Financial factors and ownership structure are both part of the determinants of corporate R&D investment. Considering listed firms in the R&D intensive industries during the 2000s, this paper examines whether financial factors and ownership structure explain R&D investment in Japan. Following the...

With the diversification and globalization of Japanese companies in recent years, their business portfolios have become more complex, and the grouping of companies has progressed via carve-outs and M&As. As a result, adequate control of business units by headquarters (business unit governance)...

The ownership structure of Japanese corporations has changed dramatically since the banking crisis in 1997, from an insider-dominated structure to an outsider-dominated structure. In this paper, we address the causes and effects of the dramatic change in the ownership structure, focusing on...

In the course of postwar economic development, Japan has never faced a situation where mergers and acquisitions (M&As) pervade among domestic companies. But from the later half of the 1990s, the number of M&As began to rise sharply and Japan is now entering an M&A boom for the first time in the...

The Japanese economy is currently experiencing a major merger and acquisition (M&A) boom unprecedented in its postwar economic development. The purpose of this paper is to cast light, from a number of angles, on the determinants of the rapid increase in M&A activity in Japan since the end of the...

The rapid increase in the number of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) from the 1990s onward can be attributed primarily to a type of shock to the growth and/or profitability of certain industries and corporations. Characteristics of industries and corporations subject to particularly aggressive...

RIETI recently conducted a comprehensive survey on corporate governance in Japan. It covers various topics concerning corporate governance and managerial practices such as managerial objectives, cross-shareholding, responses to shareholder's activism and hostile takeovers, executive compensation...

The goal of this report is to overview the characteristics of the evolution and current status of corporate governance of Japanese companies from the 1990s to recent years, by focusing on two keywords: diversification and hybridization. We also seek to identify the policy implications with...

This paper examines the determinants of board composition and the effects of outside directors using a sample of Japanese firms listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) first section from 2005 to 2010. Our empirical results are mainly consistent with the hypothesis that firms choose board...

Central to recent changes in corporate Japan is the dominance of hybrid firms which combine market-based principles and relational governance in different economic domains such as finance and organizational architectures (employment system). Since hybridization is opposed to the institutional...