The first contribution of this paper, following the works of Lettau and Ludvigson (2001a,b), is construction of the Japanese consumption-wealth ratio data series and to examine whether it explains Japanese stock market data. We find that the consumption-wealth ratio does not predict future stock...

This paper proposes new point estimates for predictive regressions. Our estimates are easily obtained by the least squares and the instrumental variable methods. Our estimates, called the plug-in estimates, have nice asymptotic properties such as median unbiasedness and the approximated...

This paper provides an overview of the sustainability of Japan’s government debt, emphasizing the viewpoint of market participants in the Japanese government bonds (JGB) market. The Japanese government will be able to finance its debt as long as current surpluses continue, meaning there is...

This chapter discusses corporate investment in the Japanese economy over the last few decades and the policy prescriptions that are now required to induce efficient investment. The chapter complements that by Hashimoto and Higuchi, since both discuss the problems at the real side of the Japanese...

Following Lo and MacKinlay's work on the U.S. market (1988, 1990), this paper investigates the autocorrelation of the market index and the cross-autocorrelations of size-sorted portfolios in the Japanese market. The structure of the cross-autocorrelations in the Japanese market is very similar...