Contrary to the objective of a major corporate pension reform in Japan to enhance retirement income security, and despite the increased relative tax benefits of externally-funded plans, the number of firms that do not sponsor externally-funded defined benefit plans or defined contribution plans...

We investigate the significant effects of the September 11 attacks on the Japanese stock market, one of the largest markets in the world. Although several studies have examined the impact of the attacks on the domestic U.S. stock market, few studies have analyzed their impact on the foreign...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss whether insurers could have a strong motivation for M&A in the future because they need to survive within the industry under oversaturated market conditions. Recently, Japanese non-life insurance markets, mainly the automobile insurance market,...

We find that between 20 and 25 percent of the negative covariance between excess returns and inflation is explained by shocks to monetary policy variables. The finding is robust to changes in the monetary policy rule that have occured during the 1966-1998 period. The result contradicts the...

When a firm exercises discretion to disclose or withhold information (strategic disclosure), risk-averse investors command higher expected returns when expected cash flows decrease, producing a negative correlation between these expectations. Moreover, stock returns exhibit stronger reversal...