This paper investigates Japanese banks' earnings management behavior under three distinct economic environments: (1) high-growth with asset price bubble economy (1985-1990); (2) stagnant growth with financial distress economy (1991-1996); and (3) severe recession with credit crunch economy...

This paper examines the feedback effect between trading in financial markets and bank loan contracting. We find that banks charge higher loan rates for borrowers with higher short selling activities. This result is robust to various identification tests and robustness checks. We further find...

We examine how search frictions affect merger outcomes. Exploiting firm connections in common bank networks (CBNs) as a channel for reducing search costs, we show that like-buys-like mergers are more probable between firms connected through a CBN. This effect is amplified if the connection has...

Biddle and Hilary (2006) demonstrate that accounting quality improves investment efficiency in the U.S. but not in Japan. We examine whether no relation between accounting quality and investment efficiency remains valid in Japan beyond their study period, which ends in 2001. We hypothesize that...