For the past 10 years, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor project of Babson College and the London Business School has documented that entrepreneurship and small, startup businesses are a key determinant of economic growth. You can find this data if you know where to look. One of the early studies is described
You certainly can do quite a few things. You probably know by now that there is no federal estate tax at all in the United States, if deaths occur in 2010. Next year it may come back like a tidal wave —or not — depending on what Congress does. What should you do to cope ...
Osaka leads Japan in another embarrassing statistic. It is checking its records, which it found list 5,125 residents which are indicated to be age 120 or older. One man would be 152 if still alive. See the Bloomberg article. Cities and towns throughout Japan are all reviewing their files after the revelation of a ...
I suppose that the answer largely depends on your reaction to the government’s making decisions for you. Perhaps it is a societal matter. In Japan, people often seem to expect guidance from authority figures. They may also assume that “forced inheritance” rules, which allow close family members to insist on fixed shares, mean that there ...
The estate tax lapse for the year 2010 has already helped the heirs of several famous and very wealthy persons who, if they had survived until next year, would have left far less. TV personality Art Linkletter, actor Dennis Hopper, Taco Bell founder Glen Bell, author Louis Auchincloss, real estate developer Walter Shorenstein, pipeline developer ...
Willie Pesek’s latest column at Bloomberg.com may offer a great insight into why the size of China’s economy has now surpassed Japan’s. It rings true to many expats in Japan. Willie continually does a great job in noting why news matters. That news does not mean China is “better” in that it provides its ...
Japan’s first case under the revised Organ Transplant Law took place this month with organs from a man, left brain-dead in a traffic accident in Kanto-Koshinetsu, whose family gave sole consent without prior written approval from the man. Before the new law, transplants required a written instruction from the donor. After some debate, it appears ...
For decades, Japan companies and the public have complained about the lack of legal services, due to there being only about 15,000 lawyers in Japan, which, as I am fond of saying, was less than the number of golf courses in the United States. Naturally, this systematic shortage of legal services resulted in substitutes ...
Japan will sign the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction in 2011, thus finally joining the many developed countries that prevent a parent in a failed international marriage from taking children across borders in violation of an existing child custody order. This is in direct response to “gaiatsu” or foreign pressure ...
And that does not include those whose deaths have been confirmed or all the “missing” who are under the age of 100. It suggests that the koseki or family register system in Japan, used for various government records purposes including payment of pensions, is hopelessly disorganized. See the latest Daily Yomiuri report here Indeed, one ...