EC INTEGRATION AND JAPANESE FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT IN THE EC

This study proposes two hypotheses to identify the cause(s) behind the short-term cyclical Japanese manufacturing foreign direct investment in the European Community (EC) in the late 1980s and early 1990s: (i) a catch-up process of Japanese firms in anticipation of EC single market integration in 1993 and (ii) the so-called bubble economic phenomenon caused by the overheated economy following expansionary monetary policy in Japan in the late 1980s. Applying multinomial logit models to the data on parent firms of 283 Japanese manufacturing subsidiaries established in the EC from 1988 to 1992 reveals strong support for the bubble economy hypothesis but not for the catch-up hypothesis. Results also show that under a bubble economy situation, tax-related incentive policies in host countries-e.g., an investment tax allowance for foreign direct investment-are quite important in attracting Japanese firms. Copyright 1996 Western Economic Association International.

Distribution of Consumer Products in Japan

This article examines the structure of the Japanese distribution channels for consumer products. It highlights the unique characteristics of the distribution process on both the wholesale and retail levels and shows how historical factors have contributed to these developments. Based on this information, recommendations are made to the importer of consumer products into Japan in order to aid in successful market penetration

JAPANESE ANTITRUST: RECONCILING THEORY AND EVIDENCE

Japanese antitrust law exempts a variety of vertical and horizontal restraints that remain closely regulated in the United States. Despite these dissimilar antitrust environments, however, market concentration, firms' exercise of market power, and deadweight loss from monopoly are highly similar in the two countries. The hypothesis that antitrust alters the relative mix of price to non-price competition rather than the absolute level that competition assumes might explain this empirical puzzle. Thus, this paper studies Japanese antitrust exemptions for resale price maintenance and export cartel associations to illustrate how adopting vertical and horizontal restraints has allowed Japanese firms to substitute towards forms of non-price competition better tailored to industry characteristics. Copyright 1993 Western Economic Association International.

Derived demand for disaggregated cheese products imported into Japan

The objective of this article is to estimate the derived demand for imported cheese products into Japan when cheese import data are disaggregated by specific cheese group and by source country of production. We provide empirical measures of the sensitivity of demand to changes in total imports, own-price, and cross-prices among exporting countries for four market segments of the cheese category. Derived demands for U.S. fresh, grated, and processed cheese products are perfectly inelastic, and it is thus suggested that competition in these segments be based upon differences in product characteristics. However, the derived demand for “other” cheese is elastic, and competition can be price driven. Hence, an advantage of this paper's approach is that disaggregating import data for a product category helps identify specific marketing strategies for market segments within the category. [EconLit citations: Q110, Q130, Q170.] © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Agribusiness 21: 1-16, 2005.

BORDER BARRIERS IN AGRICULTURAL TRADE AND THE IMPACT OF THEIR ELIMINATION: EVIDENCE FROM EAST ASIA

We investigate the impact of the elimination of import tariffs and nontariff policy barriers (NTPBs) on agricultural trade in a notional East Asian Free Trade Agreement using a Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP)-based computable general equilibrium model. The investigation is divided into two parts. We first measure the NTPBs by employing a widely used method derived from the literature on border effects. Then, by adding into the GTAP database our estimates on the NTPBs, which the original GTAP database by its nature does incorporate, we compute the impact of the entire elimination of policy barriers (the complete reduction of import tariffs and NTPBs) on GDP. The result shows that there are remarkable differences between the effect of abolition of import tariffs and that of entire elimination of all import barriers