We examine the determinants of Japanese foreign direct investment (FDI) focusing on institutional and social factors. Using panel data on 59 countries from 1995 to 2008, we find that host countries with free and open markets and greater cultural distance from Japan attract Japanese FDI. Good...

This paper examines the evolution of alcoholic beverage sectors and the effects of tax policies on these sectors as well as the alcohol beverage demand systems in Japan utilising data from 1948 to 2011. In tax policy analyses, liquor tax policies are found to have differential effects on the...

In June 2005, a questionnaire survey was sent to 9000 companies in the Kansai Area (Osaka, Kyoto and Hyogo), the second largest economic block in Japan, with 2041 companies responding. This article introduces the results of this questionnaire survey. The greatest feature of this study is that,...

The present paper uses a comparison of Japan and the US to argue that the debate about corporate governance reform is best framed in terms of systems of complementary instruments and institutions. It argues that the Japanese and US systems of corporate governance differ along many dimensions,...

The present study was designed to determine the relationship between corporate governance and tax avoidance in an international setting. Financial and governance data sourced from the Datastream database for a sample of Japanese and UK firms between 2012 and 2017 are used. First, we examine the...

The pressures to accommodate to the global standards of corporate governance (CG) for Japanese public companies had grown strong since the mid-1990s. A series of legal reforms has led to the formal imitation of the market oriented Anglo-American model which, however, was not accompanied by the...

The paper shows that, as owners accumulate larger stakes and hence become less risk-tolerant, their incentives to monitor management are attenuated because monitoring shifts some of the firm's risk from management to owners. This counterbalances the positive effect which more concentrated...

Japan’s high corporate savings might be holding back growth. We focus on the causes and consequences of the current corporate behavior and suggest options for reform. In particular, Japan’s weak corporate governance—as measured by available indexes—might be...

In recent years, there has been a slow but steady change in ownership structures and corporate governance in Japan. As a result of economic stagnation, relations between companies characterised by cross-shareholdings and the main-bank system have become less rigid and institutional investors...

The volume is a collection of papers on 'M&A in Japan - a new instrument for corporate policy', with a special emphasis on small and medium firms, presented at a workshop in December 1999. The first contribution gives an overview of international M&A in recent years. Next, preliminery results of...