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ABSTRACTStarting with a brief location analysis of the plant site, in this paper we analyze the characteristics and geography of the labor market for a U.S.‐ Japanese automobile joint venture. Based on a survey of the firm's employees, we show that the labor market is two‐tiered and stretches over many states in the United States. There are clear differences in skills, gender and socio‐demographic characteristics between short and long distance movers, and American workers are willing and able to adapt to technology and work practices originating in a different culture. Most employees hold positive opinions of the work environment and practices at the plant, Japanese influence in the U.S. economy and U.S.‐Japanese economic relations, despite perceiving Japan as an economic threat to the United States. We conclude with some policy implications of our findings and an agenda for future research.

Vehicle taxation based on CO2 emissions is increasingly being adopted worldwide in order to shift consumer purchases to low-carbon cars, yet little is known about the effectiveness and overall economic impact of these schemes. We focus on feebate schemes, which impose a fee on high-carbon vehicles and give a rebate to purchasers of low-carbon automobiles. e estimate a discrete choice model of demand for automobiles in Germany and simulate the impact of alternative feebate schemes on emissions, consumer welfare, public revenues and firm profits. The analysis shows that a well-designed scheme can lead to emission reductions without reducing overall welfare.

We study the effects of durability and secondary markets on equilibrium firm behavior in the car market. We construct a dynamic oligopoly model of a differentiated product market to incorporate the equilibrium production dynamics that arise from the durability of the goods and their active trade in secondary markets. We derive an econometric model and estimate its parameters using data from the automobile industry over a 20‐year period. Our estimates are used to provide a measure of the competitive importance of the secondary market.