What characterizes Chinese consumer behavior? A cross-industry analysis of the Chinese diaspora in Japan

In order to profit from China??s enormous business opportunities, international firms need to know Chinese consumer preferences. To learn more about intrinsic Chinese consumer preferences and their distinction from other Asian consumer preferences, this study analyzes differences in the formation of customer satisfaction, repurchase intent, and word-of-mouth intent between Chinese-born and locally born consumers in Japan. Verifying culture-based hypotheses, cross-industry analyses show that Chinese-born consumers pay less attention to the public brand image and risk-related switching costs, but more attention to quality expectations, perceived value, experienced usefulness, and financial switching costs than Japanese consumers. Marketing strategies should account for these preference structures.     

Interregional economic-demographic model of the Tokyo region

The Tokyo Metropolitan Area consists of four prefectures, and experienced a rapid social inflow of population from other areas in 1960s, and a removal of residential population from CBD to suburban cities within the Area in 1970s. Tokyo prefecture at the centre functioned as CBD, and showed a continuous growth of economic activities, while the leading sector changed from secondary to tertiary sector. The number of daily commuters to Tokyo prefecture has increased to two million persons. Thus in the Tokyo prefecture several variables like social inflow, employment in secondary sector and residential population reached to historical highest values in late 1960s and early 1970s, An economic-demographic model is constructed by pooling data of four prefectures for 1965–1979 to describle these rapid changes in four prefectures.

The model consists of seven blocks (population, commutation, employment, production, income and expenditure, capital stock, price) and contains 142 equations. Social movement of residential population is explained by per capita income, housing stock, endowment of social overhead capital, and land price. Daily commuters are explained by labor productivities. Private and public investments are endogenously explained in the model. Potential type variables of income and population are used to describe the interregional linkages in various equations. After final test the model could properly explain the turning point period of Tokyo, and drastic changes of Metropolitan Area. The model is then applied to the forecast up to 1990, and several simulation studies to clarify various policy effects.     

An experimental approach to the effectiveness of an incentive system against moral hazard in the insurance market

Although traditional Japanese insurance theory has tended to assume the basic altruism of policyholders, this assumption may not be warranted. Many people might be opportunists rather than altruists. So in the actual insurance market, moral hazard may occur not accidentally but naturally. Without effective incentive mechanisms, policyholders may deviate from their original purpose. It is important to design penalties as negative incentives for the control and prevention of moral hazard. We test these propositions here by means of a game theory and questionnaire. The reason why we use a game theory and carry out the questionnaire is that it is not suitable to apply the econometric model to collect reliable data about moral hazard.     

Average employee tenure,voluntary turnover ratio,and labour productivity: evidence from Japanese firms

Using Japanese firms' data, this study shows that voluntary turnover ratio is negatively related to firm labour productivity. While recent studies have reported the negative influence of turnover on organizational performance (Kacmar et al., 2006 Kacmar, K.M., Andrews, M.C., van Rooy, D.L., Steilberg, R.C. and Cerrone, S. 2006. Sure Everyone can be Replaced… But at What Cost? Turnover as a Predictor of Unit-Level Performance. Academy of Management Journal, 49: 133–44. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Shaw et al., 2005a Shaw, J.D., Gupta, N. and Delery, J.E. 2005a. Alternative Conceptualizations of the Relationship between Voluntary Turnover and Organizational Performance. Academy of Management Journal, 48: 50–68. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), they analysed only US samples. Our study contributes to researchers' efforts to generalize the relationship between voluntary turnover and organizational performance. Turnover is detrimental to labour productivity as it reduces the stock of firm-specific human capital that a firm retains. Findings suggest that firm average employee tenure mediates the relationship between voluntary turnover and labour productivity.     

Technological retard in small least developed countries — small is beautiful but fragile?

This paper argued the technological retard and its influence to stagnant economic growth in small least developed countries. First we measured the technological development by UNIDO's TCI, and found that the level of technical complexities in island or inland countries was lower than the normal level by 27 and 57 per cent. We also found that the development of technical complexity is very important to industrialization in developing countries. Thus the stagnant technological improvement is one of the reasons for low growth of LDCs handicapped by smallness or isolation. Secondly we analyzed the relation between stagnant technological improvement and the low growth of small LDCs by a simple growth model, which combines the Romer-type non-linear production function and human capital growth equation. The brain drain was explicitly considered a main hindrance of human capital formation in these LDCs.     

Deregulating Overtime Hours Restrictions on Women and its Effects on Female Employment: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Japan

This paper provides novel evidence on the effect of deregulating overtime hours restrictions on women by using the 1985 Amendments to the Labour Standards Act (LSA) in Japan as a natural experiment. The original LSA of 1947 prohibited women from working overtime exceeding two hours a day; six hours a week; and 150 hours a year. The 1985 Amendments exempted a variety of occupations and industries from such an overtime restriction on women. Applying a difference‐in‐difference model to census data, we find causal evidence pointing to the positive effect of this particular piece of labour market deregulation on the proportion of female employment. We then carry out a series of sensitivity analyses to ensure the robustness of our finding. Especially, we conduct a falsification test and an event study to show that our causal inference is not threatened by the differential pretreatment trends. Finally, we use quantile regressions and find that for jobs with more rapidly growing proportion of female employment, the effect of the exemption from the overtime work restriction on women is larger.     

INSUFFICIENT ENTRY OF EMPLOYEE‐CONTROLLED FIRMS IN A FREE‐ENTRY OLIGOPOLY

This study is a theoretical examination of whether employee‐controlled firms (ECFs) enter a free‐entry oligopolistic market excessively or insufficiently, from the viewpoint of welfare maximization. The excess entry theorem is well known in oligopoly theory. According to this theorem, a greater number of profit‐maximizing firms enter a free‐entry oligopolistic market than is optimal for welfare maximization. We demonstrate the possibility that insufficient entry arises when ECFs compete in a free‐entry market. In particular, we show that if both the demand and cost functions are convex, insufficient ECF entry necessarily occurs. Our results suggest that competition among firms seeking purposes other than profit might lead to insufficient entry because differences in competing firms’ objectives affect the intensity of market competition.