Nguyen, Nghia Huu

To: Tokyo University

Research Objective:
Economic competition in the modern world is not simply between private firms which compete
for market share and profits. Every economist understands that modern competition involves both the
public and the private sector, and the structure of competition and profit levels will depend on the
degree of public intervention. In the case of the US, there exist various antitrust laws and Horizontal
Merger Guidelines to regulate the structure of competition with the intention to bring about the
highest social welfare level. Other public interventions in the US include tariffs, import/export quotas,
and subsidies all of which play important roles in shaping the characteristics of the industries they
affect. Similar concepts are also applied in Japan as many government agencies put forward a number of
different administrative guidances and expect firms to comply. This factor affects firms domestic
strategies directly and their international behaviors indirectly. Since Japanese firms are among the most
competitive on the international playground, I intend to explore the industrial organization of Japan to
see whether public intervention has been effective in improving social welfare and economic efficiency
in a dynamic competition scheme.

In preparation for this study, I have completed a comparative review of Japanese and
Vietnamese post-war industrial policies while studying abroad at Meiji Gakuin University. This project
provided me a basic understanding of the Japanese industrial organization for the period from 1945
until the 1980s. Upon returning to the US, I acquired a master degree in economics and worked on
several papers related to the topic of industrial organization. One paper, Antitrust Limitations on
Contract: Comment (with M. Holian), is currently submitted for publication review. The other project, An
Evolutionary Model of the Finitely Repeated Prisoners Dilemma, is a work in progress.

The above mentioned works are surveys related to the US division of the industrial organization
field. To study Japanese side, it is essential to be in Japan to collaborate and receive research
supervision of many experts of the Japanese economy. In this way, I will gain a solid understanding of
the government agencies and the production structure. This is the reason I am applying to Tokyo
University a leading research institution of Japan where most promising economics professors gather.
At Tokyo University, I intend to familiarize myself with the characteristics of several Japanese firms and
industries in order to construct dynamic competition models that can assimilate those industries. Once
these models are established, analyses of different competition scenarios will be possible and important
lessons can be extracted from them. It is also important to examine the time series impact of public
interventions on Japanese firms in a dynamic sense to reveal the effectiveness of such policies on
regulating competition, innovation, and social welfare. The purpose is to contribute to a more detailed
framework and the general knowledge pool of the Japanese industrial organization. The result of such
study may provide valuable data for the public sector in forming effective industrial policies.