This paper presents evidence about the coats of corporate capital in Japan and the US, for a sample of large companies, and evaluates a variety of hypotheses about why the cost might be lower in Japan.We find that the before-tax return to capital in Japan appears slightly lower than in the U.S....

We extend our recent work measuring the cost of capital in Japan and the United States by considering several questions that such results raised. Among our findings are: (1) The small firm - large firm distinction appears to be more significant in Japan, not in the United States; (2) Correcting...

This paper uses financial statement data for large samples of U.S. and Japanese nonfinancial corporations to estimate the return to capital in each country for the period 1967-83. Interpreting these as measures of the cost of capital, we find that the before-tax cost of corporate capital was...