Journal of the Japanese and International Economies最新文献

Political conflict between nations sometimes leads to consumer boycotts. We examine the regional impacts of bilateral boycott activity by investigating the 2019 Korean consumer boycott of travel to Japan. Employing triple- and double-differences designs, we find that the impact of the boycott is large and regionally heterogeneous. Japanese prefectures with high (i.e., 75th percentile) pre-boycott dependency on visitors from Korea suffer bilateral export losses of 56.9 to 60.9 percent and aggregate export losses of 10.5 to 13.3 percent. Prefectures with low (i.e., 25th percentile) Korea dependency experience bilateral losses of 47.8 to 49.7 percent and aggregate losses of 3.3 to 4.2 percent.

The member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have made significant efforts to increase intra-ASEAN trade by reducing or eliminating tariffs in the region. However, intra-ASEAN trade as a percentage of total trade in the region has not increased significantly; instead, ASEAN countries' imports from China have grown dramatically. In this study, we examine the causal impacts of imports from China on intra-ASEAN trade by estimating gravity-type equations for intra-ASEAN trade at a highly disaggregated product level for the period 2000–2019. In particular, we address the issues of including observations with zero-valued trade and endogeneity in a gravity equation with multiple high-dimensional fixed effects. As a result, we found that imports from China significantly increase, rather than decrease, intra-ASEAN trade.

This article aims to contribute to the nascent literature on the effect of non-reciprocal trade preferences (NRTPs) on economic complexity in beneficiary countries. It investigates the effect of NRTPs (Generalized Systems of Preferences - GSP - and other trade preferences) offered by the QUAD countries (Canada, the European Union, Japan, and the United States) on the beneficiary countries' levels of economic complexity. The analysis has used a panel dataset of 110 beneficiary countries over the period of 2002-2018, and the two-step system Generalized Method of Moments estimator. Results show that the utilization of NRTPs (either GSP programs or other trade preferences) influences positively economic complexity when beneficiary-countries' shares of exports under the relevant NRTP in total merchandise exports is very high. In addition, GSP programs and other trade preferences jointly promote economic complexity, if the utilization of either NRTP reaches high levels. The utilization of NRTPs also enhances economic complexity in countries that receive high shares of foreign direct investment flows in GDP. Finally, development aid flows are strongly complementary with the utilization of NRTPs in fostering economic complexity, especially when they reach very high amounts. One message conveyed by this analysis is that preference-granting countries (including QUAD countries) should offer both generous NRTPs and high amounts of development aid if NRTPs were to be effective in expanding the manufacturing base in the beneficiary countries, and in particular, in improving their economic complexity.

This study examines the impact of a large credit shock on employment in Japan during the Global Financial Crisis in 2008–2009. To identify which firms faced a serious credit shock, we used variations in the long-term debt that must be repaid in the crisis. Because long-term debt takes more than one year to mature, it was determined independently of employment adjustments during the crisis. Therefore, using long-term debt maturing in a crisis, it is possible to identify the impact of exogenous tightening of the borrowing constraint on employment. We found that companies with a higher ratio of long-term debt maturing during the crisis had a greater negative impact on employment. In particular, the impact increased as the period passed from the shock, and this feature was most conspicuous in the group with the highest proportion of long-term debt maturing in the crisis.

The hospitals in Japan have hitherto had complete autonomy in deciding whether to admit COVID-19 patients. In fact, they were “swinging” between admitting or not COVID-19 patients, especially during the initial COVID-19 outbreak. To address endogenous decision making, we estimated the effect of admitting COVID-19 patients on hospital profits using instrumental variable (IV) regression. We derived the IVs from the guidelines of the national government on which hospital types should admit COVID-19 patients. Our empirical results revealed that the monthly profits per bed decreased by approximately JPY 600,000 ($\approx$ USD 4615), which is 15 times the average monthly profit in 2019. This overwhelming financial damage indicates it is costly for some hospitals to treat COVID-19 patients because of their low suitability in admitting such patients. Based on the implications of our main results, we propose an alternative strategy to handling patient surges in case of new infectious disease outbreaks.

This study investigates the short-term effects of public-sponsored job training (PJT) for the unemployed on their subsequent working status and income using a large-scale Japanese government survey and the propensity score matching technique. We find a significantly positive effect on the probability of working for both men and women; however, the point estimate is larger for women than for men. We also find a gendered difference in the effects on income and probability of being employed as a regular worker, with significantly positive effects for women but no significant effects for men, suggesting that PJT might be more effective for women. We confirm that the results are robust to a range of empirical specifications.

This study applies the difference-in-difference method on panel data collected from internet surveys to investigate changes in the preventive behaviors and mental health of individuals as influenced by the COVID-19 state of emergency declaration between March and June 2020. The key findings are: (1) The declaration led people to exhibit preventive behaviors but also generated negative emotions; (2) Such behaviors persisted even after deregulation of the state of emergency; (3) Making the declaration early (vs. late) had a larger effect on preventive behavior, with the gap between residents’ behaviors for areas that made early vs. late declarations persisting after the deregulation; and (4) The effects on mental health diminished during the state of emergency and disappeared after its deregulation.

This paper examines how new science-intensive drugs improve the longevity of the population and the cure rate of hospitalized patients (inpatients). We develop a comprehensive longitudinal-disease-level panel data set, matched with drugs with a new molecular entity (NME) launched in Japan and classified by science intensity. Estimates suggest that the increase in the diversity of science-intensive NMEs (or NME stock) used for treating a disease significantly contributed to longevity and to the improvement of the cure rate of inpatients. In contrast, we find that non science-intensive NME stock does not significantly enhance these outcomes. Our results also suggest that controlling for the effects of surgeries does not reduce the effects of science-intensive drugs and that quality of science exploited for the discovery of an NME also plays a role in the effects. We have validated our indicator of science-intensive NMEs as a measure of the contribution of drugs to treatment, based on a survey of physicians. The results show that scientific advancement and exploitation for drug innovations critically contribute to improving human welfare.

Welfare gains achieved through international trade are a cornerstone of the literature on international economics. However, the data and research methods needed to empirically assess these welfare gains have only recently become available. Building on recently developed methodologies for estimating the elasticity of substitution and computing welfare gains from trade, we estimate Japan's welfare gains from liberalizing trade in the manufacturing sector. To do so, we estimate the elasticities of substitution using Japanese customs data at Harmonized System (HS) 9-digit product codes. The analysis shows that Japan's welfare gains from trade liberalization occurred especially from the end of the 1990s onward, and reached 16 percent vis-à-vis the autarky situation.