上的作用随着市场化的深入而减弱。     

Bank diversification and monetary policy

Using bank-level data in Asia, we examine the relationship between the effectiveness of monetary policy and the business diversification of banks. We find that bank diversification enhances the effect of monetary policy.     

Tariff elimination versus tax avoidance: free trade agreements and transfer pricing

International Tax and Public Finance - We explore the new roles of rules of origin (ROO) when multinational enterprises (MNEs) manipulate their transfer prices to avoid a high corporate tax. The...     

Geography and Demography: New Economic Geography With Endogenous Fertility

To explain the links between demographics and economic integration, we construct a new economic geography model with endogenous fertility. Labour mobility across regions results in more people flowing into highly populated regions, but lowers fertility rates there. Finally, regions are divided into one very large region with a higher real wage and another small region with a lower real wage, a higher fertility rate and a supply of workers to the large region. The population growth path resembles a logistic curve in the early phase, but population decreases in the last phase. Economic integration leads to population concentration and decreases population size.     

Firms' open innovation policies,laboratories' external collaborations,and laboratories' R&D performance

The value of the open innovation approach is now widely recognized, and the practice has been extensively researched, but still very little is known about the relative impact of firm‐level and laboratory‐level open innovation policies and practices on R&D performance. This study attempts to measure that impact by analyzing a sample of 203 laboratories of Japanese firms located in Japan. It examines simultaneously the effects of firm‐level open innovation policy and laboratory‐level external collaborations on laboratory R&D performance. The study aims to go beyond a general understanding of the importance of open innovation; it shows how an open innovation policy can have a positive and significant effect on collaborations between a laboratory and local universities or business organizations. The results also show how an open innovation policy can contribute to the laboratory's R&D performance by facilitating external collaborations by the laboratories. It demonstrates how these factors affect R&D performance in different ways, depending on the type of R&D tasks. Our findings suggest several theoretical and practical implications in the field of R&D management.     

Development of educational program for production manager leading new perspectives on manufacturing technology

In this paper, we consider the problems associated with the development and management of an educational program for manufacturing managers in leadership roles who are making contributions towards the creation of customer delight as well as customer satisfaction using manufacturing technology. The basic concept combines an intelligent knowledge-based approach with the kaizen activity program within the framework of value creation and comparative advantage models based on a network referred to as Academia, Business, Consultancy, and Government (ABC-G). This educational program, which reflects the characteristics of manufacturing technologies and practices in the Hokuriku District of Japan, was developed in 2005–2006 and the trial education was developed in 2005 and 2006, and a trial run of this program was conducted in 2006 and 2007 in close collaboration with local manufacturing companies and their employees. The results are informative of the effects of educating manufacturing managers in Japan and the problems that will have to be overcome for the continuous improvement of the program.     

Mass media effects on trading activities: television broadcasting evidence from Japan

This study examines how information broadcasting through television (TV) media influences stock market activities. Consistent with the effect of TV information to attract investor attention, we find that increased information flow through TV is significantly associated with greater trading volume and larger price change. For information type, hard news from business-oriented programmes and earnings-related news strongly contributes to the attention effect, while the effect of soft news is weaker. Bid–ask spread widens for more TV information flows, suggesting that new information arrival in the market expands information asymmetry. Finally, the impact of TV is more influential for stocks with more individual shareholders than those with institutional shareholders.     

Effects of Anticipated Fiscal Policy Shock on Macroeconomic Dynamics in Japan

This study investigates the effects of fiscal policy on macroeconomic dynamics in Japan with a particular focus on the effects of anticipated fiscal policy shock and the recent policies of Abenomics. We identify anticipated fiscal policy shock by combining excess stock returns for the construction industry and the vector autoregressive model with robust sign restrictions derived from a theoretical model. The primary result is that GDP and consumption respond positively to anticipated fiscal policy shock. In addition, the result of the historical decomposition that focuses on the period of Abenomics reveals that anticipated fiscal policy shock positively contributes to consumption dynamics.