Firm-Specific Human Capital and Employment Period

Lifetime employment and employee training within large enterprises are distinctive features of the Japanese employment system. Young people mainly have been hired by large enterprises immediately after graduation, and their career paths are based on Japanese employment practices. We consider whether firm-specific human capital and employment period have made Japanese companies grow. We use risk of obsolescence to analyze the relationship between firm-specific training and employment period. We find that firms that yield large returns on training investment employ regular workers for long periods but firms that yield small returns on training investment employ regular workers for short periods

Advertising and Services of Retail Shops in Spatial Competition

Consumers purchase various goods at retail shops. Because products sold at such shops are homogeneous, the advertising of these shops causes spillover effects and each retailer would have incentive to become a free rider. We consider that services offered by retail shops differentiate these shops, in which case, advertising of their services would not have spillover effects. We analyze the advertising of retail shops in spatial competition and prove that advertising of their services expands market share when these shops supply original services. Moreover, we consider the services that retailers offer as effective methods of competing against internet shopping

Temporary Employment in Japan : A Cross-national Perspective

Many temporary employment workers in Japan currently labor under severe employment conditions, such as very low wages, overtime work, and exclusion from workers compensation. However, in most Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, employment conditions are better than those in Japan. Therefore, we believe it would be significant to determine the factors that influence Japan’s temporary workers to labor under severe employment conditions. We estimate temporary employment functions in OECD countries by analyzing panel data for the period 2000-2011 and compare temporary employment in the European Union (EU) to that in Japan. The results of our analyses are as follows. (1) Employment protection legislation increases the rate of youth temporary employments and this is used for cost adjustments. (2) In OECD countries, part-time workers are used as a buffer against business fluctuations. (3) In the case of female regular workers in Japan, the 25-29 year age group is the largest, whereas in the EU, it is the 40-54 year age group. (4) In Japan, female temporary workers are almost equally distributed across all age groups. However, in the EU, the 40-54 year age group has the largest number of such workers. (5) The wage gap by employment contract and by gender is large in Japan

An analysis of advertising campaigns by distributors and manufacturers

Today, many electrical appliances are sold by distributors. Therefore, consumers can obtain information on various products from the distributors’ homepages on the Internet. Nonetheless, studies on how distributors influence manufacturers’ advertising strategies are scarce. In this paper, we highlight the spillover effects of advertising and the impact of distributors’ advertisements. The aim of this analysis is to clarify that distributors influence the advertising strategy of manufacturers. The results of the analysis indicate that some small manufacturers can earn profits without themselves advertising if many manufacturers produce similar goods

Long-Period Employment, Service Innovation, and Profit

Firms face various types of obsolescence risk. We posit that workers\u27 firm-specific experience increases labor productivity and prevents obsolescence. The return on firm-specific experience increases with employment period. However, no study has examined whether human resource development with a long-term vision drives business innovation and enables a firm to remain competitive. We use obsolescence risk to analyze the relationship between the returns on long-period employment and profit. We find that when firm-specific experience provides sufficiently large returns and the risk of obsolescence is low, the expected profit is greater for long-period employment than short-period employment

Defined Benefit Pension Annuity and Defined Contribution Pension Annuity

In many countries, many elderly people depend on the government and employment−based pensions. The modal pension in the developed countries was of the defined benefit several years ago. A governed−based defined benefit system transfers income from workers to the retired generation, at least in part. But the world’s population is rapidly growing aging, so the risks of underfunded plan terminations is increasing and defined contribution plans are becoming more the norm in the developed countries. We build an option model for pricing individual defined contribution pension and examined whether individual defined contribution pensions can reduce inefficiency in defined benefit pensions in this paper