Small and Medium Enterprises in Japan: Surviving the Long-Term Recession

The relationship between large enterprises (LEs) and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Japan has undergone major changes during the long-term recession since 1991. While SMEs still play the important role of supplying parts and components to LEs through subcontracting, many LEs have started to reduce the number of their suppliers and the components they use in manufacturing. While efficient SMEs selected by LEs were able to expand their businesses, inefficient SMEs lost customers. The regression results in this study suggest that the decrease in number of establishments—specifically, the exit of inefficient SMEs—might improve total factor productivity growth rates. The traditional business model of being dependent on certain LEs and doing business within the cluster is not functioning as well as it used to. Heavy dependence on certain industries and highly segmented and specialized production processes prevent the clusters from adjusting to the new business environment. Some SMEs are still able to create new business by taking advantage of more flexible divisions of labor. SME policies must encourage diversification and collaboration that cut across traditional industry groupings to form a flexible division of labor.japan sme recession; japan sme restructuring

Knowledge spillover in Indian automobile industry : the process and the coverage

In India, as the production of passenger cars increased, many local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) entered the parts and components manufacturing sector. The sources of knowledge for large enterprises and SMEs are different. Naturally, spillover effects among large enterprises and between large enterprises and SMEs are different. This paper focuses on knowledge spillover among large enterprises and from large enterprises to SMEs. Subcontractor can absorb relation-specific skills through repeated interaction with parent company. The results of field survey emphasizes that relation-specific skills are a determinant factor of spillover effects from assemblers and large auto component manufacturers to SMEs. Econometric analysis shows that spillover effects among medium and large automobile units and from medium and large automobile units to small units went beyond boundary of cluster.India, Automobile industry, Industrial technology, Automobile, Technology, Spillover, Small and medium enterprises

Spatially Coupled LDPC Codes for Decode-and-Forward in Erasure Relay Channel

We consider spatially-coupled protograph-based LDPC codes for the three terminal erasure relay channel. It is observed that BP threshold value, the maximal erasure probability of the channel for which decoding error probability converges to zero, of spatially-coupled codes, in particular spatially-coupled MacKay-Neal code, is close to the theoretical limit for the relay channel. Empirical results suggest that spatially-coupled protograph-based LDPC codes have great potential to achieve theoretical limit of a general relay channel.Comment: 7 pages, extended version of ISIT201

Design and Performance of Rate-compatible Non-Binary LDPC Convolutional Codes

In this paper, we present a construction method of non-binary low-density parity-check (LDPC) convolutional codes. Our construction method is an extension of Felstroem and Zigangirov construction for non-binary LDPC convolutional codes. The rate-compatibility of the non-binary convolutional code is also discussed. The proposed rate-compatible code is designed from one single mother (2,4)-regular non-binary LDPC convolutional code of rate 1/2. Higher-rate codes are produced by puncturing the mother code and lower-rate codes are produced by multiplicatively repeating the mother code. Simulation results show that non-binary LDPC convolutional codes of rate 1/2 outperform state-of-the-art binary LDPC convolutional codes with comparable constraint bit length. Also the derived low-rate and high-rate non-binary LDPC convolutional codes exhibit good decoding performance without loss of large gap to the Shannon limits.Comment: 8 pages, submitted to IEICE transactio

A japán vezetéknevek

Japanese surnames     The structure of today’s Japanese personal names is straightforward: they consist of a surname and a given name. By contrast, to read a surname or to choose the appropriate kanji to record a surname is extremely complicated; what is more, the number of surnames in Japan is quite high (they cannot be precisely counted because of their complexity). Even the history of naming has been extraordinarily complicated: in the contemporary Japanese language there are many words meaning ‘surname’, each having a different origin and function in the past. The paper first presents these features of Japanese surnames; then lists the most frequent types of Japanese surnames, categorized according to their origins; and finally describes a tendency affecting contemporary surnames

Knowledge spillover in Indian automobile industry : the process and the coverage

In India, as the production of passenger cars increased, many local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) entered the parts and components manufacturing sector. The sources of knowledge for large enterprises and SMEs are different. Naturally, spillover effects among large enterprises and between large enterprises and SMEs are different. This paper focuses on knowledge spillover among large enterprises and from large enterprises to SMEs. Subcontractor can absorb relation-specific skills through repeated interaction with parent company. The results of field survey emphasizes that relation-specific skills are a determinant factor of spillover effects from assemblers and large auto component manufacturers to SMEs. Econometric analysis shows that spillover effects among medium and large automobile units and from medium and large automobile units to small units went beyond boundary of cluster