The Japanese Labor Movement and Institutional Reform

This paper traces the evolution of the Japanese labor movement's stance toward institutional change from the early post-World War II era to the present. It argues that, like most labor movements, the Japanese movement began as a movement that promoted the wholesale reconstruction of national political economic institutions. However, over time, its role vis-à-vis institutional change shifted. By the 1970's, rather than being a force devoted to precipitating wholesale institutional change, the Japanese labor movement shifted to a stance of active defense of institutional status quo in both industrial relations and the Japanese political economy writ large. Recently, however, the movement is showing signs that it may be altering its stance once again. I use the concept of "social contract" to make sense of these shifts in the labor movement's stance toward institutional change. I argue that the earlier shift from that of promoting institutional change to a defense of the status quo can be understood to be a byproduct of the establishment of a social contract acceptable to organized labor that was forged between business, labor and government. The recent initial steps toward an alteration in that stance, in turn, is argued to be a consequence of a perceived breakdown of that social contract precipitated by Japan's prolonged recession of the 1990s and increased international competitive pressures.Japan; institutional change; unions; industrial relations; social contract; political economy.

Technological agglomeration and the emergence of clusters and networks in nanotechnology

Research and development at the nanoscale requires a large degree of integration, from convergence of research disciplines in new fields of enquiry to new linkages between start-ups, regional actors and research facilities. Based on the analysis of two clusters in nanotechnologies (MESA+ (Twente) and other centres in The Netherlands and Minatec in Grenoble in France), the paper discusses the phenomenon of technological agglomeration: co-located scientific and technological fields associated to coordinated technology platforms to some extent actively shaped by institutional entrepreneurs. Such co-location and coordination are probably a prerequisite for the emergence of strong nanocluster

Impact of Population Aging on Japanese International Travel to 2025

In this paper we forecast Japanese international travel to 2025. In addition, to the usual economic variables, our model also captured both populations again and cohort effects on Japanese travel abroad. We predict the number of future Japanese overseas trips for males and females separately by five-year age groups and in five-year increments. We conclude that the Japanese will continue to travel abroad in increasing numbers but population aging will dramatically slow overall future Japanese overseas travel. While the number of "senior" travelers is predicted to increase sharply, we foresee fewer overseas trips taken by Japanese, especially among women, in the 20s and early 30s age groups. Finally, we examine the responses of the industry and the public sector in Japan to implications of a rapidly aging population on future international travel.

Euclidean distance geometry and applications

Euclidean distance geometry is the study of Euclidean geometry based on the concept of distance. This is useful in several applications where the input data consists of an incomplete set of distances, and the output is a set of points in Euclidean space that realizes the given distances. We survey some of the theory of Euclidean distance geometry and some of the most important applications: molecular conformation, localization of sensor networks and statics.Comment: 64 pages, 21 figure

Wear in screw extruders

Imperial Users onl