Fulbright Japan

Japan’s competition law, the Act on Prohibition of Private Monopolization and Maintenance of Fair Trade, came into force in July 1947. This means Japan’s competition law is the world’s third oldest competition law after Canada and the USA. Competition laws and legal regulations have been spreading globally. While jurisdictions with competition laws were only Canada, the USA, Japan, Germany, and the current European Union in 1960, by 1990, competition laws had spread to 25 jurisdictions, including countries in Europe, Australia, parts of Central and South America, etc. Since then, the number of jurisdictions establishing competition laws continued to increase: in 2000, 86 jurisdictions had competition laws, and in 2017, the number reached to 120. Japan’s economy has reached a maturity stage, and demands for existing goods and services are at the point of market saturation. What will drive an economy forward under such circumstances is innovation. Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, stated, ‘People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.’ This can be understood to mean that the supply side drives the economy. The implication is that, by proposing new products and services from the supply side, potential demand is stimulated and actual demand increases.

Consumption of seafood contaminated with Vibrio parahaemolyticus causes foodborne infections, which are on the rise owing to increased consumption of raw seafood in Asia, Europe, North America, and other regions. V. parahaemolyticus infections have been common in Japan since the 1960s. Following an epidemic in 1997, the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare instituted regulations for seafood in 1999, which appear to be reducing V. parahaemolyticus infections. In this review, we describe the scientific findings for these regulations. Analyses of the V. parahaemolyticus serotypes and isolate characteristics in samples from infected patients and contaminated seafood are discussed. In addition, based on the results of a survey, we show that new food safety regulations have led to improvements in food hygiene at many seafood retail shops, food service facilities, and restaurants. This example from Japan could be of immense help to control foodborne infections in other countries.

Abstract This study assesses the role of network effects under rapid quality change in the Japanese mobile telecommunications market by utilizing a simple framework based on a discrete choice model of product differentiation. The results indicate the existence of network effects in the Japanese mobile telecommunications market during the late 1990s and early 2000s. However, changes in the value of mobile telecommunications services mainly depend on quality changes; the contribution of network effects is negligible. Additionally, over time, network effects make a diminishing contribution to improving consumers' valuations. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Industrial economics has successfully clarified the mechanism of collusive conduct and its facilitating factors. But policy implications for remedial actions are less straightforward. This paper provides some supplementary comments from the viewpoint of enforcement issues against price-fixing agreements. There are some disagreements among practitioners concerning the probative value of circumstantial (or economic) evidence. Information exchange may be a possible clue to elucidate the evidentiary standard. On the other hand, there seems to be a unanimous agreement, if appropriately designed, on the desirability of leniency programs. Necessity of leniency programs must be a reflection of stricter standard of proof in court decisions, resource constraints of antitrust enforcer, or increasingly defensive acts of conspirators.