The impact of COVID-19 on Japanese firms: mobility and resilience via remote work.

Unlabelled: Drawing on the original survey of Japanese firms during the COVID-19 pandemic, we estimate the impact of the crisis on firms' sales, employment and hours worked per employee and roles of work-from-home (WfH) arrangements in mitigating negative effects. We find that the lowered mobility, induced by the state of emergency declared by the government and fear of infection, significantly contracted firms' activities. On average, a 10% reduction in mobility reduced sales by 2.

Cryptoasset networks: Flows and regular players in Bitcoin and XRP.

Cryptoassets flow among players as recorded in the ledger of blockchain for all the transactions, comprising a network of players as nodes and flows as edges. The last decade, on the other hand, has witnessed repeating bubbles and crashes of the price of cryptoassets in exchange markets with fiat currencies and other cryptos. We study the relationship between these two important aspects of dynamics, one in the bubble/crash of price and the other in the daily network of crypto, by investigating Bitcoin and XRP.

Dual labor market and the "Phillips curve puzzle": the Japanese experience.

Unlabelled: Low inflation was once welcomed by both policymakers and the public. However, Japan's experience during the 1990s changed the consensus of economists and central banks around the world regarding prices. Facing deflation and the zero-interest bound at the same time, the Bank of Japan had difficulty conducting an effective monetary policy, making Japan's stagnation unusually prolonged.

Systemic analysis of a manufacturing process based on a small scale bakery.

The main aim of the article is to present two new innovative concepts of reliability of a functioning manufacturing system in the process of making bread in small-scale bakeries. Reliability is understood as one of the representations of an operator acting on specific streams in time t to t. One of these represents the global reliability of a system as a function of parallel action of all the streams of the system in time t to t and is denoted as P .

Work-from-home productivity during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from Japan.

This study examines the productivity of working from home (WFH) practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results reveal that the mean WFH productivity relative to working at the usual workplace was about 60%-70%, and it was lower for employees and firms that started WFH practice only after the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there was a large dispersion of WFH productivity, both by individual and firm characteristics.

Interdisciplinary Approach to Biological and Health Implications in Selected Professional Competences.

Everyday life's hygiene and professional realities, especially in economically developed countries, indicate the need to modify the standards of pro-health programs as well as modern hygiene and work ergonomics programs. These observations are based on the problem of premature death caused by civilization diseases. The biological mechanisms associated with financial risk susceptibility are well described, but there is little data explaining the biological basis of neuroaccounting.

Effectiveness of Unguided Internet-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and the Three Good Things Exercise for Insomnia: 3-Arm Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: The treatment of insomnia with sleep medication causes problems such as long-term use, dependence, and significant economic losses, including medical expenses. Evidence-based lifestyle guidance is required to improve insomnia symptoms not only in person but also in easy-to-use web-based formats.

Objective: This study aims to clarify whether unguided internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy (ICBT) or the Three Good Things (TGT) exercise, both administered as self-help internet interventions without email support, could improve insomnia symptoms compared with a waiting list control (WLC) group.

Early Exposure to County Income Mobility and Adult Individual Health in the United States.

Objectives: Previous research in the United States suggests contextual income mobility may play a role in explaining the disparities between life expectancy in the United States and peer countries. This article aims to extend previous research by estimating the consequences of average individual exposure to mobility regimes during childhood and adolescence on adult health.

Methods: This study draws its data from two longitudinal datasets that track the county of residence of respondents during childhood and adolescence, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997.

Association between COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and generalized trust, depression, generalized anxiety, and fear of COVID-19.

Background: Although numerous studies have been published on the predictors of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, some possible predictors remain underexplored. In this study, we explored the associations of unwillingness and indecisiveness regarding COVID-19 vaccination with generalized trust, mental health conditions such as depression and generalized anxiety, and fear of COVID-19.

Methods: Data of wave 1 (from October 27 till November 6, 2020) and wave 3 (from April 23 till May 6, 2021) of a longitudinal online study conducted in Japan were used for the analyses.

Working from home and productivity under the COVID-19 pandemic: Using survey data of four manufacturing firms.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has impacted the world economy in various ways. In particular, the drastic shift to telework has dramatically changed how people work. Whether the new style of working from home (WFH) will remain in our society highly depends on its effects on workers' productivity.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the world trade network.

Global trade suffered a significant contraction in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and its growth is expected to remain below the pre-pandemic trend. Did the relative importance of countries in the world trade network change as a result of the pandemic? The answer to this question is particularly important for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries because of their relative importance in world trade as well as their strong trade linkages with China, where the COVID-19 virus originated. This paper examines how the world trade network has changed since the COVID-19 pandemic, with a particular focus on ASEAN countries.

Behavioral Factors Associated with COVID-19 Risk: A Cross-Sectional Survey in Japan.

Background: Behaviors to avoid infection are key to minimizing casualties of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to avoid excessive interventions that are less effective. This study aims to identify behavioral patterns associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection in the real world.

Methods: A questionnaire-based cross-sectional study was conducted targeting a research panel of NTTCom Online Marketing Solutions Corporation or its affiliates.

Are Separated Fathers Less or More Involved in Childrearing than Partnered Fathers?

Unlabelled: Separated fathers are generally assumed to be less involved with their children than partnered fathers. Yet, extant research on separated fathers has mainly focused on nonresident fathers without taking into consideration the existing diversity in post-separation residence arrangements. In fact, separated resident and shared residence fathers may possibly be more involved than partnered fathers, because the former likely bear primary childcare responsibilities, while the latter often act as secondary caregivers.

COVID-19 and output in Japan.

We build a tractable SIR-macro-model with time-varying parameters and use it to explore various policy questions such as when to lift the state of emergency (SOE). An earlier departure from the SOE results in smaller output loss and more deaths in the short run. However, if the SOE is lifted too early, the number of new cases will surge and another SOE may need to be issued in the future, possibly resulting in both larger output loss and more deaths.

Simulating the impacts of interregional mobility restriction on the spatial spread of COVID-19 in Japan.

A spatial susceptible-exposed-infectious-recovered (SEIR) model is developed to analyze the effects of restricting interregional mobility on the spatial spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection in Japan. National and local governments have requested that residents refrain from traveling between prefectures during the state of emergency. However, the extent to which restricting interregional mobility prevents infection expansion is unclear.

Trade-off between job losses and the spread of COVID-19 in Japan.

This paper quantitatively analyzes the trade-off between job losses and the spread of COVID-19 in Japan. We derive an empirical specification from the social planner's resource constraint under the susceptible, infected, recovered, and deaths (SIRD) model and estimate how job losses and the case growth rate are related to people's mobility using the Japanese prefecture-level panel data on confirmed cases, involuntary job losses, people's mobility, and teleworkability. Our findings are summarized as follows.

Productivity of firms using relief policies during the COVID-19 crisis.

This study, based on an original survey of Japanese firms, analyzes the productivity of firms that used relief policy measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. The productivity of firms using these relief measures was lower than that of non-user firms prior to the pandemic, suggesting that inefficient firms have been affected seriously. The result cautions against the excessive and prolonged relief policies.

Money flow network among firms' accounts in a regional bank of Japan.

In this study, we investigate the flow of money among bank accounts possessed by firms in a region by employing an exhaustive list of all the bank transfers in a regional bank in Japan, to clarify how the network of money flow is related to the economic activities of the firms. The network statistics and structures are examined and shown to be similar to those of a nationwide production network. Specifically, the bowtie analysis indicates what we refer to as a "walnut" structure with core and upstream/downstream components.

Comparative Analysis of Different Univariate Forecasting Methods in Modelling and Predicting the Romanian Unemployment Rate for the Period 2021-2022.

Unemployment has risen as the economy has shrunk. The coronavirus crisis has affected many sectors in Romania, some companies diminishing or even ceasing their activity. Making forecasts of the unemployment rate has a fundamental impact and importance on future social policy strategies.

Untangling the complexity of market competition in consumer goods-A complex Hilbert PCA analysis.

Today's consumer goods markets are rapidly evolving with significant growth in the number of information media as well as the number of competitive products. In this environment, obtaining a quantitative grasp of heterogeneous interactions of firms and customers, which have attracted interest of management scientists and economists, requires the analysis of extremely high-dimensional data. Existing approaches in quantitative research could not handle such data without any reliable prior knowledge nor strong assumptions.

Are consumer confidence and asset value expectations positively associated with length of daylight?: An exploration of psychological mediators between length of daylight and seasonal asset price transitions.

Many economists claim that asset price transitions, particularly stock price transitions, have a seasonal cycle affected by length of daylight. Although they claim that the seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a mediator between the length of daylight and asset price transitions, recent studies in psychology have been inconclusive about the existence of SAD, and some economics studies disagree regarding the involvement of SAD in seasonal stock price transitions. The purpose of the present study is to examine if there is any psychological mediator linking length of daylight and seasonal asset price transitions as an alternative or supplement to SAD.

How Japanese firms can weather periods: Evidence from the transportation equipment industry.

Japan has experienced several appreciation episodes. These appreciations may squeeze profit margins and lower export volumes. This paper investigates whether firms can weather appreciation periods by producing differentiated rather than commoditized products.

The weak rupiah: catching the tailwinds and avoiding the shoals.

The Indonesian rupiah depreciated 50% between July 2011 and February 2020. Blanchard et al. (Are capital inflows expansionary or contractionary? Theory, policy implications, and some evidence.

Publisher Correction: Relationship between Macroeconomic Indicators and Economic Cycles in U.S.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.