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on South East Asia |
| By: | Masayoshi Honma |
| Date: | 2004–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hst:hstdps:d04-54&r=sea |
| By: | Theresa M. Greaney |
| Abstract: | This paper examines network effects on trade by comparing the trade patterns of foreign affiliates in the United States with the trade patterns of U.S.-owned firms. The evidence strongly supports the following hypotheses: 1) foreign affiliates behave differently from U.S. firms in their trade patterns; 2) in particular, foreign affiliates display strong home biases in their trade patterns; and 3) among the foreign affiliates, Japanese affiliates demonstrate by far the strongest home bias in their trade patterns. Controlling for income and distance effects, foreign affiliates from Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland traded on average 17 times more with their respective home countries and those from the United Kingdom traded 30 times more with the United Kingdom, while Japanese affiliates traded a whopping 130 times more with Japan. |
| Keywords: | Network effects, Foreign affiliates, Trade patterns |
| JEL: | F14 F23 |
| Date: | 2004–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hst:hstdps:d04-57&r=sea |
| By: | Keith Head; John Ries |
| Abstract: | We evaluate Japan's inward and outward FDI performance using theoretical benchmarks based on the premise that management teams headquartered around the world bid for the production facilities located in each country. Our model incorporates the assumption that bids are inversely proportionate to distance. It accurately predicts the multilateral shares of FDI stocks for most important countries. The theory predicts lower shares of FDI for Japan than its share of the world economy. Japan's actual share of outward FDI exceeds its inward share -as the model predicts- but both currently lie below the benchmark predictions. |
| Keywords: | Foreign direct investment, gravity, mergers and acquisitions, openness |
| JEL: | F21 F23 |
| Date: | 2004–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hst:hstdps:d04-58&r=sea |
| By: | Keith E. Maskus |
| Date: | 2004–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hst:hstdps:d04-59&r=sea |
| By: | Sadao Nagaoka |
| Abstract: | This paper first reviews how Japan has strengthened the protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs), focusing on the expansion of the patentable subject matter, the restriction of the possibility of compulsory licensing, stronger deterrence against infringement and the introduction of the doctrine of equivalents. Second, based on the statistical analysis of sector-level panel data, it shows that (1)R&D intensity of domestic industry, trademark licensing, cross-licensing and, to a smaller degree, monopoly provisions are the significant determinants of the incidence of high-royalty contracts, and (2)Stronger protection of intellectual property rights looks to have increased the incidence of high-royalty contracts in the latter part of 1990s in the Japanese industries for which patent is important for appropriability. |
| Keywords: | Intellectual property rights, Licensing contract, Appropriability, Patent |
| JEL: | F23 O34 |
| Date: | 2004–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hst:hstdps:d04-60&r=sea |
| By: | Thomas J. Prusa |
| Date: | 2004–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hst:hstdps:d04-61&r=sea |
| By: | Arata Kuno |
| Date: | 2004–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hst:hstdps:d04-62&r=sea |
| By: | Eiichi Tomiura |
| Abstract: | Based on micro data of 118,300 firms without firm-size thresholds covering all manufacturing industries in Japan, this paper investigates the foreign outsourcing, distinguished explicitly from domestic outsourcing, at the firm level. Less than three percent of the firms are outsourcing their production across national borders. The fixed entry cost for foreign outsourcing is significant and related with the firm's human skills and foreign business experience. The firms tend to outsource more of their activities overseas when their productivity is higher or when their products are more labor-intensive. |
| Keywords: | Foreign outsourcing, Firm-level data, Productivity, Capital-labor ratio |
| JEL: | F1 F23 J31 |
| Date: | 2004–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hst:hstdps:d04-64&r=sea |
| By: | Kyoji Fukao; Debin Ma; Tangjun Yuan |
| Abstract: | This article provides the first expenditure approach estimate of purchasing power parity (PPP) converters for 1934-36 Japan, Korea and Taiwan. We matched all together 70 to 80 types of goods and services for private consumption, government expenditure and investment using three levels of weights derived from actual expenditure surveys. We find that the 1934-6 average prices of Korea for private consumption, investment and government expenditure were about 0.86, 0.89 and 0.98 times that of Japan respectively; and for Taiwan 0.84, 0.87 and 0.95 respectively. This gives the 1934-6 Korea and Taiwan overall GDE average price levels of 0.87 and 0.86 respectively that of Japan. Our new benchmark estimate is an improvement over existing converters based either on exchange rates or the 1990 backward projection method, which was embedded with index number biases. It provides a vital link for a long-term overview of structural change, ethnic income distribution and the historical convergence or divergence for these three economies in the past century. |
| Date: | 2005–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hst:hstdps:d04-66&r=sea |
| By: | Haruko Noguchi; Satoshi Shimizutani |
| Abstract: | This study examines how the price mechanism affects the length of residents' nursing home stay and their destination after exit. The purpose of this analysis is to evaluate policy options to reduce the number of socially institutionalized elderly nursing home residents in Japan. To address these issues, we take advantage of micro-level data from The Survey on Care Service Providers compiled by the Japanese government. Our duration estimates show that the price elasticity of the hazard of exit from welfare care facilities was 1.7 (95% CI: 0.4-3.0) and 1.8 (95% CI: 0.0-3.8) from health care facilities. The probit estimates show that a 1 percentage point increase in copayments leads to an increase in the probability of returning home by 0.04% for patients of welfare care facilities and 3.7% for those of health care facilities. In contrast, the price elasticity of the probability of being re-hospitalized is -3.3% for patients of health care facilities and -1.9% for those of medical care facilities. An appropriate price policy may work well to shorten patients' length of stay and to reduce the number of the socially institutionalized. Since the effects of the introduction of a price mechanism may differ for different types of facilities, public policies aimed at broadening residents' range of choices need to be designed with care and incorporate an appropriate risk adjustment system to provide a safety net for those elderly highly at risk of being socially institutionalized. |
| Date: | 2005–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hst:hstdps:d04-67&r=sea |
| By: | Haruko Noguchi; Satoshi Shimizutani |
| Abstract: | In 2000, government deregulation along with the introduction of the long-term insurance scheme for the first time allowed for-profit providers of at-home care for the elderly to compete directly with nonprofit operators. According to the contract failure hypothesis, we would expect consumers to prefer nonprofit providers over their for-profit counterparts as a result of information asymmetry and non-distributional constraints. This study takes advantage of household level data to examine whether households' choice of care provider is biased toward nonprofits. We find that nonprofit providers to command a larger market share, but this is at least partly explained by having operated in the market longer and by continuing restrictions in medical and institutional care that confer various advantages on nonprofit providers. However, we do find that user with better knowledge of providers tend to favor for-profit providers, suggesting that measures to reduce information asymmetries may help to provide a more level playing field. |
| Date: | 2005–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hst:hstdps:d04-73&r=sea |
| By: | Bacolod, Marigee; Tobias, Justin |
| Abstract: | A broad literature seeks to assess the importance of schools, proxies for school quality, and family background on children's achievement growth using the education production function. Using rich data from the Philippines, we introduce and estimate a model that imposes little structure on the relationship between intake achievement and follow-up achievement and evaluate school performance based on this estimated relationship. Our methods nest typical value added specifications that use test score gains as the outcome variable and models assuming linearity in the relationship between intake and follow-up scores. We find evidence against the use of value-added models for our data and show that such models give very different assessments of school performance in the Philippines. Using a variety of tests we find that schools matter in the production of student achievement, though variation in performance across schools only explain about 6 percent of the total (conditional) variation in follow-up achievement. Schools providing basic facilities - in particular schools providing electricity - are found to perform much better in the production of achievement growth. |
| Date: | 2005–02–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isu:genres:12249&r=sea |
| By: | Henry Kim |
| Abstract: | This paper documents evidence of business cycle synchronization in selected Asia Pacific countries in the 1990s. We explain business cycle synchronization by the channel of international capital flows. Using the VAR method, we find that most Asian countries experience boom-bust cycles following capital inflows, where the boom in output is mostly driven by consumption and investment. Empirical evidence shows that capital flows in the region are highly correlated, which supports the conclusion that capital market liberalization has contributed to business cycle synchronization in Asia. We also find that business cycles in the Asian crisis countries are highly synchronized with those in Japan. |
| Keywords: | business cycle synchronization, capital flows, boom-bust cycles, financial integration |
| JEL: | F02 F36 F41 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tuf:tuftec:0506&r=sea |
| By: | Henry Kim |
| Abstract: | We examine the de facto exchange rate arrangements in East Asia by applying the methods suggested by Calvo and Reinhart (2002) and Kim (2004). Estimation results suggest that three East Asian countries in our sample adopted a hard peg or a peg with capital account restrictions in the post-crisis period. Five East Asian countries in our sample moved toward a more flexible exchange rate arrangement in the post-crisis period. At least three of these five countries (Korea, Indonesia and Thailand) achieved the level of exchange rate flexibility that is close to the level accomplished in the free floater such as Australia. These results suggest that “Fear of Floating” of East Asian countries is not prevalent in the post-crisis period and that the bi-polar view has some support in East Asian samples. |
| Keywords: | Bi-polar View, De Facto Exchange Rate Arrangements, De Jure Exchange Rate Arrangements, East Asia, Fear of Floating |
| JEL: | F02 F36 F41 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tuf:tuftec:0507&r=sea |