This paper aims to illustrate and show viewpoints for strength of correlation relationships between international personal exchanges and economic activities from the viewpoint of social networks and transaction cost economics, focusing on knowledge workers engaging in specialty occupation and international transactions in goods and services, between Japan and 57th countries for 7 years, before the COVID-19 pandemic. And through this empirical study, we intend to show that international personal exchanges among knowledge workers contributes to the development of international trading.

We assume that social capital formed by the network of exchanges among knowledge workers who propagate knowledge across borders, contributes to the development of international economic transactions by reducing uncertainty and transaction costs in cross-border transactions. And based on the remaining issues raised in previous studies, we conduct a verification focusing on Japanese expatriates in overseas and foreign residents in Japan with specific residency status as well as on the amount of value-added trade in goods and services.

This quantitative survey mainly discusses the relationships with international personal exchanges among knowledge workers and value-added creation in economic transactions, and suggests that the degree of contribution of personal exchanges is particularly large in trade with advanced industrialized countries that are economically similar to Japan. And results of this empirical analysis suggest that the importance of simultaneously examining not only the availability of trade resources, but also the heterogeneity of economic scale, industrial structure, trade structure and form, and other characteristics of each country.

The impact of Internet media on social and political participation has long been a subject of debate. This study focuses on online participation behavior as the dependent variable, investigating whether social media platforms such as Twitter (currently X) and Facebook serve as affordances that encourage participation. The data used in the study were from a web survey conducted in 2020 targeting individuals aged 20 to 39 (N=541), and logistic regression analysis was performed using Bayesian inference. Preliminary analysis, conducted with Facebook and Twitter usage as the dependent variables, indicated that older individuals, university graduates, and those with a larger number of friends tended to use Facebook. On the other hand, younger individuals and university graduates tended to use Twitter. Subsequent analysis, with online participation experience as the dependent variable, showed a tendency for individuals using Facebook to participate in crowdfunding and for those using Twitter to participate in online petitions. The findings of this study suggest that there are differences based on the characteristics of social media platforms in terms of what kind of participation behavior they encourage in their users.