Böcker i Kobe University Monograph Soci-serien

This book treats the mechanisms of growth and cycles in capitalist economies in a unified manner, incorporating a highly original macro-dynamic theory based on Marxian micro-foundations and historical perspectives. That theory was developed about 50 years ago by Nobuo Okishio (1927¿2003) and included the ideas of Keynes and Harrod. In mainstream economics, it used to be standard to analyse long-term economic growth and business cycles in different frameworks. That approach has been changing recently, but it still tends to be common to discuss them separately. At the outbreak of the global financial crisis of 2007¿2008 and the prolonged stagnation that followed, there was strong criticism among policymakers and businesspeople that mainstream macroeconomics failed to provide convincing explanations and effective policy recommendations. This book offers an alternative perspective that responds to those criticisms. All these macroeconomic difficulties call for new wisdom beyondthe limited neoclassical framework. The sharp, wise thoughts of Okishio will add new tools for young researchers worldwide to meet the challenges of the current resource misallocation, the Great Recession and the Lost Decades problems.Okishio proposes a historical perspective for the capitalist system, first. He argues that production relations are conditioned by productive force. The former should evolve as the latter improves, and the latter should evolve in order for human society to survive. While reproduction is indispensable for the economy to continue in any production relations, it takes a specific form in capitalist economy. He next shows that the existence of profit requires the exploitation of the labourer. This is called the Fundamental Marxian Theorem. He also shows a trade-off relationship between the real wage rate and the profit rate. In his theory, the real wage rate is determined to clear commodity markets in the short run as in the Keynesian theory, while Marx believed that the real wage rate is given at subsistence level or is influenced by the labour market. Okishio attributes the origin of the business cycle to labourers¿ under-consumption and private capitalists¿ dispersive decision of accumulation. The former is caused by exploitation, and the latter is based on the capitalist class¿s private ownership of the means of production. Both are derived from the nature of the capitalist economy. He argues lastly that, in the long term, the development of productive force through the business cycle will transform the production relation into a new economic system.

This is the first book published that focuses on competition law and policy in the Japanese pharmaceutical sector. It consists of chapters written and edited by academics who research the industry from various perspectives, including economics, competition law, pharmaceutical regulations, and intellectual property law. Competition policies involving pharmaceutical products attract attention from academics and policymakers worldwide. The pharmaceutical industry is regulated by drug laws that vary from country to country and are affected by differing practices and industrial structures. The book begins by examining drug regulations and trade practices in the industry that are peculiar to Japan and its healthcare system. It then presents the Japanese Antimonopoly Act and cases involving it, and discussions of current competition law issues in the Japanese pharmaceutical industry. The book also discusses innovation and intellectual property and economic analyses of pharmaceutical regulations and drug discovery. The chapters include comparative studies on Japanese regulations vs. those in the European Union and the United States.Japan is one of the biggest pharmaceutical markets in the world. With this in mind, the book provides "one-stop shopping" for anyone interested in pharmaceutical regulations in the country. Covering the basics but extending to in-depth explorations of complex problems, this book appeals not only to students and academics, pharmaceutical companies and regulators, but also to those dealing with real-world policy issues that encompass competition policy, intellectual property, and pharmaceutical regulation.Chapter 11 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com

This book reviews the periodic changes in the legal policies of the late-developing ASEAN countries, often known as the CLMV countries (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam), in their continuous path toward globalization after the collapse of the socialist bloc. The book also identifies the characteristics of the legal reforms in their present stage guided by the common framework under the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) moving toward 2025.The first stage is illustrated by the ASEAN-style utilization of foreign investments as reflected in all investment laws and policies of CLMV countries in the 1990s, which featured entry control (as ¿sticks¿) and investment incentives (as ¿carrots¿). Those controls and incentives were the means to induce investors to assume various performance requirements to contribute to industrial policies. The second stage witnessed a shift toward enhanced liberalization as an endeavor toward the WTO accession during the 2000s, as seen in the integrated investment laws that appealed for the national treatment of foreign investors. At the same time, those investment laws emphasized the substantive provisions (e.g., fair and equitable treatment and indirect expropriation) and procedural protections (e.g., provision of Investor¿State Dispute Resolution mechanisms) as an appeal for stabilization of the investment climate. The third stage of legal policy, as evidenced by the recent amendments to the investment laws, is newly focused on environmental and social considerations, which seems to be an indispensable response to the increasing social protests against the negative impacts of investment promotion. Simultaneously, the means of administrative controls over investors, established in the first stage, are uniquely utilized for the realization of new goals.

This edited book was produced through a transnational and transdisciplinary UNESCO Chair Project on Gender and Vulnerability in Disaster Risk Reduction Support. Contributors come from five disaster-prone Asian countries, and the chapters reflect their rich knowledge and practical experience in disaster management and humanitarian assistance. The chapters, all with a focus on gender and vulnerability, illustrate that gender can make people, especially women, vulnerable. The chapters address the experiences of state and non-state actors responding to disaster and promoting recovery at the local level. However, while women and vulnerable people may be victims of disasters, they also serve as agents for recovery and voices for better disaster preparedness. In sharing both successes and failures, as well as suggestions for the future, this book speaks to the need for transdisciplinary knowledge and multilevel coordination, as well as full equality for all genders and respect for human rights, in order to cope with increasingly more frequent, intense, and complex emergencies. This book is of interest as a text to students in a variety of disciplines who are focusing on disaster and health emergencies, as well as to practitioners and others promoting disaster risk reduction and resilience.

This book covers many aspects of excessive expansion of cross-border capital flows underlying the global financial crises that occurred in succession in the form of the subprime mortgage crisis, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and the European debt crisis. Obtaining a broader picture of financial flows at the global level from various perspectives is essential to comprehensively understand the fundamental causes for a series of global-scale financial crises and to formulate effective policy responses in the future. The topics addressed here include a basic concept and overview of global liquidity in a broad sense, domestic and international credit activities of financial institutions in both advanced and emerging countries, and global demand for US dollars. Offshore bond issuance in BRICs countries, including its implications for the Chinese shadow banking sector, uncovered interest rate parity puzzle, and related policies such as capital controls are covered as well. This book is highly recommended to readers who seek an in-depth and up-to-date integrated overview of the dynamics of today's globalized financial markets.

This book introduces empirical methods for analyzing energy markets. Even beginners in econometrics and mathematical finance must be able to learn how to utilize these methodologies and how to interpret the analysis results. This book provides some example analyses of the North American, European, and Asian energy markets. The reader will experience some theories and practices of energy trading and risk management. This book reveals the characteristics of energy markets using quantitative analyses. Examples include unit root, cointegration, long-term equilibrium, stochastic arbitrage simulation, multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) models, exponential GARCH (EGARCH) models, optimal hedge ratio, copula, value-at-risk (VaR), expected shortfall, vector autoregressive (VAR) models, vector moving average (VMA) models, connectedness, and frequency decomposition. This book is suitable for people interested in the empirical study of energy markets and energy trade.