Global BusinessJapan
Japan
- Afterbirth: It's What's For Dinner
- The Incredible Shrinking Sheep of Scotland
- The FDA and Painkillers: What's Safe Now?
- FBI: Saddam Feared Iran More Than U.S.
- Beaten Back, Iran's Opposition Looks To Reform From Within
- How California's Fiscal Woes Began: A Crisis 30 Years in the Making
- Goldman Sachs vs. Rolling Stone: A Wall Street Smackdown
- What Happened to the Stimulus?
- India's Historic Ruling on Gay Rights
- California's Budget Crisis: Is There a Way Out?
MULTIMEDIA
GLOBAL BUSINESS
Counting Surgical Sponges
A Pittsburgh company develops a simple technology to ensure that no surgical sponges get left behind
Naples' Volcano Vigilance
The Naples Emergency Responders are tasked with protecting the
city from the omnipresent volcanic activity of Mount
Vesuvius.
Photographs by Emiliano Mancuso / Grazia Neri
"Smart Sponges" Purify Stormwater
A Scottsdale, Arizona company finds a market for its "Smart Sponges", chemically-engineered filters that effectively — and cheaply — purify storm-water runoff
COUNTRY NAVIGATOR
- Japan
- Capital: Tokyo
- GCI Rank: 9 What's This?
Developed for the World Economic Forum by Professor Xavier Sala-i-Martin, the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) measures the competitiveness of nations using economic statistics and extensive polling of international business leaders.
FEATURED STORIES
Japan
Feelin' Muji
How do you design by not designing? A retailer's quest for the ultimate in simplicity can be complicated
Revving Up Nissan
The design of its new supercar inspires a collaboration revolution at the Japanese automaker
Sharp's Way of Reshaping Television
A radical rethinking of its design approach led Sharp down the path of innovation
DOING BUSINESS IN JAPAN
Problematic Factors
- Access to financing
- Restrictive labor regulations
- Foreign currency regulations
- Inadequate supply of infrastructure
- Inefficient government bureaucracy
- Inadequately educated workforce
- Poor work ethic in national labor force
- Policy instability
- Government instability/coups
- Crime and theft
- Corruption
- Tax regulations
- Tax rates
- Inflation
- 0 10 20 30
- Percent of responses
Note: From a list of 14 factors, respondents were asked to select the five most problematic factors for doing business in their country/economy and to rank them between 1(most problematic) and 5. The bars in the figure show the responses weighted according to their ranking.
Market and Currency data Copyright © MarketWatch, Inc. 2007. All rights reserved.
Subject to the MarketWatch Terms of Use. MarketWatch, the MarketWatch logo, and
BigCharts are registered trademarks of MarketWatch, Inc. Intraday data delayed
15 minutes for Nasdaq, and 20 minutes for other exchanges. All quotes are in
local exchange time. Intraday data provided by Interactive Data Real Time
Services, and subject to the Terms of Use. Historical and current end-of-day
data provided by Interactive Data Pricing and Reference Data.
FXQuoteTM provided by GTIS, an Interactive Data Company.