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.     

The global financial crisis and small- and medium-sized enterprises in Japan: how did they cope with the crisis?

In this paper, we examine the nature of the shocks that hit the small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Japan during the global financial crisis that occurred in the wake of the massive number of non-performing subprime loans in the U.S. We examine how the SMEs responded to the shocks, using the unique surveys that were conducted by the Research Institute of the Economy, Trade and Industry in 2008 and 2009. The shocks were identified as demand, supply, and financial shocks. The demand shock was the most prevalent of the shocks, while the financial shock was least frequent. The SMEs took a spectrum of measures against the demand shock by seeking help from suppliers and financial institutions. We find that the measures taken by the SMEs crucially depended on the bank–firm relationship as well as the customer–supplier relationship. The bank-dependent SMEs asked their closely-affiliated financial institutions for help, while the SMEs less dependent on financial institutions sought help primarily from their suppliers. A long customer–supplier relationship plays an important role in mitigating the supply shock.     

Major Psychological Factors Affecting Acceptance of New Breeding Techniques for Crops

New plant biotechnologies called new breeding techniques (NBT), which will follow the present genetically modified (GM) technology, have appeared and are attracting attention worldwide. The first purpose of this study was to show consumer attitudes toward traditional plant breeding, GM, and NBT crops. The second purpose was to verify the validity of a psychological model determining the acceptance of NBT crops. A survey was conducted in Japan with 657 randomly selected adult participants. The results showed that perceived risk, perceived benefit, trust, sense of bioethics, anxiety, and anger play an important role in the personal and public acceptance of NBT and indicated that trust and anxiety are especially important factors in both situations.     

SEARCH UNEMPLOYMENT AND THE EFFECT OF AGGREGATE DEMAND POLICY: A DUAL LABOR MARKETS ANALYSIS

This paper examines the role of aggregate demand policy affecting unemployment under a model of dual labor markets. Recently, some papers have considered the sources of unemployment in OECD countries and have stressed the role of aggregate demand policy in reducing it. However, there exists the argument that aggregate demand policy may have an adverse effect on unemployment. Therefore, in this paper, we will consider in what situations aggregate demand policy has such an effect on unemployment, and propose an analysis of its microfoundation.     

Employment tenure,job expectancy,and earnings profile in Japan

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships between employment tenure and earnings profile in Japan. Since the Japanese labour market has recently experienced substantial changes, it is natural for the Japanese employment and compensation system to be influenced by such changes. In this study, the changes that have happened to the Japanese employment and compensation system in recent years have been considered empirically by focusing on the relationships between employment tenure and earnings profiles. To do this, a forward-looking variable called ‘expected job tenure (or job expectancy)’ is introduced and the effects of it on earnings profile.     

The theory of effective protection in general equilibrium with interindustrial flows

The purpose of the present note is to demonstrate that the sufficiency condition of Bruno (1973) and Sendo (1974) on tariff changes is valid as an ERP index in the sense defined by Bhagwati and Srinivasan (1973), within the framework of the Bhagwati-Srinivasan general equilibrium model with two industries, even if we admit interindustrial flows.     

Does the diversity of human capital increase GDP? A comparison of education systems

This paper examines how different education systems affect GDP by influencing the diversity of human capital. We construct an overlapping generation model in which agents are heterogeneous in income and innate ability, and the final goods are produced with differentiated intermediate goods. It is shown that under a realistic condition, the diversity of human capital induced by income inequality always lowers the GDP of the next period, while the diversity of human capital induced by heterogeneous ability can increase GDP, if the produced intermediate goods are sufficiently substitutable and firms have a large span of control. Hence, as public education equalizes education resources across households, it mitigates the negative effect of income inequality on GDP, while the effects of ability tracking crucially depend on the production structure of the economy.     

第36届世界标准日祝词标准使世界更高业

我们都希望生活在一个更安全、更安定的世界里，然而。地震、飓风、江水、交通事故、传染病和工业事故，除了给人类带来物质损失以外，每年还导致成千上万的人员伤亡。为了应对这些威胁，国际标准提供了广为认可的解决方案，     

The role of human capital on the performance of manufacturing firms in Bangladesh

The efficiency determinants of manufacturing firms in developing countries have received increasing attention over the past few decades. This study examines the role of top managers' human capital and other exogenous determinants of the efficiency of manufacturing firms in Bangladesh by using heteroscedastic single‐step stochastic frontier analysis. We find that general human capital represented by educational qualification and specific human capital formed by work specific experience show different ways of impact on firm performance. Specifically, education has both a direct impact on firm outputs and an indirect impact as an efficiency determinant, whereas experience affects only technical efficiency.     

A topological approach to Wilson’s impossibility theorem

We will present a topological approach to Wilson’s impossibility theorem [Wilson, R.B., 1972. Social choice theory without the Pareto principle. Journal of Economic Theory 5, 478–486] that there exists no non-null binary social choice rule which satisfies transitivity, independence of irrelevant alternatives, non-imposition and has no dictator nor inverse dictator. Our research is in line with the studies of topological approaches to discrete social choice problems initiated by [Baryshnikov, Y., 1993. Unifying impossibility theorems: a topological approach. Advances in Applied Mathematics 14, 404–415]. This paper extends the result about the Arrow impossibility theorem shown in [Tanaka, Y., 2006. A topological approach to the Arrow impossibility theorem when individual preferences are weak orders. Applied Mathematics and Computation 174, 961–981] to Wilson’s theorem.