Foreign banks in Japan: A study of a Japanese deregulation process

The deregulation of foreign banks in Japan, although corresponding in broad outline to world-wide trends, has diverged substantially in many particulars from patterns seen elsewhere. It has tended to be excruciatingly slow and piecemeal and to have been of minimal benefit to foreign banks. A review of this process leads to the conclusion that these characteristics result from organisational and political-bureaucratic factors inherent to the Japanese style of government which is, in turn, partially a reflection of Japanese culture. Although these non-economic factors have influenced the specific pattern of change, its overall direction appears to have been consistent with the broader national interest.The authors wish to acknowledge financial support from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Florsheimer Center for Policy Studies, and the Krueger Center for Financial Research.     

Mining and Social Movements: Struggles Over Livelihood and Rural Territorial Development in the Andes

Social movements have been viewed as vehicles through which the concerns of poor and marginalized groups are given greater visibility within civil society, lauded for being the means to achieve local empowerment and citizen activism, and seen as essential in holding the state to account and constituting a grassroots mechanism for promoting democracy. However, within development studies little attention has been paid to understanding how social movements can affect trajectories of development and rural livelihood in given spaces, and how these effects are related to movements’ internal dynamics and their interaction with the broader environment within which they operate. This paper addresses this theme for the case of social movements protesting contemporary forms of mining investment in Latin America. On the basis of cases from Peru and Ecuador, the paper argues that the presence and nature of social movements has significant influences both on forms taken by extractive industries (in this case mining) and on the effects of this extraction on rural livelihoods. In this sense, one can usefully talk about rural development as being co-produced by movements, mining companies, and other actors, in particular the state. The terms of this co-production, however, vary greatly among different locations, reflecting the distinct geographies of social mobilization and of mineral investment, as well as the varying power relationships among the different actors involved.     

Target marketing in a social marketing context: gender differences in importance ratings of promoted intrinsic and extrinsic restricted exchange benefits of military enlistment

Social marketing involves influencing voluntary behaviour of people towards a social end. Examples of social marketing range from campaigns to encourage healthy physical behaviour to efforts to encourage tax support for public education, overcome racism, or stimulate ‘patriotic’ behaviour. Using data from a summer 2001 telephone survey of 600 young adults, this paper investigates how recruitment campaigns may benefit from considering gender differences in importance ratings of a variety of benefits promoted by the military in the USA. Importance ratings are assessed using differences in means and variances tests. Findings identify gender specific differences that may be used to enhance recruitment campaigns. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications     

Analysing the factors influencing clean technology adoption: a study of the Spanish pulp and paper industry

Technological change has a relevant role to play in the transition towards a sustainable industry. However, slow diffusion of clean technologies can be observed in OECD countries. The analysis of the determinants and barriers to clean technology adoption should be a main goal of economists and social scientists. This paper shows that three sets of interrelated factors prevent but also stimulate the widespread adoption and diffusion of clean technology: these are factors external and internal to the firm, conditions of the potential adopters and characteristics of the environmental technology. These factors are included in the so‐called ‘triangular model’, which is further applied to the analysis of clean technology adoption in the pulp and paper industry in Spain. The empirical study shows that clean technology adoption decisions are the result of an interaction between these factors, often involving contradictory signals for the potential adopter. The paper closes with some public policy recommendations for the effective and efficient promotion of clean technology diffusion. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Researching with whom? Stability and manipulation

This paper explores the existence of stable research teams, when the preferences of each agent depend on the set of researchers who are collaborating. We introduce a property over researchers’ preferences, called top responsiveness, guaranteeing the existence of stable research teams configurations. We also provide a stable mechanism, induced by the so-called top covering algorithm, which is strategy-proof when researchers preferences satisfy top responsiveness. Furthermore, we find that, in this framework, the top covering mechanism is the only strategy-proof mechanism that always selects stable allocations.     

Intergovernmental transfers and fiscal behavior insurance versus aggregate discipline

This paper evaluates the trade-off between the advantages of risk sharing and the perils of common pool problems in federal fiscal arrangements. Under the assumption of asymmetric information we evaluate two alternative regimes of intergovernmental transfers. In one regime, the central government pre-commits to a certain level of transfers that compensate vertical fiscal imbalances and provide some limited ex-ante insurance. In the other regime, it accommodates ex-post the fiscal needs of the different provinces. In this second case, full-insurance results, but the economy is subject to a tragedy of the fiscal commons, with excessive subnational spending, insufficient local taxation, and reduced production of federal public goods. We find the range of parameters for which one or the other institutional regime will be preferable. The result is a fiscal-federalism version of the usual trade-off between rules and discretion.     

Long-Term Performance Following Rights Issues and Open Offers in the UK

Abstract:  This study finds evidence of significant long-term underperformance following rights issues made during 1986-95 in the UK. The findings are resilient to a number of methodological controls. In contrast, our results for a smaller sample of open offers made during 1991-95 show strong positive performance over a 5-year post-issue period, implying that firms making open offers had better growth prospects than firms making rights issues. During 1986-90, a period when open offers were rarely used, firms appeared to be making rights issues to exploit overvaluation. However, this was not evident for rights issues made during 1991-95, a period when open offers were more commonly used.     

Purchase‐role structure in Korean families: Revisited

This opportunistic research has been made possible by the financial crisis that struck much of Asia in 1998, and was followed by a rapid recovery in 1999. Previous research has been conducted to study the structure of family decisions in Korea during the 1997–98 period. By adding one more set of data points, for 1999, it is possible to conduct a 3‐year, longitudinal study to revisit the structure of family decision making under the impact of the economic crisis experienced during this period. The major finding is that more joint decision making occurs under economic stress, although the effect is mitigated by the economic circumstances of the respondent and involvement level of the product category. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Tactical Opportunities,Risk Attitude and Choice of Farming Strategy: an Application of the Distribution Method

When assessing farming strategies, it is important to account for the opportunities provided for tactically adjusting to outcomes of risk. The hypothesis that accounting for tactical adjustment is more important than accounting for risk attitude was supported in this study with regard to identifying the optimal drainage recirculation strategy for an irrigated dairy farm. Failing to account for tactical adjustment would lead to a sub-optimal choice, costing the farmer about A$3 100 in present value terms. In contrast, failing to account for risk aversion would not affect the strategy chosen. The distribution method was found to be well suited to modelling tactical adjustment.