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This article assesses the impact of environmental regulation (ER) in host countries on Japanese foreign direct investment (FDI) decision-making. It tests the pollution haven hypothesis using data on national (ER) standards and Japanese inward FDI in five dirty industries (iron and steel industry, nonferrous metals industry, chemicals industry, paper and pulp industry, nonmetallic products industry). The results do not support the pollution hypothesis. On the contrary, inward Japanese FDI appears to be attracted to countries which have committed themselves to a transparent and stable environment regulatory environment, suggesting that the quality of the regulatory framework in terms of its certainty and transparency has a greater influence on foreign investors' choice of location than the level of environmental regulatory measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the impact of public capital on the Japanese manufacturing industries from 1970 to 1995. Unlike previous studies, which are based mostly on economy-wide analysis, this study is based on a disaggregated analysis at the industry level. A Generalized Leontief cost function is utilized to estimate the impact of public capital on nine manufacturing industries in Japan. The results indicate that public capital offers no insignificant contribution to the productive performance of these manufacturing industries except for Paper, Textiles and Transport. The paper also suggests that the bubble economy in the 1980s is the contributing factor behind this insignificant effect of public capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2020, the Japanese government launched the Go To Eat campaign, a policy initiative involving the distribution of vouchers to households for use at restaurants, with the aim of supporting the food service industry, which had experienced a significant decrease in sales due to the government’s ‘self-restraint request’ during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper uses a nonparametric method to investigate the relationship between the Go To Eat campaign and the spread of COVID-19 in Japan by examining food service expenditures, mobility, positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, and the Indices of Industrial Production. The distribution of food service expenditures changed in October and November, when the campaign started, as well as in December, when the campaign ended. In addition, the distribution of mobility changed in January 2021, when a state of emergency was declared. The Go To Eat campaign was economically effective as a temporary subsidy, and it might have facilitated mobility in a way that was difficult to control for some time. As such, the indirect effect of the campaign on the rise in the number of positive PCR tests is undeniable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unconventional monetary policy (UMP) influences inequality through two channels that work in opposite directions – a labour market channel (more employment, higher wages) and a financial market channel (higher asset prices). In an earlier paper, covering UMP through 2014, we found that UMP in Japan had contributed to greater income inequality through its effects on asset prices. With a longer time period, a richer dataset including labour market data, and a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) we confirm that these results continue to hold, and investigate why UMP's impact on inequality in Japan differs from some other countries. We argue that Japanese structural issues may mute the labour market channel, especially: (i) labour market rigidity; and (ii) the large share of the population that is older than 65 years old or retired. The older cohort's capital gains and dividends are re-saved in other financial assets, instead of being consumed or used for starting businesses. At the same time, wages have not increased despite the severe labour shortage, due to the frictions in Japan's labour market. We conclude that these factors may make the inequality created by UMP in Japan unique by international comparison. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the nonlinear connection between corporate governance (CG) and corporate leverage. Our study applied the dynamic panel threshold model (DPTM) to facilitate the capture of the nonlinear effect of CG on a firm's leverage for Japanese listed companies. Additionally, our study sought to demonstrate the linkage between CG and the speed of adjustment (SOA), particularly following the reforms in Japan's CG system, to reach a targeted level of leverage. The empirical findings confirm the presence of the threshold influence of managerial ownership and board size, thus confirming their nonlinear impact on capital structure. Moreover, at a low level of managerial ownership, the SOA for firms to achieve the optimal level of leverage is faster than it is for firms with a high level of managerial ownership (MO), while firms with a larger board achieve their targeted level of leverage quicker than firms with a smaller board. Our findings indicate that recent reforms in Japan's CG system seem to have been inefficient, with no positive effect on corporate leverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the impact of conventional and unconventional monetary policy on income inequality in Japan, using hitherto unexplored data from the Japan Household Panel Survey. Empirical evidence shows that expansionary monetary policy in Japan has contributed to diminishing the gender pay gap through an increase in working time of women relative to men, but also to increasing the education pay gap. These effects may have materialized via the aggregate demand channel and the labour productivity channel. In contrast, expansionary monetary policy has had no significant impact on the development of the age pay gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the implication of the full insurance hypothesis and differences in its applicability across groups of households in Japan. Using a rare Japanese individual panel data set called the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumption, the paper first shows that the full insurance hypothesis is strongly rejected for the country as a whole. The paper further shows that the rich as well as the poor, and also college graduates as well as non-college graduates cannot insure their consumption against income shocks. In sharp contrast, urban residents can pool income shocks completely, whereas rural residents cannot. Rural residents suffer from income risks more seriously than urban residents in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the economic impact of information and communication technology (ICT) innovation, within a general equilibrium framework of empirically estimated constant-elasticity-of-substitution (CES) production frontiers. Such innovation generates not only productivity growth and price changes, but it also triggers changes in the economic structure of production and trade patterns. This process ostensibly increases the social welfare. To study the impact of ICT innovation, we construct a bilateral general-equilibrium model that spans 350 commodities and sectors of trade between Japan and the Republic of Korea. We estimate all CES parameters from published statistics, including linked input–output tables and Comtrade databases. A small exogenous productivity shock in the ICT is examined in terms of potential price reductions of all commodities in both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of external advice on entrepreneurs' fundraising and business performance while distinguishing the sources of advice, by using a survey in Japan that includes 3,011 new firms. We find that advice from managers in the same industries contributes to solving entrepreneurs' fundraising problems not only before startup but also immediately after startup. Their advice also helps increase the amount of external funding which entrepreneurs obtain at the time of startup. We also find that advice from accountants contributes to enhancing new firms' performance immediately after startup. Their advice also contributes to enhancing their performance after the screening of projects, suggesting that such advice also serves as value-added in terms of the enhancement of new firms' business performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using firm-level labour union data from Japan, this paper investigates the effect of labour unions on firm leverage. We find that as union coverage increases, both the level of and extent of change in leverage decreases. These relations remain robust when a firm falls into deficit. We also find that firms with higher union coverage have a higher interest coverage ratio. In addition, we find that firms with higher union coverage are less likely to choose issuing debt compared to issuing equity when they face financial distress. Our results imply that significant employee influence enhanced by labour unions increases fixed costs, crowds out the firm's debt capacity and consequently reduces the firm's leverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the causal relationship between real exports and GDP growth in Japan using two recently developed causal modelling approaches. Using Japanese time series, the paper employed the augmented VAR methodology developed by Toda and Yamamoto (1995) to test for Granger non-causality. Then, a more recently developed technique of directed acyclic graphs (DAG) was also used in providing over-identifying restrictions on the innovations from a vector autoregression (VAR) model. In contrast to prior analyses, the application of DAG techniques allows for the examination of both contemporaneous and dynamic causal structure of the exports-productivity nexus. The empirical results reveal that the causal path between exports and GDP growth in Japan is bi-directional. Furthermore, other variables such as capital and foreign output are also significant determinants of productivity growth in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically analyses the stability of the aggregate import demand function for G7 countries. The standard cointegration test and a test developed by Gregory and Hansen are performed. The results of standard cointegration tests suggest that there is no stable cointegrating relation between real import, real GDP and relative import price for all G7 countries. The cointegrating relation is empirically supported for France and Germany if structural change for cointegrating vector is explicitly taken into consideration. The cointegrating relation is empirically rejected for Canada, Italy, Japan, the UK and the USA. Thus, the stimulation of domestic business conditions will not necessarily link the quantity of imports for these five countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically analyses whether consumer confidence has an effect on the real economy in Japan. This paper uses vector autoregressions including variables which represent consumer confidence. It is shown that in the cases of quarterly and monthly data, consumer confidence has a significant effect on GDP fluctuations, whereas in the case of semiannual data, it has no effect. In other words, consumer confidence has an effect on only short-term economic fluctuations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the dependence of unemployment on real oil price and real interest rate is an important issue that has been addressed only in the time dimension, little is known about the movements of real input prices and their impact on unemployment in the time-frequency space. With a continuous wavelet coherency and partial coherency approach and monthly data of Japan and US from January 1960 to May 2017, this paper contributes to the literature by examining the characteristics of the dependence of unemployment on real input prices across frequencies and over time. The empirical results indicate that: First, a rise in real oil price leads to productivity growth slowdown and unemployment increase at the scale of 16–64 months after 1990 for Japan and 8–24 months after 2005 for US. Second, an increase in real interest rate results in higher unemployment at the 16–32-month scale before 1974 for Japan and 8–64-month scale before 2000 for US. Third, the degree of integration between labour market and energy market in US is higher than that in Japan. This study provides time-frequency evidence to the supply side hypothesis about the relationships between input prices and unemployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of main bank switching on the probability of bankruptcy of new small businesses using a propensity score matching estimation approach. We use a unique firm-level dataset of approximately 1,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) incorporated in Japan; these SMEs are young and unlisted just after incorporation. We find that switching main bank relationships increases the probability of firm bankruptcy. In addition, the result holds only when the relationship between the firm and its main bank is terminated. Specifically, the probability of bankruptcy increases when firms switch their main banks to financial institutions with which they have not previously transacted, and when the ex-post main banks are not affiliated financial institutions of their ex-ante main banks. These results may be because such switching worsens the financial condition of client firms, and thus, it leads to bankruptcy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the drivers of labor productivity at aggregate and sectoral levels focusing on tangible and intangible ICT capital, FDI and global value chain participation. The analysis, based on a panel dataset of 18 EU countries, the US and Japan over the period 2000–2017, reveals an important role of ICT capital, especially intangible ICT capital embodied in software and databases, in driving labor productivity growth. Furthermore, backward global value chain participation is also positively associated with productivity. Contrary to expectations, we do not find evidence of a productivity-enhancing effect of foreign direct investment when controlling for phantom FDI related to special purpose entities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether the Career Concern Hypothesis, which Gibbons and Murphy (Journal of Political Economy, 100, 1992) have presented, holds in the labour market of professional baseball players in Japan. The hypothesis emphasizes that if workers are concerned about their career, an optimal compensation contract has two incentives - an explicit incentive from compensation for current performance and an implicit incentive from concern about their career - and predicts that the explicit incentive should be strongest for workers close to retirement because the concern for their career is weakest for these workers. Incorporating the uncertainty of the retirement period, evidences are found supporting the Career Concern Hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a unique long-run panel of Japanese households, this paper examines the changes in consumption at retirement ('the retirement-consumption puzzle'). Our analysis shows that households' expenditure does decline after the retirement of the household head and that changes in household composition at retirement cannot fully account for this decline. Changes in life-style/preferences after retirement also do not appear to explain a salient feature of the expenditure decline, namely, the strong correlation between the magnitudes of the expenditure decline and the income decline upon retirement. On the other hand, our finding that the expenditure decline is larger for households with smaller savings and/or that experienced a large unexpected income decline is broadly consistent with the standard LC/PIH augmented with unexpected shocks, while it does not rule out the possibility that there is a relatively small subset of households that are myopic and lack sufficient saving discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hypotheses of non-addiction, myopia and rational addiction are tested using annual, quarterly and monthly data. Changes in the prices of Japanese cigarettes can be viewed as exogenous from the point of view of consumer behaviour, because the Japanese government controls cigarette prices. The empirical results of this paper support the addiction hypothesis. The short-run and long-run price elasticities range from -0.338 to -0.421, and from -0.679 to -0.686, respectively; thus, increases in tax revenues in the long run are likely to be smaller than those in the short run. As a result, tax increases would be an effective means of curbing smoking and reducing its social cost. Furthermore, the debt compensation programmes for the Japan Railway and the National Forestry will not go according to plan, unless revenues are increased in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The governance structure of public corporations is determined by the agency relationship between shareholders and managers, and the agency theory predicts that deregulation of an industry leads to governance adaptation. Deregulation of the Japanese banking business in the 1980s offers an interesting case study in this framework, as Japanese banks fell into serious solvency problems in the post-deregulation 1990s. This paper investigates whether ineffective governance was responsible for the plight of Japanese banks. The sample is 384 corporations that were listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange between 1983 and 1990, which includes 59 banks. One of the findings is that bank shareholders allowed more diffuse ownership structure after deregulation, which demonstrates that the agency theory did not hold for shareholders of Japanese banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data on per capita income of Japan's 47 prefectures between 1955 and 1997, this paper shows that one of the most popular measurements of convergence, σ-convergence, is not invariant with both transformation and definition of dispersion. Measured by the standard deviation, the actual per capita income has diverged, whereas measured by the coefficients of variation, it has converged since 1955. The log of per capita income and relative income of all prefectures to Tokyo, however, have converged regardless of the measurement of dispersion. In addition, through the estimation of density function and transition matrix, the intradistribution dynamics of each prefecture's per capita income is identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has documented the empirical evidence that the Basle Accord had significant effects on bank credit in Japan. The Accord reduced the ratio of the credit increase to the total asset by 0.09–0.24% for banks with the international standard, and by 0.06–0.21% for those with the domestic standard, respectively. According to the Fixed Effects Model estimates, the impacts of the regulation are in between 0.12% and 0.13% for those banks with the international standard. These estimates are smaller than the corresponding estimate with aggregate time series data, 0.40%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper forms one of a series examining aspects of transfer pricing from a Japanese perspective. In earlier work the authors examined prevalent allegations that global companies, especially Japanese multinationals, operated transfer pricing policies to the deliberate disadvantage of host countries by artificially locating profits in jurisdictions where a tax advantage could be obtained. There would appear to be considerable evidence to suggest that obtaining a tax advantage is not the primary reason for adopting any particular transfer pricing policy. This is especially true in the case of certain Japanese companies, the transfer pricing policies of which result in effective transfers of profits back to their home base in Japan, where tax rates are relatively high. In earlier work it was initially suggested that this homeward transfer of profits was a consequence of following different costing principles and operating within a different business culture. This paper will explore further these reasons and attempt to analyse why such companies actively seek to undertake foreign direct investment, yet do not exploit transfer pricing opportunities in ways which have been open to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the J-curve hypothesis for US agricultural and manufactured goods, using the Shiller lag model. The results support the J-curve effect for agricultural goods, but not for manufactured goods. These findings explain why many studies in the literature fail to support the J-curve phenomenon. There are two explanations for these findings: (1) the aggregation bias of data that combine both agricultural and manufactured goods and (2) the country under study is often an industrial nation like the US or Japan with a high proportion of manufactured goods in both exports and imports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper constructs a model that attempts to explain the performance of Japanese financial institutions in Australia. In general the model proposed performs well for size measures, but comparatively poorly for measures of profitability. Size, as measured by home country equity, was found to increase both Australian assets and Australian profitability. Institutional features in both Australia and Japan were found to have their greatest impact upon size measures. Net interest margin differences were found to have no significant relationship with any performance measure used. However, the results are not sufficiently conclusive to produce a definitive model to explain the performance of foreign-owned banks in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs cointegration and error correction models to examine the dynamics of the yen-dollar real exchange rate and the US-Japan real trade balance. It uses quarterly data from 1973.I-1993.IV. The unit root tests reveal non-stationarity in both the variables. The ADF test fails to affirm any long-run association between the yen-dollar real exchange rate and the US-Japan real trade balance. Also, there is evidence of bidirectional short-run Granger causality between these two variables with mutual feedbacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tries to clarify whether change in political regime has an effect on the behaviour of the stock market in Japan. The empirical study finds that the transition of ruling party effect is not a crucial variable to the Nikkei 225. The alienation felt by the Japanese about the political environment, resulting in a succession of prime ministers, does not influence the Nikkei 225 stock market behaviour. Therefore, former prime ministers who have resigned have become scapegoats for the poor performance of financial and economic policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classified broadly, two motives for intra-family transfers exist: altruism and selfishness. This paper examines two selfish hypotheses  –  the exchange motive (strategic bequest motive) and the demonstration effect  –  using a new Japanese microdata set. Analysis of the determinants of intergenerational co-residence, distance between residences, and frequency of contact yields considerable support for the exchange motive but no support for the demonstration effect. The findings are consistent with the exchange motive after distinguishing it from mutual altruism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Has deflation contributed to the long lasting stagnation of the Japanese economy? Could the Bank of Japan have stopped deflation by implementing a more expansionary monetary policy? Tentative answers are probably not to the first question, and probably yes to the second question. It is found that the total cost of deflation over the period 1995–2003 has been close to a 1.1% rate of lost GDP. Yet, on the basis of statistical significance and robustness to specification choices, this evidence is not compelling. On the other hand, the estimated positive linkage between nominal base money growth and inflation is significant and robust, even given current economic conditions. However, in order to be inflationary, monetary policy should have been more expansionary than what actually observed, even since the launch of the quantitative easing in 2001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though monetary policy has kept interest rates at historically low levels, the Japanese economy has experienced long lasting recessions since the 1990s. In this paper, Japanese data are employed to conduct an empirical analysis of changes in the effects of monetary policy on the real economy. It is found that monetary policy effects vary depending on the phase of the business cycle and the lending attitudes diffusion indices. More precisely, policy effects are larger in recession but diminish in extreme recession, and monetary policy is more effective when lenders' attitudes are severe but less effective when they are excessively severe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies the panel data unit root tests provided by Im, Pesaran and Shin (Discussion paper, 1997) to examine the interest rate convergence of small-open Asian countries with major financial centres. With monthly data from 1988:1 to 1997:6, it was found that the nominal interest rates of these countries converge to the US rates rather than to Japan's. This finding is consistent with the view that the monetary authorities of non-Japan Asian economies pegged their exchange rates overwhelmingly to the dollar rather than the yen before the financial crisis of 1997. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is to study globalization motives and strategies of Japanese manufacturing industries by analyzing the causes and patterns of foreign direct investment (FDI) of Japanese manufacturing firms. We use regression analysis to determine internally driving-out factors and externally-inducing factors. Japanese FDI strategy has gone through three different stages; from natural resource-seeking investment in the 1950s and 1960s to market-expansion investment in the 1970s and 1980s and to a combination of cost-reducing (low-cost labor-seeking) investment and market-penetrating investment in the 1990s. Our findings show that Japanese FDI in Asia and other developing countries tends to be in labor-intensive sectors where Japanese firms are losing their comparative advantages at home. The main motive for FDI into these regions is low-cost resource seeking. On the other hand, Japanese FDI in the US and Europe tends to be knowledge-intensive sectors where Japanese firms attempt to internalize transaction and information costs by globalizing its production. The main motive for FDI into these regions is market-seeking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asset prices rose rapidly in Japan during the latter half of the 1980s, and then declined as quickly in the early 1990s. Their behaviour is consistent with the existence of speculative 'bubbles' in these markets. This paper investigates the dynamic relationships among stock and land prices in Japan, output, and monetary and bank lending variables. The results of causality tests and variance decompositions are reported for two time periods, 1972–1985 and 1986–1991. The price bubbles affected each other in the first period, although the size of this impact is dependent on the choice of variables in the VARs. In the bubble period, there is strong evidence that the stock market bubble was determined by its own past and also influenced the land market bubble, accounting for a significant proportion of the variance of the land market bubble. However, neither output, the money supply nor the lending variables were significant in the causality tests or in explaining the variation of the two assset bubbles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper appraises the in-sample and out-of-sample adequacy of linear AR and nonlinear SETAR models of unemployment rates for Germany, Japan, the UK and the US. Tests are reported for the presence and specification of threshold nonlinearities, SETAR model estimates, limiting dynamic properties and residual diagnostics, and out-of-sample forecasting performance. In-sample, threshold non-linearities are confirmed to be strongly present for the UK, US and Germany, and more marginally so for Japan. Out-of-sample, excepting Japan, SETAR models provide superior onestep-ahead forecast on RMSE grounds, most notably for the US. Final tests indicate that these models exhibit predictive accuracy in the sense of parameter and residual variance stability, implying the potential for exploitation of such nonlinearity in official forecasting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The empirical evidence that evaluates ex-post the effects of trade policy confirms the presumption, well known in theory, that quantitative barriers to trade have an impact on the average quality of exports. Yet, in evaluating ex-ante the effects of trade policy reform, very few studies take into account the role of the induced change in quality. The paper evaluates the effects of liberalization in the Italian car market through a calibrated model where the choice of the quality of exports is made endogenous. Simulating the removal of the VER on Japanese exports, there are substantial gains from liberalization when only quantity effects are considered. Results change dramatically if quality effects are taken into account: the downgrading in Japanese exports entails a strong reduction in consumers' gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intertemporal models of current account determination demonstrate that in the analysis of the current account balance of a country, it is important to distinguish between transitory and permanent disturbances in income and relative prices. This paper attempts to decompose the observed data on income and real exchange rate into transitory and permanent components and then uses the decomposed series to test the empirical validity of the predictions of the intertemporal models. Evidence from the United States and Japan provide very limited support for the intertemporal models in terms of the effects of transitory and permanent changes in income on current account balance. For both US and Japan, the study finds that permanent changes in real exchange rate have significant effects on the current account balance. Statistical tests find no evidence of hysteresis in the trading relations of the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to identify the factors determining the relative competitiveness of Taiwan's international tourism among a group of seven East Asian countries. Using data on visitors from the USA and Japan, the major message which emerged from this study is that there are sharp differences between factors affecting US visitors and Japanese visitors. Specifically, we found: (1) the decline of Taiwan's market share in Japan has been mainly due to appreciation of NT dollars and changing preferences, whereas they are not crucial factors in the US market; (2) qualitative supply-side factors indeed could have decisive influences on the market share. However, their effect is again origin-dependent. The open-door policy of China is the only important determinant of Taiwan's competitiveness in the US market, while it has no impact on the Japanese visitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the difficulties facing tax authorities in valuing cross-border flows from a transactions based analysis, in conditions where intangibles and services are important and where the multinational firm concerned is operating a system in which group-wide economic functions dominate decision making. Its key contention is that the economic functions of any entity should be examined in order to determine whether transactions analysis can be used to produce an acceptable value. This is done in the particular context of Japanese multinational enterprises and uses two hypothetical situations to demonstrate the inadequacy of transactions based analysis as a panacea for transfer pricing problems, especially for transfers of value involving intangibles and services, which it redefines into two categories, perceptible and imperceptible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the efficiency of personal cars by using the non-parametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. Analysis and comparison is performed in a normative manner since all the economic and technical parameters used (four and ten respectively) are not explicitly weighted. The data set covers 121 different car models in 1997, as appeared in the German Auto Motor und Sport magazine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study seeks to analyze the non-linear relationship between a firm's debt structure and performance based on evidence from Japan through the use of a panel data fixed effects model for a sample of 1,670 listed firms. This is the first study that looks at the effect of the short-term debt threshold on corporate performance, as well as the influence of the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC) on the nonlinear effect of debt structure on corporate performance. Moreover, it represents an initial endeavor that uses cross-industry comparisons to scrutinize the nonlinear effect of debt structure on the performance of Japanese companies. This study's findings reveal the presence of a nonlinear impact of debt with short-term maturity on corporate performance. In addition, there is a U-shaped relationship between firm performance and short-term debt, suggesting that a firm's profit decreases at lower levels of short-term debt (below 45.2%) and increases at higher levels of debt with short-term maturity. Moreover, this short-term debt threshold was affected significantly by the financial crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inequality has been largely ignored in the literature and practice of monetary policy, but is gaining more attention recently. Here, we exclusively focus on the impact of unconventional monetary policy (UMP) on inequality. We look at how the recent UMP in Japan affected inequality, using household survey data. Our vector auto regression (VAR) results show that UMP widened income inequality after 2008Q3 as the Bank of Japan (BoJ) resumed its zero-interest rate policy and reinstated UMP. This is largely due to the portfolio channel. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to empirically analyse the distributional impact of UMP. Japan’s extensive experience with UMP may hold important policy implications for other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During the last decade, economists and policy makers have extensively discussed what types of firms can exploit external markets by exporting and what happens to domestic firms if external competitors penetrate into the home market. Although both theoretical and empirical studies have been dedicated to these issues, few have been carried out for the service sector. Since the service sector accounts for the lion’s share of GDP, the lack of those studies indicates that a large part of the actual economy still remains veiled. Our study fills this gap. We examine whether or not the Melitz and Ottaviano (2008) model remains satisfied in the service sector, using data from Japanese SMEs. From our analysis, we confirm that larger market sizes are associated with higher productivity levels. On the other hand, firms with higher markups tend to develop their business in smaller markets, conditional of the simultaneity between production and consumption. These results reveal that further productivity growth in the service sector also requires markets to be larger and more integrated. In addition, the markup levels become lower in those markets. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Great East Japan Earthquake and the subsequent tsunami that hit and severely damaged the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station resulted indirectly in the shutdown of most of the nuclear power plants in Japan. To compensate for the lost nuclear power supply, more fossil fuels were used. People became concerned that this could be disadvantageous for domestic manufacturing industries and accelerated their offshoring to Asia, especially China, through foreign direct investment (FDI). We used a world trade computable general equilibrium (CGE) model with endogenous FDI from Japan to China to quantify the impact of the power crisis on the Japanese manufacturing sectors. We found that the power crisis as well as FDI would adversely affect several sectors that use power intensively, but would benefit the transportation equipment (TEQ), electric equipment (EEQ) and machinery sectors, despite the common expectation that these sectors would undergo a so-called ‘hollowing-out.’ [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyzes the impact of monetary policy on household saving in Japan between 1993 and 2017. Using annual data from the Japan Panel Survey of Consumers it is shown that monetary expansion has contributed to a widening gap in households' net saving through an adverse effect on the volume of saving of non-academic households. In contrast, households with at least one academic tend to be able to compensate these adverse effects of monetary expansion or can even benefit from it. The article documents how inequality in terms of the ability to build up wealth has increased in Japan over the past decades. The statistical analysis controls for household size as well as potential spatial effects in the transmission mechanism of monetary policy on household saving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A perceptual gap between banks and firms exists in Japan, preventing the credit channel of monetary policy. Banks believe that bankable customers are scarce, while firms believe that banks do not issue loans without collateral or guarantees. To explain this gap, I focus on the dispersion in the degree of financial constraints across listed Japanese firms from FY1991 to FY2019. I construct a firm-specific and time-varying measure of financial constraints through the structural estimation, and investigate its distribution over time. The results reveal a right-skewed distribution for the index of financial constraints, indicating that many firms face minor financial constraints, while a few face severe financial constraints. The spread between the 75th and 25th percentiles of the index of financial constraints increased after the bubble burst, indicating that Japan's financial heterogeneity has recently become outstanding. Finally, decomposing financial heterogeneity into within – and between-industry effects shows that the observed financial inequality is due to the increase in inequality among firms within narrowly defined industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extending Fama and French's U.S. study on choosing factors to international equity markets, we test nested and non-nested asset pricing models for North America, Europe, Asia excluding Japan, and Japan. For non-nested models, we propose a new simulation methodology using a blocks bootstrap approach that takes into account factor dependencies. The resultant out-of-sample Sharpe ratios across all models and countries are lower than Fama and French's pairs bootstrap approach. While we confirm that the six-factor model with market, size, and small size spread factors for value, profitability, investment, and momentum produces the highest maximum squared Sharpe ratio in most economies, an exception is Asia excluding Japan. Additionally, spanning regressions reveal that size does not matter in any of the international equity markets, whereas value matters in Europe, Asia excluding Japan, and Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The long-run equilibrium relationship among money, income, prices, and interest rates in Japan is investigated by the threshold cointegration test, which allows for asymmetric adjustment, introduced by Enders and Siklos (2001). The threshold cointegration approach provides clear evidence of the cointegration relationship characterized by asymmetric adjustment. By allowing for asymmetric adjustment, results are obtained showing the stability of the money demand function, similar to Lucas (1988), who pointed out that the money demand function is stable if unit income elasticity is imposed. In particular, the estimated results show that the adjustment process toward equilibrium is highly persistent above an appropriately estimated threshold, whereas the adjustment process toward equilibrium quickly converges below it. This finding indicates that deviations from equilibrium resulting from increases in money or decreases in income and prices are highly persistent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The credit view is that a monetary tightening affects the real economy by shifting the supply schedule of bank credit left. While bank credit typically contracts following a monetary tightening, the financial contraction does not necessarily mean a shift of the supply schedule. Testing the credit view requires the identification of the shifts of the demand and supply schedules of credit. Using an original approach, this study shows that the credit view is supported for Japan. The credit view is, however, composed of two different views, namely the lending view and the balance-sheet view. While the balance-sheet view implies that the cutback of lending has no impact on the real economy, the lending view implies independent impacts of the cutback. Given the acceptance of the credit view, this study further attempts to test the balance-sheet view against the lending view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A structural vector autoregressive model of the Australian economy that allows for international shocks from the USA, Japan as well as world commodity prices is specified and estimated for the period 1979-1999. A block exogenous structure linking the three countries is imposed. The international linkages are modelled using a factor structure to circumvent problems from estimating large scale dynamic models. The factors are estimated recursively using a Kalman filter and are found to represent aggregate demand and liquidity shocks for the USA and Japan respectively. The key empirical result is the USA shocks are the dominant source of international shocks on the Australian economy with the Japanese economy having a dampening effect on the USA shocks. The empirical results also show that Australian monetary policy responds to domestic conditions rather than international monetary policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The location determinants of US FDI in the Pacific region of the OECD, i.e. Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Korea, are analysed for 1982-1997. The data set allowed two time periods i.e. the 1980s and the 1990s, and two different subgroups, i.e. Australia and New Zealand, and Japan and Korea to be distinguished. Statistical evidence indicates a heterogeneous response of US FDI towards different countries and for different time periods. Factors such as market size, income level and qualified and productive labour exert a significant impact on both the timing and the locational choice of US investors in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]