A cohort analysis of male labor supply in Japan

This study uses repeated cross-sectional data from 1982 to 2007 to understand labor force behavior of men in Japan, focusing on the increase in non-regular employment. I find that regular employment fell significantly for recent cohorts of less-educated men. Regular employment of single men and less-educated married men responded more to the business cycle than did regular employment of highly educated married men. Cohorts who finished their schooling in the late 1990s and early 2000s experienced a severe decline in regular employment at young ages, although this phenomenon was mainly observed among single men and not among married men.     

Corporate Governance Structure and Employment Adjustment in Japan: An Empirical Analysis Using Corporate Finance Data

I investigate the influence of corporate governance structures on employment adjustment in Japanese firms, using financial data for firms listed on the Japanese stock market. The results indicate that corporate governance structures affect the rate of employment adjustment. The presence of large stockholders and the degree of stock cross–holding lengthens the period the firm remains in debt and slows down the speed of employment adjustment.     

Endogenous international joint ventures and the environment

This paper examines the welfare effects of emission taxes under a choice between an international joint venture (JV) and a full-ownership FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) by parent firms from a developed country (the North) and a developing country (the South), as well as their location and share decisions. If the South has a poor abatement technology, its best policy is to impose a relatively high emission tax to attract a full-ownership FDI. If it has a good abatement technology, the best policy is to impose a relatively low emission tax to attract the JV. Furthermore, deregulation of foreign ownership of the JV improves the quality of the environment.     

New business history?

This editorial introduces eight articles for the special issue on ‘New business history?’. Following a workshop on this topic, several submissions with discussions on business history methodology and studies with non-standard historical approaches were received and reviewed. In the editorial we provide an overview of recent debates in the discipline and provide a short introduction to the articles accepted for publication in this special issue.     

Integrating business modeling and roadmapping methods - The Innovation Support Technology (IST) approach

The purpose of this paper is to report the integration studies of business modeling and roadmapping methods for the “Innovation Support Technology (IST)” and the IST's practical application to real-world cases. The IST is conducted for the purpose of offering a convenient tool for engineers and researchers in order to enhance corporate value from R&D outputs. “Japan's lost decade” has forced companies to change R&D management and R&D operation style, especially regional industries. We propose the framework for revitalization of regional industries by using the Strategic Technology Roadmap made by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI-TRM) with business modeling. We applied this IST method to several real-world cases to show its effectiveness. This study represents the result of over four years (fall 2002) of work with the value creation framework of the business modeling method for R&D outputs, done by a group of researchers from JATES (Japan Techno-Economics Society).     

Sweatshops and Free Action: The Stakes of the Actualism/Possibilism Debate for Business Ethics

Whether an action is morally right depends upon the alternative acts available to the agent. Actualists hold that what an agent would actually do determines her moral obligations. Possibilists hold that what an agent could possibly do determines her moral obligations. Both views face compelling criticisms. Despite the fact that actualist and possibilist assumptions are at the heart of seminal arguments in business ethics, there has been no explicit discussion of actualism and possibilism in the business ethics literature. This paper has two primary goals. First, it aims to rectify this omission by bringing to light the importance of the actualism/possibilism debate for business ethics through questions about the ethics of sweatshops. Second, it aims to make some progress in the sweatshop debate by examining and defending an alternative view, hybridism, and describing the moral and practical implications of hybridism for the sweatshop debate.

     

Blockholder leverage and payout policy: Evidence from French holding companies

This paper focuses on dominant owners’ use of leverage to finance their blockholdings and its relationship to dividend policy. We postulate that blockholder leverage may impact payout policy, in particular when earnings are hit by a negative shock. We use panel data for France where blockholders have tax incentives to structure their leverage in pyramidal holding companies and study the effect of the financial crisis in 2008/2009. We find no difference in payout policy and financial behavior during the 1999 to 2008 period between firms with levered owners and other firms. However, in the years 2009 to 2011 following the crisis, dividend payouts increase in proportion to pyramidal debt of dominant owners. We inspect pyramidal entities individually and find that on average only 60% of dividends are passed through to the ultimate owners, with the rest predominantly used to meet debt service obligations of the pyramidal entities.     

Equal Employment Opportunity Law and the gender wage gap in Japan: A cohort analysis

In this article, I perform a cohort-based analysis of the female-to-male wage gap using aggregate data in Japan from 1975 to 2005. While the inter-cohort closing in the gender wage gap is apparent, the convergence is smaller when the gap is calculated for each level of education. This pattern suggests that a certain portion of the gender wage convergence is due to changes in the educational composition of the workforce. I find that educational composition changes played a larger role in closing the pay gap for younger cohorts than it did for older cohorts. Highly educated women who entered the labor market after the enactment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law gained in that they had more regular full-time employment but did not experience wage gains relative to their male counterparts.     

Trade Liberalization and Environmental Regulation on International Transportation

Incorporating pollution emissions from international transportation into a model of strategic trade and environmental policies, we investigate the effect of trade liberalization and environmental regulation on national welfare and the environment. Our model includes imperfectly competitive markets for international transportation and final products. We find that trade liberalization may reduce each country's welfare unless some level of environmental regulation on international transportation is in place. When international trade is liberalized initially, a mutual increase in the common emission tax rates may improve each country's welfare. However, when international trade is highly protected initially, imposing an emission tax may reduce welfare.