This paper traces the diffusion of " just-in-time " production in the Japanese automotive sector, as reflected by inventory reductions in a sample of 52 suppliers and assemblers. We show that most inventory reductions occurred during a remarkable burst of activity starting in the late 1960s. Companies affiliated with Toyota were the early adopters but were followed very quickly by others in Jap...

This paper examines how an industry’s productivity is changed by inward FDI occurring in affiliated downstream industries those buying from the focal industry. While controlling for FDI into the focal industry, I find that FDI in downstream industries has a significant negative influence on U.S. manufacturing industries in 1987-1991. Downstream FDI reduces productivity by lowering the demand fo...

This article examines the relationship among perceived organizational support, affective organizational commitment, and employee citizenship behavior in Kuwaiti business organizations. Employees’ affective organizational commitment is proposed to mediate the relationship between perceived organizational support and employee citizenship behavior. Data were collected from 261 employees affiliated...

I show in this paper that incomplete contracts affect a firm’s decision about serving foreign customers through exports or local sales from an affiliated plant. When contracts between two agents within a firm are too costly to write, the share of multinational firms may be higher or lower compared to a world without contractual frictions. Incomplete contracts also provide a novel explanation fo...

This paper traces the diffusion of " just-in-time " production in the Japanese automotive sector, as reflected by inventory reductions in a sample of 52 suppliers and assemblers. We show that most inventory reductions occurred during a remarkable burst of activity starting in the late 1960s. Companies affiliated with Toyota were the early adopters but were followed very quickly by others in Jap...

Observers of modern transitional economies urge firms there to ignore stock markets. Stock markets simply will not work in such environments, they explain. Firms should instead rely on debt finance, particularly bank debt. Only then will they be able to keep principal-agent (i.e., investor-manager) slack to manageable levels. Turn-of-the-century Japanese firms faced problems that closely mirror...

Partisan perception affects the actions of professionals in financial sector. Linking credit rating analysts to party affiliations from voter records, we show that not affiliated with U.S. president's downward-adjust corporate ratings more frequently. Since compare different covering same firm quarter, differences fundamentals cannot explain results. We also find a sharp divergence Democratic a...

The banking literature has established that banks can alleviate information asymmetries between lenders and borrowers, while the Q literature has used cash flow sensitivity analysis to test whether financing constraints hinder investment. This paper investigates whether bank ties in Japan were costly for mature and healthy firms in the 1980’s and 1990’s, and whether banks continued to facilitat...

This paper seeks to examine the paradox that despite the growing role of FDI in most economies and growth in their share of employment, exports and innovation (‘direct spillovers’), evidence of technological spillovers to domestic firms in the host economy (‘indirect spillovers’) is sparse. Given the explicit dependence of the development strategies of developing countries on FDI after liberali...