The Successful Imitation of the Japanese Lean Production System by American Firms: Impact on American Economic Growth

This paper provides some quantitative evidence about the strong links between the Lean Production System (LPS) or equivalently the holistic Just-in-Time/Quality Control (JIT/QC) system and sectoral (micro) economic growth. This evidence is supported by qualitative arguments that present the LPS or the JIT/QC philosophy as a major and fundamental organizational feature of modern economies. Though the implementation of such a system originated in Japan, the USA have been in the process of catching up in the last fifteen years. Subsequently, recently published American sectoral data (for the period between 1958 and 1996) are used to provide ample quantitative evidence of the role the JIT/QC organizational philosophy played in shaping and leading the American macro and sectoral economies in the last 40 years. The implications for the theory of economic growth and economic policy are also briefly stated.Lean Production, Just -in-Time, Quality Control, organization, American, Japanese, transaction costs, sectors, regression, error correction model, stationarity, total factor productivity, labor productivity, economic growth.

Organizational Innovations of Firms from the 1850s in the USA and Japan

Organizational Innovations (OIs) are defined as disembodied technology as against embodied technology or technical (technological) innovations. The firms, as we see them today in the USA, Japan and many other countries, are organized according to OIs that took place in the USA and Japan in the last 150 years or so. A historical review during that period will identify OIs in these two countries. OIs such as integration of production and distribution, focal factories, and just-in-time cum quality control (JIT/QC) are more thoroughly described.organizational innovations, disembodied technology, firms, economic growth, historical review

On the Organisation of SMEs and Economic Growth in the USA and Japan

The total number of firms, out of which around at least 95 to 99 per cent (or even more) are SMEs approximates the degree of competition that exists in each country and within each sector of a national economy. A historical examination of the American and Japanese firm evolutions, which shows a divergence in industrial organisation between the companies in the USA and Japan provides a qualitative evidence to this role of competition. Also, the same historical trip reveals the close relationship, which prevails between the degree of competition as represented by the total number of firms and the speed of economic growth. The cross section regression model developed in this paper quantitatively confirms this relationship. Furthermore, it is suggested that the historical divergence between the American and Japanese firm evolutions is due to some precise factors such as relative abundance of resources, and other historical circumstances. Consequently, there is not a unique path of optimum growth, since what is good for the USA might not be good for Japan and vice versa. For instance, for the USA, the 'big business' type has always prevailed during the last 120 years, whereas for Japan, the smaller focal type of firms together with some huge conglomerates dominated the Japanese economy. The cross country regression model not only confirms the importance of organisational differences but also supports the endogenous type of economic growth.firms, evolution, economic growth, endogenous, competition, resources, history, Chandler, Fruin, organisation, integration, big business, focal firms, SMEs, economies of scope, sub-contracting, diversification, decentralisation of decisions, multidivision, oligopolies, regression, developed countries, zaibatsu, keiretsu

The Long Term Fate of Korea and Other “Small” Economies in East Asia: Economic Development, Integration Issues, and Political Power

In this paper it is argued that Korea and other countries in East Asia like Korea have a particular fate quite predictable in the long run in terms of economic growth and political dependency unless economic integration takes place in a particular direction. Thus the presence of the potentially giant China makes things “difficult” for “Korean” countries (e.g Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, and even Japan). This fate is not coloured with optimism unless some measures are taken that ensure a particular way of integration in East Asia. It is not unique that a giant economy is the centre of economic activities for the wider region. Unlike the European Union which does not contain any giant member in its process of integration, the USA could be the closest good example of how neighbouring countries have evolved next to this giant. In East Asia the situation is not similar to that of the USA at the moment, but in this paper there is a set of propositions and arguments that predict the fate of “Korean” economies next to a potentially giant China. Several methods will be used to demonstrate the validity of these propositions (mathematical model, cluster and scale analyses, and so on). Various strategies will be examined in the context of the propositions. It will be demonstrated that the short term and long term strategies that countries such as Korea and Thailand in isolation might have to follow are not necessarily consistent unless an overall strategy of regional integration takes place

Manufacturing Sectoral Growth in the USA and Japan: Relevance to SMEs, Organizational Innovations, and Recent Economic Growth

Although economic growth is inherently linked with the structure and nature of SMEs (e.g. their number, industry concentration, size, degree of outsourcing, etc), as this has been shown in the existing literature, OIs 1, more generally, are the context in which SMEs operate and hence OIs ought to be more closely examined in order to further understand the complex process of economic growth and the particular impact of SMEs on the latter. In this paper, a detailed comparison of the growth of manufacturing sectors in the USA and Japan is used as an indirect way to demonstrate the following proposition. Although SMEs have played a positive role in the postwar economic Japanese miracle, they are not a sufficient force for a sustainable economic growth, as the recent protracted recession in Japan shows. It is only when technological innovations and in particular OIs take place in the economy that this type of growth is possible, as this is also demonstrated in the recent American prolonged economic growth

LOFAR discovery of the fastest-spinning millisecond pulsar in the Galactic field

We report the discovery of PSR J0952$-$0607, a 707-Hz binary millisecond pulsar which is now the fastest-spinning neutron star known in the Galactic field (i.e., outside of a globular cluster). PSR J0952$-$0607 was found using LOFAR at a central observing frequency of 135 MHz, well below the 300 MHz to 3 GHz frequencies typically used in pulsar searches. The discovery is part of an ongoing LOFAR survey targeting unassociated Fermi Large Area Telescope $\gamma$-ray sources. PSR J0952$-$0607 is in a 6.42-hr orbit around a very low-mass companion ($M_\mathrm{c}\gtrsim0.02$ M$_\odot$) and we identify a strongly variable optical source, modulated at the orbital period of the pulsar, as the binary companion. The light curve of the companion varies by 1.6 mag from $r^\prime=22.2$ at maximum to $r^\prime>23.8$, indicating that it is irradiated by the pulsar wind. Swift observations place a 3-$\sigma$ upper limit on the $0.3-10$ keV X-ray luminosity of $L_X < 1.1 \times 10^{31}$ erg s$^{-1}$ (using the 0.97 kpc distance inferred from the dispersion measure). Though no eclipses of the radio pulsar are observed, the properties of the system classify it as a black widow binary. The radio pulsed spectrum of PSR J0952$-$0607, as determined through flux density measurements at 150 and 350 MHz, is extremely steep with $\alpha\sim-3$ (where $S \propto \nu^{\alpha}$). We discuss the growing evidence that the fastest-spinning radio pulsars have exceptionally steep radio spectra, as well as the prospects for finding more sources like PSR J0952$-$0607.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, published in ApJ letter

MeerTRAP: Twelve Galactic fast transients detected in a real-time, commensal MeerKAT survey

MeerTRAP is a real-time untargeted search project using the MeerKAT telescope to find single pulses from fast radio transients and pulsars. It is performed commensally with the MeerKAT large survey projects (LSPs), using data from up to 64 of MeerKAT's 13.96~m dishes to form hundreds of coherent beams on sky, each of which is processed in real time to search for millisecond-duration pulses. We present the first twelve Galactic sources discovered by MeerTRAP, with DMs in the range of 33--381~pc~cm$^{-3}$. One source may be Galactic or extragalactic depending on the Galactic electron density model assumed. Follow-up observations performed with the MeerKAT, Lovell, and Parkes radio telescopes have detected repeat pulses from seven of the twelve sources. Pulse periods have been determined for four sources. Another four sources could be localised to the arcsecond-level using a novel implementation of the tied-array beam localisation method.Comment: 16 pages, 14 figure