This paper examines the effectiveness of Japans Emergency Credit Guarantee (ECG) program set up during the financial turmoil following the failure of Lehman Brothers, in increasing credit availability and improving the ex-post performance of small businesses. In particular, using a unique...

This paper empirically examines the impact of Japan's debt forbearance policies with regard to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) stipulated in the “Act concerning Temporary Measures to Facilitate Financing for SMEs.” Using unique Japanese firm survey data that identify firms that...

We empirically investigate the adoption of stock option plans in Japan after the corporate governance reforms of the early 2000s. We examine the determinants of stock option grants, especially focusing on the effects of herding behavior among Japanese firms and the change of accounting treatment...

This study aims to examine the positive relationship between stock liquidity and corporate cash holdings in the context of Japan and offer a novel explanation. Our explanation is based on the “dark side” of stock liquidity, according to which liquidity can aggravate corporate financial...

Using U.S, data, Sharifkhani and Simutin (2021) show that industry shocks propagating along this intersectoral trade network can feed back to the originating industry, causing an “echo”–intermediate-term autocorrelation in returns. This "echo" effect is stronger in industries with strong...

This paper represents the first study to examine the relationship between ESG initiatives and firm value for almost all Japanese listed firms. By constructing our unique AI-based ESG (Environmental Social Governance) scores that have higher coverage than existing ESG scores, we score and analyze...