In this paper, we conduct an empirical analysis of the impact of better judicial enforcement on the probability of being credit rationed, loan size, and the probability of bankruptcy using household-level data from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers, conducted by the Institute for Research...

Recent studies on fiscal policy use cross-sectional data and estimate local fiscal multipliers along with spillovers. This paper estimates local fiscal multipliers with spillovers using Japanese prefectural data comparable with the national accounts. We estimate the local fiscal multiplier on...

We investigated, empirically, why Japanese banks held excess reserves in the late 1990s. Specifically, we pin down two factors explaining the demand for excess reserves: a low short-term interest rate, or call rate, and the fragile financial health of banks. The virtually zero call rate...

This paper examines empirically some of the reasons why Japanese manufacturing firms frequently fail to satisfy concavity conditions of the cost function. We focus on the “bubble period” in the 1980s when land was in great demand for reasons related to both production and speculation, and...