In this paper, we conduct an empirical analysis of the impact of better judicial enforcement on the probability of being credit rationed, loan size, and the probability of bankruptcy using household-level data from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers, conducted by the Institute for Research...

The goal of this paper is to detect the degree to which court decisions control the stringency of employment protection and to investigate how such judicial discretion affects labor market performance. However, identification difficulty arises because court decisions are volatile against...

In this paper, we conduct an empirical analysis of the impact of better judicial enforcement on the probability of being credit rationed, loan size, and the probability of bankruptcy using household-level data from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers, conducted by the Institute for Research...

Recent developments in the literature on employment protection legislation (EPL) have revealed that changing the stringency of employment protection can lead to extensive consequences outside of the labour market, by affecting firms’ production decisions or workers’ commitment levels. This...

Critics have long complained that lawyers dissipate value. Some do, of course. Some legal work dissipates more value than others, and the lawyers who focus on the most notorious rent-seeking sectors extract a heavy toll in the U.S. Whether lawyers choose to focus on value-dissipating or...

Oppressed, outvoted, and outgunned, minority shareholders have an obvious solution for their woes: vote with their feet, sell their shares, and leave the company. But this “Wall Street walk” is only available to shareholders in public, listed corporations; shareholders in close...

Extraterritorial application of domestic competition law is an important feature of the current regulatory framework governing anticompetitive conduct. Japan was initially hesitant to apply its Anti-Monopoly Act in such a manner. However, the last two decades show a significant shift in its...

A low-quality patent system threatens to slow the pace of technological progress. Concerns about low patent quality are supported by estimates from litigation studies suggesting that the majority of patents granted by the U.S. patent office should not have been issued. This paper proposes a new...

In Japan's civil law property system, courts recognize a form of extra-statutory security, the jōto tanpo or title-transfer security interest, that is created by conveying legal title to the creditor, with a promise to restore it to the debtor upon repayment. Although best known today as a...