This paper provides both theoretical and empirical analyses of market participants' optimal decision-making in trading Japanese equity mutual funds. First, we build an intertemporal decision-making model under uncertainty in the presence of transaction costs. This setting enables us to shed...

This paper offers three analyses of Japan's macroeconomic experience during the post-1990 period. First, we analyze various facets of deflation during the period, arguing that the deflation of general prices has by no means been a major factor for the stagnating economy. In contrast, the...

This paper discusses Japan's financial system, in particular its perspective and the authorities' roles in redesigning and administering the system. Japan's financial system, characterized by the "main bank system," depends heavily on banks and differs greatly from the U.S. financial system,...

This paper reviews the financial market functioning under the zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) and the subsequent quantitative monetary easing policy (QMEP) conducted by the Bank of Japan (BOJ). First, the estimation results of the Japanese government bond yield curve using the...

If markup ratios fluctuate widely, so does output volume and investment. This magnifies the business cycle and increases uncertainty about future economic conditions. This paper investigates the implication for monetary policy by analyzing markup ratios. The main conclusions are (1) as a result...

Repurchase agreement (repo) transactions are widely used as a risk-free means of borrowing or lending funds and securities. Repo transactions can be categorized into (1) general collateral (GC) repos that borrow or lend funds, and (2) special collateral (SC) repos that borrow or lend specific...

This paper explores banks' entry decisions into a duopolistic loan market to shed light on the prolonged slump in the Japanese loan market in the 1990s. The game-theoretic real options approach is employed to analyze the effects of uncertainty on lending decisions. Special emphasis is given to...

This article provides an empirical investigation into the validity of the production-based capital asset-pricing model (P-CAPM) in the Japanese asset markets during the period 1980-97. Several methodologies are used to test the P-CAPM, which include the generalized method of moments (GMM) test...

This paper investigates the cause of price differentials between domestic and overseas markets through various empirical analyses of markup pricing. The results show that markup ratios (defined as price/marginal cost) are generally higher in non-manufacturing sectors than in manufacturing ones....

This paper provides a formal model that investigates optimal timing in banks' writing off their nonperforming loans. The motivation comes from the recent episodes of Japanese banks, which have been slow to clean up their nonperforming loans after the collapse of the "bubble" economy in the early...