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This paper aims to explore the factors associated with the return intentions of Brazilians in Japan. It examines hypotheses drawn from two economic perspectives of migration, neoclassical economics (NE) and the New Economics of Labour Migration (NELM) using survey data obtained from the Shizuoka Prefecture. The degree of sociocultural integration and immigrants' ties to Brazil and Japan are also considered. The findings support both NE and NELM, suggesting that Brazilian immigrants in Japan are a diverse group, differing substantially in their migration motivations and family strategies. However, one‐third of immigrants are undecided about whether to stay or return. In the future, the number of intended stayers is expected to increase as schooling in Japan is one of the strongest determinants of intention to stay. Future research should focus on the transitions of immigrants' return intentions, as the indecisiveness may exert a negative impact on immigrant children's integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For five years of his premiership, Jun’ichiro Koizumi bravely fought against politicians, bureaucrats, and interest groups to promote his structural economic reform. Fortunately, by the time he retired, Japanese economy got out of the depression. But the tide changed. In the July 2007 Upper House elections, the public was opposed to structural reform that Koizumi and Abe had advocated. Now it is not clear where Japanese political economy is likely to go. This paper will take a long-term view on the evolution of Japan’s political economy, and try to understand Jun’ichiro Koizumi’s structural reform in that long-term context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the naïve adoption of an Anglo-American approach to the management of credit risk as the prescription for Japan's prolonged financial slump would amount to a very risky strategy. The neoclassical arguments for the adoption of Basle-type pragmatism and the adoption of Anglo-American financial norms neglect the important question of how to manage Japanese lenders' uncertainty, which affects their assessment of credit risk. We point out that an ill-planned transition without mechanisms for diversifying risk and uncertainty has encouraged herd behavior in lending. We also argue that Japan's traditional rent-based mode of financial intermediation and monitoring performed important functions, including the incubation of new enterprises, and should have been retained in alternative form rather than abandoned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]