Fragmentation, time zones, and their dynamic consequences

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 22243024
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Applied economics
• Research Institution: Kobe University
• Principal Investigator: NAKANISHI Noritsugu 神戸大学, 経済学研究科(研究院), 教授 (20237324)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): ZHAO Laixun 神戸大学, 経済経営研究所, 教授 (70261394) ; DEI Fumio 神戸大学, 大学院経営学研究科, 教授 (90093541) ; KAMIHIGASHI Takashi 神戸大学, 経済経営研究所, 教授 (30324908) ; HU Yunfang 神戸大学, 大学院経済学研究科, 教授 (30379466) ; DOI Junko 関西大学, 経済学部, 教授 (00367947)
• Project Period (FY): 2010-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: タイムゾーン / フラグメンテーション / オフショアリング / シフト労働 / ベルマン方程式 / 均衡経路の不決定性 / 動学的貿易モデル / ネットワーク形成

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In our project we had two separated but interrelated groups: one dealt with static models and the other dealt with dynamic models. The former group has elucidated two important time-zone-related factors (i.e., the time-reduction effect and the day-night reversal effect) that determine the structure of international trade and investigated how they affect such issues as the reduction in shift working, the domestic income distribution, the possession of foreign affiliates by multinationals, offshoring of core tasks and peripheral tasks, international income inequalities, incentives for the formation of FTAs, and so forth. The latter group has elucidated some fundamental properties of the Bellman equation in dynamic programming and investigated such issues as the effects of fiscal policies, international income transfers, and capital movements in dynamic trade models, and the indeterminacy of dynamic equilibrium paths, and so forth.

Free Research Field

国際経済学，国際貿易理論