The effect of mergers on employment and wages: Evidence from Japan

This study investigates the impact of mergers on employment and employees’ wages in Japan, based on 111 mergers between listed firms observed between 1990 and 2003. Typically, the number of employees decreases by 4.45% three years after a merger, even after changes in sales and other variables are controlled. Firms that experience related mergers, and rescue mergers are more likely to decrease the number of workers. At the same time, wages increase by 5.46% per employee. These results suggest that the main motivation behind mergers is not to divest employees of their wealth.     

Impacts of ISO 14001 adoption on firm performance: Evidence from China

This paper investigates the impacts of ISO 14001 adoption on the performance of firms using a sample of Chinese firms. The results show that adopting ISO 14001 has insignificant impacts on the financial performance of Chinese firms. A further investigation shows that the adoption of ISO 14001 increases sales and costs of firms in similar magnitudes, thus causes insignificant net effects on the financial performance. Despite negligible financial gains, the adoption of ISO 14001 provides implicit non-financial benefits, such as promoting export and relieving coercive environmental inspections from the government.     

Bank capital shocks and portfolio risk: Evidence from Japan

Despite the downward trend of land prices and the ex post low return on real estate loans, Japanese banks increased their lending to the real estate sector during the 1990s. We argue that this phenomenon can be explained by the risk-shifting incentives of banks and discover that banks with low capital-to-asset ratios and low franchise value chose high-risk assets such as real estate loans. Unlike previous studies, we show that the capital–risk relationship is non-linear and changes from positive to negative as franchise value falls. We also find that a capital adequacy requirement did not prevent risk-taking behavior of under-capitalized banks since they then just issued more subordinated debts to meet this requirement. In contrast, government capital injections led banks to reduce risky loans at the margin. Recapitalization by issuing subordinated debts helped banks recover their capital losses and mitigated the credit crunch, but consequently allowed them to increase their exposure to the real estate sector and worsened the bad loan problems.     

Banking crisis and productivity of borrowing firms: Evidence from Japan

We investigate the effects of bank distress on the productivity of borrowing firms by using data on listed companies in the Japanese manufacturing industry during the 1990s. We find that deterioration in the financial health of banks, which is measured by a decline in the capital-asset ratio, decreased the productivity of their borrowers during the period of the severe financial crisis (FY1997–1998). Our finding empirically confirms the theoretical view that an increase in financial friction negatively affects the productivity of the corporate sector.     

The impact of agricultural technology adoption on income inequality in rural China: Evidence from southern Yunnan Province

This study analyzes the impact on income inequality of government efforts to increase agricultural incomes in rural China. It collects and analyzes survey data from 473 households in Yunnan, China in 2004. In particular, it investigates the effects of government efforts to promote improved upland rice technologies. Our analysis shows that farmers who adopted these technologies had incomes approximately 15% higher than non-adopters. Despite this relatively large increase, we estimate that the impact on income inequality was relatively slight. This is primarily due to the fact that lower-income farmers adopted the improved rice technology at rates that were roughly equivalent to those of higher-income farmers.     

The transmission mechanism of monetary policy in Japan: Evidence from banks' balance sheets

We examine how banks' responses to monetary policy vary according to their balance sheet using Japanese bank data from 1975 to 1999. We find that the effect of monetary policy on lending is stronger for banks that are smaller, less liquid, and more abundant with capital. The effects of bank balance sheet on monetary transmission are different by bank types, policy stances and borrowers' industries. Our results imply that a lending channel of monetary transmission exists, that the effect of expansionary monetary policy is attenuated if banks' capital is scarce, and that the effect of monetary policy on the allocation of funds depends on banks' balance sheets. J. Japanese Int. Economies 20 (3) (2006) 380–405.     

The effects of the social norm on cigarette consumption: Evidence from Japan using panel data

Using Japan's prefecture-level panel data from 1989 to 2001, this paper examines the influence of the social norm on a person's smoking behavior when the complementary relationship between smoking and drinking is taken into account. The key findings through a dynamic panel model controlling for unobserved prefecture-specific fixed effects are as follows: (1) influence from others is stronger when people live more closely and cohesively. A tightly knit society results in a reduction of smoking through smoking-related interaction. (2) Smoking and drinking have a complementary relationship: greater initial consumption of alcohol results in larger consumption of cigarettes. (3) The complementary relationship between smoking and drinking is attenuated if the cost of committing the annoying conduct (i.e., smoking) is high.Overall, this empirical study provides evidence that the psychological effect of the presence of surrounding people has a direct significant effect upon smoking behavior and, furthermore, that it attenuates the complementary relationship between smoking and drinking, thereby reducing cigarette consumption. These results indicate that not only formal rules but also tacitly formed informal norms are effective deterrents to smoking.     

Multidimensional Poverty and Perceived Happiness: Evidence from China,Japan and Korea*

We compare multidimensional poverty and its associations with perceived happiness in China, Japan and Korea. Using largely comparable nationwide survey data, we focus on multidimensional poverty in terms of income, schooling, health and social protection. We find multidimensional poverty to be more prevalent in China than in Japan or Korea; sex and age‐based differences are largest in Korea. We further confirm significant associations between multidimensional poverty and perceived happiness. For all three countries, the aggregated poverty dimensions could largely identify unhappy individuals, with both wider coverage and higher odds than is possible through unidimensional analyses.     

Quality and efficiency of home help elderly care in Japan: Evidence from micro-level data

With the introduction of public long-term care insurance in the spring of 2000, for-profit enterprises were allowed to enter the home help elderly care market in Japan for the first time. We take advantage of data from a unique, self-conducted survey to compare the efficiency and quality of service offered by providers with different types of ownership and different lengths of operation. We present two major findings. First, contrary to the prevailing perception, we find no significant difference in the quality of service between for-profit and nonprofit providers. Although the nonprofits are able to offer more qualified and experienced staff, the quality of services provided by nonprofits is worse in some aspects than that of their for-profit counterparts. Second, our estimates of a quality-adjusted cost function demonstrate that the management of newer providers is more efficient than that of older providers. Our results show that the competition mechanism works effectively in the home help care market, and that there is no reason to believe that the for-profit providers are behaving opportunistically. Thus, this study justifies the belief that free-market policy contributes significantly toward improving the quality and the efficiency of home help long-term care in Japan. J. Japanese Int. Economies 21 (2) (2007) 287–301.     

产业结构变化对中日韩经济周期协动性的影响

对中日韩三国产业结构变化与经济周期协动性的关系进行研究,研究结果表明,中日韩产业结构差异性越来越低,其主要原因是:中日之间的农林牧渔业结构性差异降低;中韩之间工业和服务业结构性差异降低;日韩之间农林牧渔业和工业结构性差异降低.这说明:农林牧渔业对中日和日韩的经济周期协动性产生更强的影响;工业对中日的经济周期协动性产生更弱的影响,而对中韩和日韩的经济周期协动性产生更强的影响;服务业对中韩的经济周期协动性产生更强的影响.     

内生式发展理论在乡村振兴中的实践——以日本岛根县邑南町为例

在乡村居民主导下进行内生式发展是实现乡村振兴的重要方式。从20世纪70年代开始,为应对传统外生式发展过程中产生的乡村产业凋敝、人口外流等问题,日本乡村地区以内生式发展的方法开展了乡村振兴实践。岛根县邑南町正是其中的典型案例。在当地居民的主导下,邑南町通过创新性地开发地区内部资源建立了乡村产业体系,依靠对区域内外生产要素的统筹运用弥补了本地发展的短板,实现了城乡互补的协调发展。邑南町的内生式发展实践促进了乡村产业振兴、人口回流和居民生活质量提升,满足了本地居民的发展需求。在推动乡村振兴由外生驱动转向内生发展的过程中,我国可以借鉴邑南町的经验,重视培育和提升乡村居民参与乡村发展的能力,使之成为乡村振兴的主导者和建设者;完善城市生产要素下乡机制,弥补乡村发展短板,实现城乡协调发展;有效发挥地方政府的作用,打造服务型政府。     

Transmission of liquidity shock to bank credit: Evidence from the deposit insurance reform in Japan

Finding the causal effects of liquidity shocks on credit supply is complicated by the endogenous relation between loan demand and liquidity position of banks. This paper attempts to overcome this problem by exploiting, as a natural experiment, the exogenous deposit outflow prompted by the removal of a blanket deposit guarantee on time deposits in Japan. We find that during the period of transition from a blanket guarantee to a partial guarantee, weak banks suffered from a large outflow of partially insured time deposits. More importantly, we find that those weak banks were not able to raise a sufficient amount of other types of deposits to make up for the loss of time deposits, which, consequently, forced them to cut back on loan supply. These results are consistent with the theory that the imperfect substitutability of insured deposits and uninsured deposits affects the tightness of banks’ financing constraints and ultimately the supply of bank loans.     

Efficiency,Cointegration and Contagion in Equity Markets: Evidence from China,Japan and South Korea*

This paper empirically examines whether three East Asian stock markets, namely, those of China, Japan and South Korea, are individually and/or jointly efficient, and whether contagion exists between the cointegrated markets. While individual market efficiency is examined through testing for the random walk hypothesis, joint market efficiency is examined through testing for cointegration and contagion. The present study finds that the hypothesis of individual market efficiency is strongly rejected for the Chinese stock market, but not for the Japanese and the South Korean stock markets. However, when testing for cointegration, market efficiency is strongly rejected for all these markets. We take a simple case of contagion and find that although there is a long‐term relationship among the three markets, the contagion hypothesis cannot be rejected only between Japanese and South Korean stock markets, indicating short‐run portfolio diversification benefits from these two markets.     

公司治理的本质和形式:日本的经验教训

由于对公司治理本质和形式的认识混淆,在公司治理实践过程中出现追求形式的现象.本文通过对日本企业的公司治理变革的分析,阐述区分公司治理的本质和形式的重要性和必要性.公司治理应该有多种形式,而且这些形式不会向某种特定的模式收敛.区分了公司治理的本质和形式,才能使企业能够根据各国、各种文化的特征,寻找出一种合适自身发展的公司治理方法.     

The determinants of capital structure: Evidence from China

This paper employs a new database containing the market and accounting data (from 1994 to 2003) from more than 1200 Chinese-listed companies to document their capital structure characteristics. As in other countries, leverage in Chinese firms increases with firm size and fixed assets, and decreases with profitability, non-debt tax shields, growth opportunity, managerial shareholdings and correlates with industries. We also find that state ownership or institutional ownership has no significant impact on capital structure and Chinese companies consider tax effect in long-term debt financing. Different from those in other countries, Chinese firms tend to have much lower long-term debt.     

Supplier density and at-home care use in Japan: Evidence from a micro-level survey on long-term care receivers

Following the introduction of the long-term care insurance scheme and deregulation of the market for at-home care services, Japan experienced a substantial increase in expenditure on care for the elderly. Using household-level survey data, we empirically examine whether the increase in care expenditure is associated with supplier density springing from the rise in the number of care providers following deregulation. We provide weak evidence that supplier density in the at-home care market is positively correlated with probability to use care or expenditure on care. Moreover, we find no link between the share of for-profit providers and the demand for at-home care services.