A five-day work week system and labor productivity/efficiency

The purpose of this paper is to clarify whether there is a relationship between the labor productivity and the spread of five-day work week system in Japan by applying Data Envelope Analysis (DEA). Thus this paper gives another research field where we can use DEA to analyze the policy evaluation of local authorities. Our main findings are twofold: the five day system is more popular in the region where the economic activity is highly active and in such area the efficiency measured by DEA is also high, which means there is a negative correlation between the labor productivity and the number of annual working days

The Loan Sale Market and the Financial Deregulation

The loan sale markets are classified into two types. The one is the "positive" market, which im-proves the efficiency or economizes the transaction cost accompanied with all financial in-termediation and the other is "negative" one. The introduction of the loan sale market is an impor-tant step from the regulation-oriented financial system to the market-oriented one and we believe no doubt that accelerates the speed of financial liberalizations and replaces the regulatory factors to the market based ones. Logically discussing, the loan market is closely related to the free issu-ing system. In this sense, we can derive some lessons from the free banking era

Rationality of the Guideline System in the Japanese Minimum Wage Law

The present Japanese minimum wage system adopts the guidelines system. Under this system all prefectures are classified into several groups. A standard of the rise of minimum wage width is also shown for each group, and the minimum wage of the prefecture is determined by referring the standard. Therefore, in which group each prefecture is ranked has an important economical implication as well as political, because it determines the regional minimum wage indirectly. In this paper, by adapting the statistical technique that is more analytical than an arithmetic method now in use, we examine the validity of the current ranking system. It was shown an overestimation or underestimation are often caused, which results some prefectures are ranked more higher or lower than the real economic condition suggests. Furthermore, its influence on regional economy depends strongly on a skewness of the wage-income distribution

Trust system and Reconstruction from the 3.11 Disasters

公益財団法人野村財団 社会科学助成事業(2012-2014) 報告論

Bank-firm Relationship in Bangladesh:Present State and Some Lessons

The objective of this study is to critically analyze the banking system of Bangladesh with special aim of tracing out the major banking problems of the economy underneath and suggest remedies to solve the problems. In doing so the study revealed that huge loan-default, inadequacy of capital, higher transaction costs, lack of long-term financing and lack of close bank-firm relationship are the key problems of the banking sector of Bangladesh. Among these problems bank-firm relationship has been singled out as the key problem for discussion. Accordingly, it has been observed that bank-firm relationship in Bangladesh is mainly limited to financing aspects. The study concludes that, making bank-firm relationship closer can be beneficial for both the bank and the firm. It can work as remedy towards solving problems such as loan default; information asymmetry and finally interest-spread problem for the banks.Also for the client firms, closer bank-firm relationship can reduce transaction costs, delay in loan decisions, and interest expense of borrowings. Finally, the study suggests that, by following Japanese experience of loan syndication in the pattern of \u27reciprocal delegated monitoring\u27, supply of management resources and stockholding of firms by banks, can also become effective for the banking system of Bangladesh to promote close bank-firm relationship