Changing banking relationships and client‐firm performance: Evidence from Japan for the 1990s

The extant literature generally suggests that the performance of client firms deteriorates if their distressed main bank reduces the supply of credit. However, this insight is only consistent with the notion that main banks have an information advantage over other banks to the extent that a client firm has trouble getting access to credit if the firm changes its main bank. This paper shows that Japanese firms did change their main banking relationship when their main banks become distressed in a period with financial shocks. Surprisingly, these firms did not suffer from loss of access to credit and actually their performance significantly improved after their change of main banks.     

Taxation In The Two‐Sector Neoclassical Growth Model With Sector‐Specific Externalities And Endogenous Labour Supply*

This paper examines the long‐run impacts of selective (or sector‐specific) commodity, payroll, and profit taxes in a two‐sector endogenous growth model with sector‐specific production externalities, in which one sector produces consumption goods and the other produces investment goods. The novelty of the model is that it allows not only for endogenous labour supply but also for the intersectoral allocation of resources, which may together lead to indeterminacy. We analytically show that the stability properties of the long‐run equilibrium critically affect the long‐run effects of these selective taxes, which may reverse the standard results of the growth effects of distortionary taxes.     

Effects of Jumps and Small Noise in High-Frequency Financial Econometrics

Several new statistical procedures for high-frequency financial data analysis have been developed to estimate risk quantities and test the presence of jumps in the underlying continuous-time financial processes. Although the role of micro-market noise is important in high-frequency financial data, there are some basic questions on the effects of presence of noise and jump in the underlying stochastic processes. When there can be jumps and (micro-market) noise at the same time, it is not obvious whether the existing statistical methods are reliable for applications in actual data analysis. We investigate the misspecification effects of jumps and noise on some basic statistics and the testing procedures for jumps proposed by Ait-Sahalia and Jacod (Ann Stat 37–1:184–222 2009; 38–5:3093–3123 2010) as an illustration. We find that their first test (testing the presence of jumps as a null-hypothesis) is asymptotically robust in the small-noise asymptotic sense against possible misspecifications while their second test (testing no-jumps as a null-hypothesis) is quite sensitive to the presence of noise.     

Applying Time Series Decomposition to Construct Index-Tracking Portfolio

This study proposes a new method for creating an index-tracking portfolio using time series decomposition. First, we construct index-tracking portfolios of stocks chosen because their price movements mimic that of the Dow-Jones Industrial Average. Our method utilizes similarities of constituent stocks to the benchmark that are assessed by distances of time series trends derived from decomposing original series. Although the portfolios chosen by our method reasonably tracked the performance of the benchmark, they did not surpass the clustering approach discussed in earlier studies. Therefore, we examined what causes tracking error and found that two causes for deficiencies in our similarity-based method, which are unintended irregular movements of holding stocks and highly correlated relationships within stocks in the portfolio. To overcome them and to improve tracking performance, we propose a similarity-balanced approach that is another index-tracking method with alternate use of similarity. Doing so improved the tracking performance by avoiding the problem of high correlation among the stocks chosen under the initial method.     

Perfect foresight dynamics in binary supermodular games

The present paper considers equilibrium selection in binary supermodular games based on perfect foresight dynamics. We provide complete characterizations of absorbing and globally accessible equilibria and apply them to two subclasses of games. First, for unanimity games, it is shown that our selection criterion is not in agreement with that in terms of Nash products, and an example is presented in which two strict Nash equilibria are simultaneously globally accessible when the friction is sufficiently small. Second, a class of games with invariant diagonal are proposed and shown to generically admit an absorbing and globally accessible equilibrium for small frictions.     

Who Uses Free Trade Agreements?

The utilization of ASEAN free trade agreements (FTA) is low by international standards. To clarify the reasons for such low utilization, this paper uses unique affiliate‐level data to investigate what kinds of Japanese affiliates in ASEAN are more likely to use an FTA scheme in their exporting. Our findings are as follows. First, the larger the affiliate is, or the more diversified the origins of its procurements, the more likely it is to utilize an FTA scheme in its exporting. Second, affiliates that export actively to countries with higher general tariffs are more likely to use FTA. Third, there are clear differences in FTA utilization depending on affiliates' locations and sectors.     

Spatial Cournot competition and economic welfare: a note

We investigated welfare implications in location-quantity models in a symmetric linear city. We found that when firms are not agglomerated in equilibrium, increasing the distance between firms raises (reduces) producer surplus and social welfare (consumer surplus). Moreover, central agglomeration is always optimal for consumers among symmetric locations, but not necessarily for producers. Central agglomeration can be inefficient even if it is the unique equilibrium outcome. In short, the firms are more likely to agglomerate or locate closer than what welfare maximizers would dictate, whereas they locate farther apart than what consumer surplus maximizers would recommend.     

Partial Agglomeration or Dispersion in Spatial Cournot Competition

We revisit works by Pal and Matsushima, which, respectively, present different equilibrium locations. We consider nonlinear transport costs and show that Pal's result (dispersion) is more robust than Matsushima's (partial agglomeration). Pal's result holds true for any transport cost function, while Matsushima's does not hold under strong concavity or convexity of the transport cost function. If we consider sequential move of location. Pal's result holds for any transport costs. On the other hand, Matsushima's does not hold except for linear transport cost. We also discuss welfare and show that nonlinearity of the transport cost function yields rich welfare implications.     

Credit Contagion and Trade Credit: Evidence from Small Business Data in Japan

The present study investigates whether credit contagion leads to a decrease in trade credit for small businesses. In 1997–1998, the Japanese economy experienced a deep recession, and the domino effect caused an increase in the number of dishonored bills and bankruptcy filings. During a period of credit contagion, the possibility of default increases for firms with more financial claims and lower cash holdings. We find that during a recession, trade payables for small businesses with higher trade receivables and lower cash holdings are reduced. The hypothesis that the effects of credit risk on trade payables are weakened is not supported.