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After the oil crises when the Japanese economy underwent structural change from a high to a low growth rate, the flow of money and funds was also affected, and the Fiscal Investment and Loan Program also underwent a great change. But nowadays a real change might be necessary for the FILP; that is, as deregulation of the financial market proceeds and the market mechanism increasingly moves into motion, the role of the government is expected to decrease. This paper will analyze the role of financial activities of the government, and examine why the FILP faces reform, and how it should be deregulated by considering the economic foundation of the FILP as well as its relation with the transformation of the Japanese economy.

This lucid and informative book analyzes the problem of clusters in transition through studies of agglomerations at different stages of development in various East Asian countries. The contributors reconsider industrial cluster policy within a more dynamic and long-term framework, and explore how regional transformations can bring new insights to the theory of agglomeration and innovation. By identifying the factors and policies to promote upgrading, the authors establish the theoretical and policy basis for transforming industrial clusters from production-oriented to innovation-oriented agglomerations. They also study the important structural changes in the region, such as FTAs and the role of the WTO, and the consequent effects on clusters.

Providing nationwide deployment of broadband services has become an important national agenda. The U.S. announced a National Broadband Plan and EU a Digital Agenda for Europe, both of which aim at providing access to 100 Mbps broadband services by 2020 to substantial numbers of households. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the migration factors among broadband services, namely CATV (BB), DSL and FTTx, in OECD 30 countries. In so doing, we focus especially on migration from CATV (BB) and DSL to FTTx in OECD 30 countries. Since FTTx is not independent of other two competing broadband services, not only FTTx but also CATV (BB) and DSL are analyzed. The results obtained by empirical panel data analysis, which covers the data from the year 2000 to 2010, revealed that (1) each three broadband services are substitutes, (2) faster connection speed promotes each broadband services adoption, (3) initial conditions of Cable TV in 2000 promote CATV (BB) diffusion, (4) unbundling of dry copper promotes DSL diffusion, (5) unbundling of fiber local loop restricts FTTx diffusion, and (6) investment decision on FTTx by carriers affects FTTx diffusion. This analysis will provide an important basis for national broadband policy in each country.

The Japanese mobile market has recently shown a remarkable growth in the last decade, with more than 106.2 million 3G (3rd Generation, or W-CDMA) subscribers and 4.4 million 2G (2nd Generation, or PDC) as of December 2009. This paper attempts to analyze factors promoting Japanese mobile phone, focusing on 3G technologies. Factors promoting it can be summarized as follows: (1) deregulations by government, such as MNP (Mobile Number Portability) and collocation; (2) competition among carriers, such as introduction of new charge plans; (3) technological development, such as connection speed; and (4) contents and applications. This paper utilizes the panel data of three main carriers of the mobile phone market, namely, NTTdocomo, au (KDDI), and Softbank. As for a model for estimation, we apply that of Madden and Coble-Neal [2004] which studied the relationship between fixed and mobile phone with the panel data by the dynamic random effects estimation. Dynamic models are based not only on the assumption such that carriers do not instantaneously adjust to satisfy their long-term demand but also on network externalities. Besides, the paper applies a dynamic panel data model in order to take care of the endogeneity problem. This paper deals with this problem rigorously by applying Arellano-Bond estimator (Arellano and Bond [1991] and Arellano and Bover [1995]) which estimates exogeneous or predetermined variables, in addition to instrumental variables, using the two-step generalized method of moments (GMM). Based on this framework, this paper identifies service innovations such as entertainment, flat rate charges are found significant for the 3G mobile phone diffusion.

The proliferation of new information technologies throughout the world has raised some important questions for policymakers as to how developing countries can benefit from their diffusion. This important volume compares the advantages and disadvantages of the IT revolution through detailed studies of a variety of developed and developing nations and regions: Argentina, Estonia, the EU, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, South Africa, Thailand and the USA