This paper proposes a new hedging scheme of European derivatives under uncertain volatility environments, in which a weighted variance swap called the polynomial variance swap is added to the Black-Scholes delta hedging for managing exposure to volatility risk. In general, under these...

The Ministry of Finance's "Corporate Enterprise Quarterly Statistics" (Hojin kigyo tokei kiho) is the only statistical source of well-balanced information about the financing behavior of Japanese firms. Indeed, there are few comparable sources available anywhere in the world. Using this...

Using the firm-level data of the "Corporate Enterprise Annual Statistics (hojin kigyo tokei nenpo)", in this paper I investigate the capital investment behavior of Japanese firms. I focus on the second-half of 1980s, and begin what I anticipate will become a full-fledged study of corporate...

In this essay on Masahiko Aoki's recent study of Japanese corporate governance, we argue that he and others misdescribe Japan on several fundamental dimensions. First, Japanese firms and employees choose neither to arrange implicit life-time employment contracts nor to invest heavily in...

Change is in the air in Japan, claim many observers: the government is radically deregulating crucial sectors of the economy, the large firms are unwinding their keiretsu corporate groups, and firms and banks are dismantling their main bank arrangements. Some observers see all three as exogenous...

The Japanese antitrust agency (the J-FTC) holds a jurisdictional monopoly over most issues. Because overlapping jurisdictions would enable politicians to gauge relative bureaucratic performance, this monopoly prevents politicians from monitoring the agency on most issues. In response, J-FTC...

Most of what we collectively think we know about the Japanese economy is urban legend. In fact -- * The keiretsu do not exist, and never did. An entrepreneurial "research institute" in the 1950s created the rosters to sell to Marxist economists looking for the "monopoly capital" that their...

From early spring to late summer in 2010 I investigated the financing behavior of Japanese firms with over \20 million in paid-in capital, using firm-level financial data from Hojin Kigyo Tokei Kiho (Corporate Enterprise Quarterly Statistics) of the Ministry of Finance. "A Study of Financing...

This is the second of the 4 discussion papers that, together with the Introduction and Summary paper (Miwa, 2010c), comprise the report of my recent investigation: "A Study of Financing Behavior of Japanese Firms with Firm-Level Data from the Corporate Enterprise Quarterly Statistics -...

This is the first of the 4 discussion papers that, together with the Introduction and Summary paper (Miwa, 2010c), comprise the report of my recent investigation: "A Study of Financing Behavior of Japanese Firms with Firm-Level Data from the Corporate Enterprise Quarterly Statistics -...