Compensation strategy: does business strategy influence compensation in high‐technology firms?

Drawing on the strategic employee group concept, this study empirically examines whether a firm's innovation strategy influences compensation systems for strategic employee groups in the high‐technology industry. We focus on compensation packages for R&D employees who play a critical role in successful implementations of innovation strategy. Using compensation data for middle‐level managers and professional employees from 237 firms in the high‐technology industry, we found that a firm's strategic intention to pursue innovation has a significant influence on the relative pay level, compensation time horizon, and stock option vesting period lengths of this strategic employee group. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Changes in labour supply and their impacts on human resource management: the case of Japan ∗

The paper examines some important developments that are taking place on the supply side of the Japanese labour market. The major themes addressed include the impact of ageing on the structure of employment and the increasing participation of women in the labour force. The paper considers in some detail the various policy responses taken, by government through legal intervention and by firms employing specific human resource management strategies, to address these issues. It also observes that supply side needs will have a significant future impact on what might be termed traditional personnel practices in Japan.     

Women's Employment in Japan and the Timing of Marriage and Childbirth

This paper uses Japanese panel data to examine empirically the effect of changes in labour market conditions and income in the timing of marriage, childbirth and employment. The main findings are that a high unemployment rate at the time of graduation tends to speed up the timing of marriage and childbirth, whereas an increase in the unemployment rate in the years after graduation delays the timing of marriage and childbirth. These results suggest that in Japan decisions are more likely to be based upon major changes such as those in employment opportunities than on fluctuations in the wage rate.
JEL Classification Numbers: J1, J2.     

HETEROGENEOUS RISK ATTITUDES IN A CONTINUOUS‐TIME MODEL*

We prove that every continuous‐time model in which all consumers have time‐homogeneous and time‐additive utility functions and share a common probabilistic belief and a common discount rate can be reduced to a static model. This result allows us to extend some of the existing results of the representative consumer and risk‐sharing rules in static models to continuous‐time models. We show that the equilibrium interest rate is lower and more volatile than in the standard representative consumer economy, and that the individual consumption growth rates are more dispersed than in the absence of uncertainty.     

Applicability of a spatial computable general equilibrium model to assess the short-term economic impact of natural disasters

Computable general equilibrium (CGE) models have been widely used to assess the economic impact of natural disasters, but the models have not been fully validated by applying them to real disasters. This study focuses on validating a model for use in a short-run case in which the functional recovery of infrastructure and businesses occurred on a time scale of a few months. A special attempt is made to determine the parameter values of elasticity of substitutions, which play an important role in the effect on supply chains. In this study, a spatial CGE model, in which Japan is divided into nine regions, is constructed and applied to the case of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. Through this application, the best estimates of the elasticity parameters generated relatively consistent estimates of production change compared with the observed change, both in severely affected regions and in other regions.     

THE NORTH KALIMANTAN COMMUNIST PARTY AND THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

In this article, the author offers a detailed analysis of the history of the North Kalimantan Communist Party (NKCP), a political organization whose foundation date itself has been thus far ambiguous, relying mainly on the party's own documents. The relationships between the Brunei Uprising and the armed struggle in Sarawak are also referred to. Though the Brunei Uprising of 1962 waged by the Partai Rakyat Brunei (People's Party of Brunei) was soon followed by armed struggle in Sarawak, their relations have so far not been adequately analyzed. The author also examines the decisive roles played by Wen Ming Chyuan, Chairman of the NKCP, and the People's Republic of China, which supported the NKCP for the entire period following its inauguration.