The large weight of public financial institutions is often identified as one of the characteristics of the Japanese financial system. It is believed that reform of the private financial sector is not enough to revitalize the Japanese financial system, but reform of the public financial sector is...

Under the Japanese "main bank" relationship, an individual bank holds equity in a firm and plays a leading role in a firm decision-making and financing. This may leave a firm dependent on its main bank for financing due to the information advantage it enjoys over other potential leaders. While...

This paper examines the evidence in bank equity markets concerning bank regulatory policies in japan over the turbulent 1995-1998 period.

Previous empirical studies cast a doubt on a positive effect of overseas listings on stockholders' wealth. In this paper, we used a mail questionnaire to obtain information on overseas listing decisions of Japanese companies.

Previous studies, investigating how the market in general viewed the impact of a big earthquake (e.g. the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area) on insurance firm values, found a positive reaction of insurers' stock prices. This "gaining from loss" may be caused by the...

The Japanese "main bank" relationship, under which a bank holds equity in a firm and plays a leading role in its decision-making and financing, may leave a firm dependent on its main bank for financing due its information advantage over other potential lenders. While alternative sources of...

We examine the evidence in equity markets concerning bank regulatory policies in Japan from 1995 to 1999. Our results support the presence of information-based contagion in Japanese equity markets. When the failure of a bank of certain regulatory status was announced, it adversely affected...

We develop an overlapping generations model of the real estate market in which search frictions and a debt overhang combine to generate price persistence and illiquidity. Illiquidity stems from heterogeneity in agent real estate valuations. The variance of agent valuations determines how quickly...