Debt, R&D Investment and Technological Progress: A Panel Study of Japanese Manufacturing Firms in the 90s

Based on a panel data set of Japanese manufacturing firms in research-intensive industries, we investigate quantitatively the extent to which debt outstandings in the 90s affected the firm's R&D activities. We find that massive debt outstandings had significantly negative effect on R&D investment in the 90s. We also find that investment on R&D was closely linked to the firm-level total factor productivity growth in the 90s. In fact, ten-percentage-point increase of debt-asset ratio lowered the firm-level total factor productivity growth rate by 0.72 percentage point for 1999-2001 by way of withering R&D activities, while the firm-level TFP growth rate remains almost intact for 1988-91

Reallocation and productivity growth in Japan: revisiting the lost decade of the 1990s

Productivity growth, Reallocation, Japan, D21, D24, O40,

Reform of the Japanese banking system

Asset price bubble, Japan’s “lost decade”, Systemic banking sector crisis, Bank restructuring and consolidation, Market-based regulatory and supervisory framework, E44, E51, G21, G28,

Mechanical drilling processes for titanium alloys: a literature review

Titanium and its alloys (Ti) are attractive for many applications due to their superior properties. However, they are regarded as hard-to-machine materials. Drilling is an important machining process since it is involved in nearly all Ti applications. It is desirable to develop cost-effective drilling processes for Ti and/or improve the cost-effectiveness of currently-available processes. Such development and improvement will be benefited by a comprehensive literature review of drilling processes for Ti. This paper presents a literature review on mechanical drilling processes for Ti, namely, twist drilling, vibration assisted twist drilling, ultrasonic machining, and rotary ultrasonic machining. It discusses cutting force, cutting temperature, tool wear and tool life, hole quality (diameter and cylindricity, surface roughness, and burr), and chip type when drilling of Ti using these processes