{"title":"Tokenism in gender diversity on board of directors","authors":"Kan Nakajima , Yoko Shirasu , Eiji Kodera","doi":"10.1016/j.jjie.2024.101342","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jjie.2024.101342","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines the existence of tokenism in Japanese companies following the implementation of corporate governance reforms. We focus on the appointment of female outside directors. The existence of tokenism on corporate boards is an important issue for companies worldwide because it deals with gender diversity in the appointment of board members. Following the Abenomics policy of empowering females, Japan introduced “Japan's Corporate Governance Code” (the Code), which included board reforms such as appointing at least two outside directors. Using our sample period after the introduction of the Code, we examine whether tokenism occurs in Japan, a country with low female participation in business. The empirical analysis reveals the occurrence of tokenism at the start of the Code's introduction. Companies appoint two outside directors to meet the formal requirements of the Code. They appoint a male outside director first and a female director later as a token. However, tokenism is not observed when busy female directors with extensive experience are appointed to the board, presumably because they have expertise and skills.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47082,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Japanese and International Economies","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101342"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143173080","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Intergenerational associations between paternal job loss and children's educational attainment in Japan","authors":"Kazuma Sato","doi":"10.1016/j.jjie.2024.101341","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jjie.2024.101341","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study explores the association between paternal job loss and children's educational attainments using the Keio Household Panel Survey (KHPS), which provides representative panel data for Japan. Because of the data limitation, the intergenerational consequences of a father's job loss have not been examined in depth in Japan. This study addresses this issue using retrospective data from the school and work history of KHPS and examines the influence of paternal job loss before their children complete compulsory education. In addition, this study employs not only the OLS and logit model but also several matching methods, such as propensity score matching, to examine these relationships properly. The empirical results present two findings. First, the father's job loss is negatively related to the children's educational attainments. Children whose fathers experienced job loss are less likely to graduate from university. In addition, the number of years of education for children whose fathers have lost their jobs is lower. Those results remain the same, despite using several matching methods. Second, even after considering the declines in fathers' income, the negative association of a father's job loss with children's educational attainments is observed.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47082,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Japanese and International Economies","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101341"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142743177","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Margins, concentration, and the performance of firms in international trade: Evidence from Japanese customs data","authors":"Keiko Ito , Masahiro Endoh , Naoto Jinji , Toshiyuki Matsuura , Toshihiro Okubo , Akira Sasahara","doi":"10.1016/j.jjie.2024.101340","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jjie.2024.101340","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study is the first to comprehensively investigate international trade at the firm-level using Japan’s customs data for the 2014–2020 period. We first decompose international trade into the intensive and extensive margins and show that the intensive margin accounts for around 30% and 40% of the variation in partner country-specific exports and imports, respectively. We next find a substantial concentration of trading firms: in 2017, the top 10% of exporters accounted for 96.6% of all exports, while the top 10% of importers were responsible for 94.6% of all imports. Finally, we match the customs data with other firm-level datasets and estimate the performance premia of exporting firms. Our findings indicate that exporting manufacturing firms outperform non-exporting manufacturing firms in all aspects we consider: sales, value added, the number of employees, the capital-labor ratio, productivity, and wages. Interestingly, the exporter premia of manufacturing firms for value added, labor productivity, and total factor productivity decreased between 2014 and 2016 and then increased until 2019, whereas the exporter premium for the average wage steadily increased.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47082,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Japanese and International Economies","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101340"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142720141","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Labor market of regular workers in Japan: A perspective from job advertisement data","authors":"Kakuho Furukawa , Yoshihiko Hogen , Yosuke Kido","doi":"10.1016/j.jjie.2024.101339","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jjie.2024.101339","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We present an analysis of wages and labor market tightness for regular workers (full-time permanent workers) in Japan, utilizing a novel dataset of online job advertisements spanning the period from 2015 to 2022. Despite the importance of online job advertisements for the labor market, little has been studied for the case of Japan. Our study documents labor market conditions reflected in online job advertisement data and investigates how posted wages are related to the labor market tightness, and how they affect actual wages of existing workers. The results uncover several aspects of the labor market which are not captured by official statistics. First, we find that posted wages for regular workers increased at a pace faster than wages for existing regular workers in the sample period, with some heterogeneity across industries and skill requirements. Second, we find that the estimated job-filling rate observed from the dataset declined in recent years, which suggests difficulties that firms faced in hiring workers, and that this was associated with an increase in posted wages. Third, we find that an increase in posted wages positively affects the wages of existing regular workers after some time lag. Our empirical findings suggest that spillovers are driven by underlying mechanisms such as retention of existing workers, and fairness norms to maintain a balance in wages between newly hired workers and existing workers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47082,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Japanese and International Economies","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101339"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143173082","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Automation and disappearing routine occupations in Japan","authors":"Shinnosuke Kikuchi , Ippei Fujiwara , Toyoichiro Shirota","doi":"10.1016/j.jjie.2024.101338","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jjie.2024.101338","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We examine the implications of automation technology in Japan since 1980, comparing different local labor markets with different degrees of automation exposure. First, we do not find evidence that automation reduces employment rate within demographic groups and automation encourages workers to move from regular to non-regular employment. Second, we show that automation shifts employment from routine occupations in the manufacturing sector to service sectors, while <em>increasing</em> the share of establishments and sales in the manufacturing sector. Finally, we show that this shift in labor demand is attributed to younger generations and non-college-educated workers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47082,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Japanese and International Economies","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 101338"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142654234","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The effect of regional import shocks on job flows in Japanese manufacturing establishments","authors":"Masahiro Endoh","doi":"10.1016/j.jjie.2024.101337","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jjie.2024.101337","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Using a dataset of all Japanese manufacturing establishments in 2006 and 2016 and industry- and region-level import shocks, this study examined the impact of the China Shock on the job flows of establishments. Regression analyses found that the industry-level import shock increased the probability of exiting in only a few groups. Interestingly, small establishments in single-unit firms located in non-agglomerated regions adopted a hibernation strategy to cope with the region-level import shock. Furthermore, surviving establishments in this category accelerated both job creation and destruction in response to these two import shocks, thereby amplifying the overall magnitude of job flows. These results became observable owing to the use of establishment-level observations and a detailed classification of job flows.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47082,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Japanese and International Economies","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 101337"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142653605","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The impact of export controls on international trade: Evidence from the Japan–Korea trade dispute in semiconductor industry","authors":"Ryo Makioka , Hongyong Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.jjie.2024.101336","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jjie.2024.101336","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In July 2019, the Japanese government announced export controls to South Korea of three chemical inputs essential in semiconductor production. This paper investigates the short- to middle-run effect of the Japan–Korea export controls on the trade patterns of the restricted and other related products of the semiconductor industry. The results show that the export controls caused a large decline in Japanese exports to South Korea of one of the three restricted inputs, hydrogen fluoride, but not in the other two restricted inputs, photoresist and fluorinated polyimide. Second, South Korea reallocated the sourcing of the restricted chemical inputs from Japan to other economies such as Belgium, the U.S., and Taiwan. Third, there was negative spillover effect on the South Korean imports of semiconductor manufacturing equipments, which is used complementarily with the restricted inputs in the semiconductor production. These results suggest a potential role of export controls in sourcing patterns and production relocation in the semiconductor industry.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47082,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Japanese and International Economies","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 101336"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142272434","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Peer effects on influenza vaccination: Evidence from a city's administrative data in Japan","authors":"Naomi Miyazato , Yoko Ibuka , Jun-ichi Itaya","doi":"10.1016/j.jjie.2024.101335","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jjie.2024.101335","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>A characteristic that differentiates vaccination from other health behaviors is that it is a public good. By the nature of a public good, negative peer effects are expected when determining vaccination behavior for free-rider incentives. This study empirically analyzes whether the surrounding vaccination status in a community influences individual vaccination behavior using administrative data on influenza vaccination for all the older people within a city of Japan. We first employ fixed effect analysis with a lagged dependent variable. We then examine how vaccination behavior changes in the event of the loss of a cohabitant and how this effect interacts with the community peer effect. Our estimation results confirm positive peer effects: the higher the community's vaccination rate, the more the raising effect of the individual's vaccination rate.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47082,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Japanese and International Economies","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 101335"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142157426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nowcasting economic activity with mobility data","authors":"Kohei Matsumura , Yusuke Oh , Tomohiro Sugo , Koji Takahashi","doi":"10.1016/j.jjie.2024.101327","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jjie.2024.101327","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We develop high-frequency indices to measure sales in service industries and production in the manufacturing sector using GPS mobility data from mobile applications. First, by utilizing the point of interest data, we develop indicators to capture sales in amusement parks, shopping centers, and food services. Second, we construct indicators for nowcasting production based on the foot traffic in factory areas that are identified by using the Economic Census and mobility patterns. We find that the mobility data allow us to nowcast sales in the service sectors and have the potential to be used to nowcast the production in labor-intensive industries.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47082,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Japanese and International Economies","volume":"73 ","pages":"Article 101327"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141572643","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editorial for Digital Economy","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.jjie.2024.101326","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jjie.2024.101326","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47082,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Japanese and International Economies","volume":"73 ","pages":"Article 101326"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141548121","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}