Digital Commons Network^™

The Philippine Economy During The Japanese Occupation, Jasper Lem

Asian Studies: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

The economy of the Philippines was derailed by the Japanese occupation during World War II. As an American colony before World War II, the Philippines had close amicable ties with the United States highlighted by promises of independence on July 4th, 1946. The Philippines also maintained a beneficial economic relationship with the States at this time through extensive foreign trade. However, because of the Japanese invasion, the Philippine economy was robbed of this profitable foreign trade and the promise of independence, severely crippling the island nation and her morale. The first policies implemented by Japan were designed to control the …

An Inquiry Concerning Japanese Yen Interest Rate Swap Yields, Tanweer Akram, Khawaja Mamun

WCBT Working Papers

This paper econometrically models Japanese yen (JPY)–denominated interest rate swap yields. It examines whether the short-term interest rate exerts an influence on the long-term JPY swap yield after controlling for several key macroeconomic variables, such as core inflation, the growth of industrial production, the percentage change in the equity price index, and the percentage change in the exchange rate. It also tests whether there are structural breaks in the dynamics of Japanese swap yields and related variables. The estimated econometric models show that the short-term interest rate exerts an important influence on the long-term swap yield in some periods but …

Skbi Big 5 Survey 2022 August, Singapore Management University

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

The latest survey results on the largest five economies (Big5) were revised markedly relative to the prior release (pre-Russia-Ukraine conflict), generally indicating weaker growth and higher inflation coupled with incremental ambiguity on the policy front.

Skbi Big 5 Survey 2022 February, Singapore Management University

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

The latest survey results on the largest five economies (Big5), based on submissions prior to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, imply a more intricate growth, inflation and policy dynamic.

Secured Transactions Law Reform In Japan: Japan Business Credit Project Assessment Of Interviews And Tentative Policy Proposals, Megumi Hara, Kumiko Koens, Charles W. Mooney Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

This article summarizes key findings from the Japan Business Credit Project (JBCP), which involved more than 30 semi-structured interviews conducted in Japan from 2016 through 2018. It was inspired by important and previously unexplored questions concerning secured financing of movables (business equipment and inventory) and claims (receivables)—“asset-based lending” or “ABL.” Why is the use of ABL in Japan so limited? What are the principal obstacles and disincentives to the use of ABL in Japan? The interviews were primarily with staff of banks, but also included those of government officials and regulators, academics, and law practitioners. The article proposes reforms of …

Skbi Big 5 Survey 2021 August, Singapore Management University

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

The latest survey results convey an upshift in growth projections of the five largest economies in aggregate accompanied by higher inflation, especially this year and to a lesser extent next year. The aggregate “Big5” median real GDP growth projections for 2021 and 2022 were raised to 6.7% (up in US, CN and EA but down in IN and JP) and 4.9% (all except US), respectively. The overall “Big5” median CPI inflation forecasts were nudged up to 2.6% (higher in US, IN and EA but lower in CN) and 2.4% (in US, IN and EA some), respectively, for this year and …

Skbi Big 5 Survey 2021 February, Singapore Management University

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

The latest survey results suggest that the five largest economies collectively is projected to snapback to almost 6% in 2021, a modest upgrade from the August median, following an unprecedented preliminary contraction of roughly 4% last year (in real GDP terms). The 2022 median growth forecast of slightly above 4.5%, while slower, is still respectable, outstripping its pre-COVID 10-year average pace by more than half a percentage point. The aggregate upgrade in 2021, however, obscures the lopsided nature and highly uneven contour of the ongoing recovery. The bulk of the upward revision to growth was mainly due to IN (to …

Skbi Big 5 Survey 2020 August, Singapore Management University

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

The COVID-19 pandemic led to whopping downward revisions to 2020 real GDP growth among the Big5 economies, on average greater than 7%-points (ranging from roughly 3.5%-points for China to more than 10%-points for India). The forecast revisions to headline inflation were less sizable and more uneven, perhaps because of the confluence of supply and demand influences. The 2021 median GDP forecast is expected to turn positive overall, with a balanced risk assessment for most of the Big5 (but a coin toss in IN and US), but the growth reversal is likely to be highly uneven. While China regains its prior …

Skbi Big 5 Survey 2020 February, Singapore Management University

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

On balance, our overall read of the latest multiyear Big5 survey results implies the following economy-at-risk scale (least to most): India, US, Euro Area, Japan and China (i.e., India’s economy might be least at-risk, while China is deemed to be most at-risk). Broadly, survey participants expect the risk assessment to GDP growth to be skewed to the downside in 2020 followed by a more balanced backdrop in 2021. But participants seem to be more divided, with most responses favoring “downside” or/and “balanced” risks, on the 2022 growth environment. The risks to headline inflation in 2020, however, appear to be more …

Skbi Big 5 Survey 2019 August, Singapore Management University

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

On balance, our overall interpretation of the multiyear Big5 survey results implies the following economy-at-risk scale (least to most): India, China, US, Japan and Euro Area (i.e., India’s economy appears to be the least at-risk, while the Euro Area might be the most at-risk). Broadly, survey participants expect the risks to GDP growth to be tilted to the downside in 2019 and 2020 followed by a more balanced growth environment in 2021. But participants seem to lean toward a more balanced risk assessment on headline inflation from 2019 through 2021, with the exception of the Euro Area, where a modest …

Relationship Between Industrial Structure Change And Economic Growth In Comparative Perspective Of China And Japan, Hongtian Ma

A with Honors Projects

Since China's reform and opening up, through the transformation and upgrading of economic structure, the gross domestic product (GDP) of China's economy developed rapidly in 2010, which became the second largest economy after the United States. After World War II, Japan's economy also developed rapidly through a series of economic restructuring. The basic situation of China and Japan is very different. China has a large population and rich land resources. Compared with China, Japan has a small population and a shortage of land resources. The GDP of the two countries is the second and third in the world respectively. This …

Insolvency Law As Credit Enhancement And Enforcement Mechanism: A Closer Look At Global Modernization Of Secured Transactions Law, Charles W. Mooney Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay revisits earlier work on the relationship between insolvency law and secured credit, the role of secured transactions law reforms, and the benefits of secured credit. These complex relationships require a holistic approach toward reforms of secured transactions law and insolvency law. Merely enacting sensible secured transactions laws and insolvency laws may be insufficient to produce the intended benefits from either set of laws.

The essay is informed by an ongoing qualitative empirical study of business credit in Japan—the Japanese Business Credit Project. The JBCP involves interviews of representatives of Japanese financial institutions and governmental bodies and legal practitioners …

Endogeneity In Panel Stochastic Frontier Models: An Application To The Japanese Cotton Spinning Industry, Mustafa U. Karakaplan, Levent Kutlu

Economics and Finance Faculty Publications and Presentations

We present a panel stochastic frontier model that handles the endogeneity problem. This model can treat the endogeneity of both frontier and inefficiency variables. We apply our method to examine the technical efficiency of Japanese cotton spinning industry. Our results indicate that market concentration is endogenous, and when its endogeneity is properly handled, it has a larger negative impact on the technical efficiency of cotton spinning plants. We find that the exogenous model substantially overestimates efficiency in concentrated markets.

The Fundamental Law Of Highway Congestion Revisited: Evidence From National Expressways In Japan, Wen-Tai Hsu, Hongliang Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

The fundamental law of highway congestion states that when congested, the travel speed on an expanded expressway reverts to its previous level before the capacity expansion. In this paper, we propose a theory that generalizes this statement and finds that if there exists a coverage effect, that is, the effect of longer road length on traffic conditional on capacity, then the new equilibrium travel speed could be lower than its previous level. Given the fundamental law, the theory predicts that the elasticity of traffic to road capacity is at least 1. We estimate this elasticity for national expressways in Japan …

Exchange Rate Exposure Of Sectoral Returns And Volatilities: Further Evidence From Japanese Industrial Sectors, Prabhath Jayasinghe, Albert K. Tsui, Zhaoyong Zhang

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

In this paper we argue that the commonly employed exposure coefficient/beta is inadequate for capturing the entire impact of exchange rate changes on firms' future operating cash flows. Instead, we employ the bivariate Glosten-Jagannathan-Runkle generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity mean model to investigate four aspects of exchange rate exposure, including sensitivity of stock returns to exchange rate changes, sensitivity of stock returns to the volatility of exchange rate changes, sensitivity of conditional variance of returns to exchange rate volatility, and the dynamic conditional correlation between returns and exchange rate changes, respectively, using data from 10 industrial sectors in Japan. We find …

How Does Childbirth Alter Intrahousehold Resource Allocation?: Evidence From Japan, Tomoki Fujii, Ryuichiro Ishikawa

Research Collection School Of Economics

Exploiting unique panel data that include direct measurements of resource allocation within households, we investigated the impact of childbirth on intrahousehold allocation for married Japanese couples. Based on a collective model of the household, we developed reduced-form and structural-form estimation equations that allow us to focus on private goods to track the changes in intrahousehold resource allocation. We found one additional child is associated with a reduction in the wife's private expenditure share by at least two percentage points. This may be because she substitutes more say in decisions on the children for her own private expenditure share.

Entropy-Based Analysis And Bioinformatics-Inspired Integration Of Global Economic Information Transfer, Jinkyu Kim, Gunn Kim, Sungbae An, Young-Kyun Kwon, Sungroh Yoon

Research Collection School Of Economics

The assessment of information transfer in the global economic network helps to understand the current environment and the outlook of an economy. Most approaches on global networks extract information transfer based mainly on a single variable. This paper establishes an entirely new bioinformatics-inspired approach to integrating information transfer derived from multiple variables and develops an international economic network accordingly. In the proposed methodology, we first construct the transfer entropies (TEs) between various intra- and inter-country pairs of economic time series variables, test their significances, and then use a weighted sum approach to aggregate information captured in each TE. Through a …

The Boycott Model Of Foreign Product Purchase: An Empirical Test In China, Malcolm Smith, Qianpin Li

Research outputs pre 2011

The primary purpose of this paper is to investigate and ascertain the effects of integrative motivation on the willingness to participate in boycott activities. This paper uses a mail survey to examine the relationships among six constructs in a boycotting issue context, in order to explore Chinese consumers’ willingness to boycott against Japanese products or services with the fallout from a Japanese former PM’s continuous visits to a controversial war shrine since 2001. The findings suggest that there are significant and positive pairwise relationships between boycott participation and three factors (i.e. animosity, efficacy, and prior purchase). High animosity towards Japanese …

Financial Crisis Containment, Anna Gelpern

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This Article maps financial crisis containment - extraordinary measures to stop the spread of financial distress - as a category of legal and policy choice. I make three claims.

First, containment is distinct from financial regulation, crisis prevention and resolution. Containment is brief; it targets the immediate term. It involves claims of emergency, rule-breaking, time inconsistency and moral hazard. In contrast, regulation, prevention and resolution seek to establish sound incentives for the long term. Second, containment decisions deviate from non-crisis norms in predictable ways, and are consistent across diverse countries and crises. Containment invariably entails three kinds of choices: choices …

The U.S. Economic Crisis: Another "Lost Decade"?, Paula Chungsathaporn

Honors College Theses

America is experiencing the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression originating with problems from mortgage backed securities and seeping into every major sector in the economy. We have witnessed the downfall or government takeover of some of the most powerful companies in the country, contributing to the highest unemployment rate America has seen in decades. During the 1990s, Japan experienced what is commonly referred to as “the lost decade,” a period of prolonged stagnant growth. Many similarities can be drawn between the current U.S. crisis and the Japanese crisis of the late 90s. The macroeconomic conditions that caused the …

Is There Country-Of-Origin Bias In The Video Game Market?, Keaton C. White

Economics Honors Projects

This paper tests for the existence of country-of-origin bias in the video game market. Using aggregate sales data from Japan and the US, I measure the effect of country-of-origin on video game sales in each respective country while controlling for genre, system, quality, and target age group, as well as domestically targeted games and superstar effects. I find that a significant country-of-origin bias exists in both game markets in favor of domestic titles.

From The Crisis Of Distribution To The Distribution Of The Costs Of The Crisis: What Can We Learn From Previous Crises About The Effects Of The Financial Crisis On Labor Share?, Özlem Onaran

PERI Working Papers

The paper analyzes the possible distributional consequences of the global crisis based on the lessons of the past crises experiences. The decline in the labor share across the globe has been a major factor that led to the current global crisis. What we are going through is a crisis of distribution, and similarly the policy reactions to the crisis are part of a distributional struggle. The paper presents the effects of the former crises in the developing countries and in Japan on income distribution, wages, and unemployment. This comparison is important not only because it compares developing vs. developed country …

Financial Crisis Containment, Anna Gelpern

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article maps financial crisis containment - extraordinary measures to stop the spread of financial distress - as a category of legal and policy choice. I make three claims.

First, containment is distinct from financial regulation, crisis prevention and resolution. Containment is brief; it targets the immediate term. It involves claims of emergency, rule-breaking, time inconsistency and moral hazard. In contrast, regulation, prevention and resolution seek to establish sound incentives for the long term. Second, containment decisions deviate from non-crisis norms in predictable ways, and are consistent across diverse countries and crises. Containment invariably entails three kinds of choices: choices …

The More Kids, The Less Mom's Divvy: Impact Of Childbirth On Intrahousehold Resource Allocation, Tomoki Fujii, Ryuichiro Ishikawa

Research Collection School Of Economics

We investigate how the impact of childbirth on intrahousehold allocation for married Japanese couples. We developed reduced‐form and structural‐form specifications from a unified theoretical framework. Under a weak set of assumptions, we can focus on private goods to track the changes in intrahousehold resource allocation. Our estimation results show that that allocation of resources within household tend to move to the disadvantage of women after a childbirth. One additional child is associated with a reduction in the wife's private expenditure share. Our estimation results reject the income-pooling hypothesis, and show that women are more risk averse than men.

Is American Health Care Uniquely Inefficient?, Alan M. Garber, Jonathan Skinner

Dartmouth Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Will The Stork Return To Europe And Japan? Understanding Fertility Within Developed Nations, James Feyrer, Bruce Sacerdote, Ariel Dora Stern

Dartmouth Scholarship

We seek to explain the differences in fertility rates across high-income countries by focusing on the interaction between the increasing status of women in the workforce and their status in the household, particularly with regards to child care and home production. We observe three distinct phases in women's status generated by the gradual increase in women's workforce opportunities. In the earliest phase, characteristic of the 1950s and 1960s in the United States, women earn low wages relative to men and are expected to shoulder all of the child care at home. As a result, most women specialize in home production …

Global Governance And The Organization For Economic Cooperation And Development, Richard Woodward

Books/Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Leisure Time In Japan: How Much And For Whom?, Scott M. Fuess Jr.

Department of Economics: Faculty Publications

Japan is famous for long working hours. For decades the Japanese government has tried to influence how people spend their free time. In 5-yearly surveys since 1986, the government has surveyed “quality of life” by gauging how much time people spend daily in various “noneconomic” activities. Using results from the 1986, 1991, 1996, and 2001 surveys, this study determines whether time spent daily on leisure activities has actually changed. Controlling for labor market forces, in recent years Japanese adults have not experienced more leisure time overall. They have increased time spent, one hour per week, in media-oriented leisure; this increase, …

Japanese Growth And Stagnation: A Keynesian Perspective, Takeshi Nakatani, Peter Skott

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This paper uses a modified Harrodian model to understand both the long period of rapid Japanese growth and the recent period of stagnation. The model has multiple steady-growth solutions when the labour supply is highly elastic, and government intervention, we argue, took the Japanese economy onto a high-growth trajectory. Labour constraints began to appear around 1970, and a combination of high saving rates and slow population growth account for the stagnation of the 1990s. This combination produces a structural liquidity trap and threatens the sustainability of attempts to ensure near full employment through …fiscal policy or by running a persistent …

Westernization Of Business Organizations In Japan And China. Continuity And Change, Wai Keung Chung

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.