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An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various articles within the issue on topics including government debt of Japan, effect of bank capital regulations on bank lending and firm borrowing in Great Britain and the TARGET2 eurozone electronic payments system.

On 6 July 2017, after four years of negotiation, the EU reached an agreement with Japan over the main elements of a comprehensive free trade agreement. The breakthrough came at a time when progress on multilateral trade negotiations at the global level seemed out of reach and EU bilateral trade agreements faced strong public opposition. This paper examines the content of the new agreement with a view to global trade dynamics and assesses its main trade policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2001 Tokyo and Brussels had very ambitious plans on paper for international economic, political and security co-operation when they adopted the so-called EU-Japan Action Plan for Co-operation (also EU-Japan Action Plan). However, to date, few of the envisioned joint international policies in the areas of global and regional politics and security have actually been implemented since 2001. The EU Commission has repeatedly referred in its recent so-called ‘information notes’ and official documents to the outcome of envisioned joint EU-Japan policies as being ‘disappointing’, acknowledging that the Action Plan suffered from a lack of focus and sought to tackle too many issues and areas without sufficient resources and adequate instruments. Without dismissing out of hand the achievements of EU-Japan on-the-ground cooperation in the areas of international politics and security, much more could have been done together in international conflict prevention, peace-building and other areas of non-military security cooperation given the resources, instruments and capabilities available in both Europe and Japan. This article analyzes why this did not take place, and is unlikely to take place in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An exchange rate between two currencies can be materially affected by shocks emerging from a third country. A US demand shock, for example, can affect the exchange rate between the euro and the yen. Because positive US demand shocks have a greater positive impact on Japanese interest rates than on euro area rates, the yen appreciates against the euro in response. Using quarterly data on the United States, the euro area and Japan from 1981 to 2006, this paper shows that the third-currency effects are significant even when exchange rates evolve according to uncovered interest parity. This is because interest rates are typically set in response to output and inflation, which are in turn influenced by other exchange rates. More importantly, third-currency effects are also transmitted to the actual exchange rate through the expected future exchange rate, which is, in a multi-country set-up, influenced by third-countries' fundamentals and shocks. Third-currency effects have a stronger impact on the currency of a relatively more open economy. The analysis implies that small open economies should avoid strict forms of bilateral exchange rate targeting, since higher trade and financial openness work as a force intrinsically amplifying currency fluctuations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Taking into account the fact of global economic integration, this paper improves the RICE model and the MRICES model, and establishes a new integrated assessment model MRICES-2012, which takes Ramsey utility as the standard of fairness. Based on the model, schemes which meet the global emission mitigation targets as well as the interests of developing countries are simulated to assess the international fairness of emission reduction. Therefore, a new feasible scheme is proposed, which can not only reach the Copenhagen Consensus but also ensure interests of every country. Specifically speaking, the US and Japan cut emissions 80% and 70% respectively by 2050 relative to the 1990 level; the EU and other developed countries cut 80% by 2050 relative to 1990 level; high human development countries cut 50% by 2050 relative to 1990 level; all above-mentioned countries start emission reduction from 2020 and keep emission on 2050 level by 2100; China begins emission reduction from 2030 and cuts emission 15% by 2050 and 25% by 2100 relative to 2005 level; medium human development countries keep emission on 2020 level by 2100; low human development countries do not take part in reduction on emission intensity and global emission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel review and laboratory test results of four standard test methods for determining the energy consumption of microprocessor controlled gas tankless water heaters. The test standards examined are from Australia, Europe, Japan and North America. The European test standard is found to be technically the most comprehensive in measuring all aspects of energy consumption for these types of appliances. Four water heaters, both conventional and condensing type, ranging in capacity from 28 to 55kW are tested to each of the test standards. The European and North American tests deliver similar results. Those to the Australian standard yield higher energy use while the Japanese method produces the lowest consumption. The relative difference in energy use between water heater models tested to any single standard is consistent, with the exception that the Australian test appears to favour the smaller water heater. Therefore, while consumers cannot use standard test results to calculate their actual running costs, in general, any of the standards will reasonably predict relative running cost differences between models if used as part of the product selection process. While the correlation between the standards varies according to the capacity of the water heater, a simple approximation is developed to convert from the efficiency measured by one standard to another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, low utilization ratio of science and technology resources has to be an important restriction factor that affects the development of science and technology in our country. It is necessary to establish and perfect the government-dominated paUern of sharing science and technology resources for realizing sustainable development. This paper, learning from the experience for science and technology resources sharing in some western developed countries, that contain the United States, European Union and Japan, studies the key problems in the development of science and technology resources sharing. Based on this analysis, some useful policies and suggestions, ranging from sharing strategy, sharing platform, management system are proposed. These conclusions are useful for the government to develop science and technology resources sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do the Japanese see the EU as a global power? How do they see the causes of the financial crisis in the euro zone, and are they changing their perception of the EU because of the Euro crisis? Regulatory power is defined as a country's or an international organization's power to set up its national or regional rules and standards as global rules and standards. Do the Japanese see the EU's 'regulatory power' as strong, and do they think the EU's 'regulatory power' declined because of the financial crisis in the euro zone? This paper presents the results of an analysis of questionnaire data as well as an investigation of newspaper articles in order to examine the Japanese perception of the EU empirically, and it also discusses academic works that relate to the result of the empirical analysis. The October 2012 questionnaire results show that the Japanese public has an impression that the EU is a global power rather than a regional power. In Japan, both business elites and university students generally think that the EU has strong power in the area of economics. However, the Japanese business elites feel that the EU's power is declining because of the financial crisis. The Euro crisis has thus negatively affected the EU's regulatory power. Even so, as the October 2012 questionnaire results show, more than 40% of Japanese business elites believe that the regulatory power of the EU has not declined even after the beginning of the Euro crisis. However, Japanese business elites continue to be anxious about the EU's regulatory power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: JT-60SA is a fully superconducting coil tokamak to be built under the framework of the EU-JA Broader Approach Agreement, and it aims to contribute to the complement of the ITER experiments and to the DEMO reactor design by the study of steady-state high-beta plasma experiments. The conceptual design of the JT-60SA tokamak and the peripheral systems has been carried out in close collaboration of EU and Japan from middle of 2006, and the JT-60SA Conceptual Design Report which involves an analysis of plasma physics and engineering design is summarized in May 2007. This paper intends to present an overall view of the JT-60SA project, and the latest design status of the key engineering issues such as superconducting magnets, divertor target, plasma heating devices, and magnet power supplies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In their 2001 Action Plan, the EU and Japan committed themselves to jointly tackling today's problems and issues related to international security, peacekeeping, economics and finance, environmental protection, and development aid. However, the reality of EU-Japan cooperation looks quite different. Focusing on security policy as well as trade and business ties, this paper argues that the balance sheet of seven years of EU-Japan cooperation as formulated in the EU-Japan Action Plan is rather disappointing, leaving many envisioned areas of bilateral cooperation untouched or dealt with only in a superficial and internationally irrelevant way. While the EU currently invests most of its Asia-dedicated financial and diplomatic resources in expanding relations with China, Japan has failed to "diversify" its foreign economic and security policies, with the aim of reducing its dependency on US foreign- and security-policy approaches by expanding foreign- and security-policy cooperation with Europe. To be sure, Brussels and Tokyo cooperated closely on pacifying and reconstructing the war-torn Balkans throughout the 1990s, but working together on the Balkans did not create a basis for sustainable and expanding EU-Japan "soft power" cooperation in global hot spots. Likewise, trade and business ties, although solid and expanding, could be much more dynamic and significant given the EU's and Japan's share of the global GDP. Overall, the EU and Japan punch below their weight regarding international political, economic and security cooperation, and realistically, there are no indications that Brussels and Tokyo are willing to invest the necessary political and diplomatic resources to boost bilateral cooperation before the EU-Japan Action Plan expires in 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The war on terror and the war in Iraq pose three challenges for foreign aid. The first concern is that donors may hijack foreign aid to pursue their own security objectives rather than development and the alleviation of poverty. The second concern is that the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the wider war on terror will gobble up aid budgets. The third concern is that major donors are continuing to impose competing and sometimes clashing priorities on aid recipients and this erodes rather than builds the capacity of some of the world's neediest governments. This article assesses the emerging aid policies of the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom and the European Union and proposes practical measures that could bolster an effective development-led foreign aid system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction outlines the EU-Japan relationship and where it stands at present. At the last summit meeting the two sides decided to start parallel negotiations for (1) a deep and comprehensive free-trade agreement or economic partnership agreement; and (2) a binding agreement covering political, security and other areas of global cooperation. Here the factors that have led both the EU and Japan to abandon the former policy of defining the overall relationship with ten-year plans, such as the 1991 Hague Declaration and the 2001 Action Plan, will be analyzed. The present negotiations will be put in historical perspective, and what is new and unique this time will be analyzed. These EU-Japan agreements will be placed in a comparative global perspective relative to other major agreements. Finally, this introduction will also introduce the other articles in this special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kyoto Protocol that went into effect in February 2005 set limits on the amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We document in this study that firms from countries ratifying the Protocol and setting limits on GHG emissions (i.e., European Union [EU] countries, Canada and Japan) are associated with higher GHG disclosures compared with firms in the United States, which has not ratified the Protocol. Additionally, we document that firms from India, which has not set any limits on GHG emissions, make even less GHG disclosures than firms from all other countries covered in this study. Our findings also show that GHG disclosures are greater for Canadian and Japanese firms compared with firms from the EU countries and that they also differ somewhat across EU firms. These findings suggest that ratification of the Protocol and limits on emissions improve pollution disclosures. In the absence of Protocol ratification, mandatory disclosure requirements may be needed to ensure adequate and reliable pollution disclosures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examination is made of the relative contributions to price discovery of the floor and electronically traded euro FX and Japanese yen futures markets and the corresponding retail on-line foreign exchange spot markets. GLOBEX electronic futures contracts provide the most price discovery in the euro; the on-line trading spot market provides the most in the Japanese yen. The floor-traded futures markets contribute the least to price discovery in both the euro and the Japanese yen markets. The overall results show that electronic trading platforms facilitate price discovery more efficiently than floor trading. Futures traders may also extract information from on-line spot prices. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 26:1131–1143, 2006 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether bilateral trade barrier data conform with the Grossman-Helpman (1995) model's predictions about ‘trade talks’ is examined in this article. A simple form of the prediction from the model is tested. Bilateral US-Japan and US-EU data from the 1990s are employed. The results are the first in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides a systematic analysis of the Balassa index, an index of revealed comparative advantage, using Japan-European Union trade data. Shape, stability and aggregation over time; Persistence over time using transition probability matrices based on monthly moving annual export flows; Regional differences.

Discusses Japanese investments in the European Community (EC). Restrictions on Japanese exports to the EC; Statistical data on Japanese direct investments from 1951 to 1988; Choice of location.

This article examines the relationship between the phenomenon known as 'globalization', on the one hand, and the regional integration process undertaken by European Union (EU) member states, on the other. Bearing in mind that the EU single market programme was a more deliberate and radical act of integration than the more haphazard globalization process, the article argues that the relationship between the two is a complex mix of convergence and conflict. The argument is applied to the financial services sector, and in particular the securities industry. The first conclusion is that the EU integration process is compatible with global financial integration. The EU single financial area has not led, and will not lead, to the emergence of a separate European 'bloc'. Indeed, on a number of regulatory issues, the combination of globalization and EU integration has induced convergence and a degree of harmonization between the EU and other jurisdictions such as the United States and Japan. The second conclusion is, however, that this progress towards convergence and harmonization is inherently conflictual and is currently blocked on the key issue of capital adequacy for securities firms. The US, supported by Canada and Japan, has resisted convergence, or indeed compromise, with what it views as unduly lax EU capital standards. Internal EU dynamics, domestic considerations within the US, market-driven pressures and the temptations of regulatory arbitrage have all contributed to the conflictual aspects of the convergence process. The EU and the Basle banking supervisors have now accepted the EU approach to capital adequacy, and the pressure is on the US regulatory authorities to conform to these lower standards or take the risk that trading activity will migrate to where standards, and therefore transaction costs, are lower. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]