We trace Japanese corporate investment across different types of firms over the past decades and estimate the main determinants of investment. We find that there are differences in investment behavior between firms expanding abroad and those operating mainly in domestic markets. On the back of a trend increase in production offshoring, investment by large companies, especially those in the transportation sector, is more positively associated with cash flow while responding less to Q ratio. These findings are consistent with the subdued recovery of private investment in recent years despite booming stock markets and the large build up of cash holdings by Japanese corporates.

This book is the first book that provides comprehensive economic analysis of cross-border outsourcing by Japanese manufacturing firms based on microdata. Previous literature on many other countries has often been constrained by limited data availability about outsourcing, but research contained in this book exploits unique firm-level data and directly tests theoretical hypotheses derived from new firm heterogeneity trade models. Productivity, capital–labor ratio and R&D intensity are examined at the firm level. While rich empirical results in this book convince us how powerful the orthodox economic theory is in understanding Japanese firms, detailed firm-level findings, combined with accessible and concise overviews of Japanese international trade, are widely informative for international economists, experts of Japanese society, business strategists for offshoring, and policy makers in both developed and developing economies. This book further discusses how boundaries of Japanese firms, traditionally sheltered by language and cultural barriers, are affected by outsourcing decisions simultaneously crossing national borders and firm boundaries. The interpretations of Japanese characteristics in outsourcing have deep implications for understanding drastically changing Japanese business amid globalization.

Using state-of-the-art econometric tools, this book examines the implications of international fragmentation of production for the performance of the Japanese manufacturing industry.The impact of the ongoing process of international fragmentation of production and outsourcing has become a highly contentious issue in developed economies such as the US and Japan. Concerns about deindustrialisation and large-scale job losses - 'the export of jobs' have generated a political backlash against multinationals and globalisation. Using detailed data from Japanese multinationals this book rigorously analyses the Japanese experience and compares and contrasts it with the experience of US manufacturing. The study finds no empirical evidence that expansion of multinational activities in foreign countries produces job losses in the home country. Indeed, when demand induced indirectemployment effects are taken into account the increased profitability of Japanese firms is likely to have increased overall employment in Japan. However, the shift of labour intensive activities to low wage economies associated with the international fragmentation of production generates adjustment pressures and a structural shift in favour of skilled workers in Japanese manufacturing.

Global Japaniziation? Brings together research from North America, Japan, Europe and Latin America to analyse the influence of Japanese manufacturing investment and Japanese working practices across the global economy. The editors present original case studies of work reorganization and workers’ experiences within both Japanese companies and those of their competitors in diverse sectors and national settings. These studies provide a wide-ranging critique of conventional accounts of Japanese models of management and production, and their implications for employees. They offer new evidence and fresh perspectives on the role of "transplants" in disseminating manufacturing innovations, and on the responses of non-Japanese firm in reorganizing production operations and industrial relations.

In this study, the contributors examine the evolution of Japanese direct investment in Europe and explore its determinants. They illustrate how, as multinationals, Japanese firms adapt to local conditions and try to take advantage of a global organisation. In this respect, three areas in particular are explored: human resource management, relationships with suppliers and R&D unit locations.