This paper analyses two pronounced features of Japanese corporate governance--large corporate boards almost entirely composed of insiders and the tendency to appoint CEOs through internal promotions. It is often argued that Japanese boards are less effective in monitoring CEOs than U.S. boards...

This study investigates the nexus between Japan’s official development assistance and foreign direct investments inflows in Southeast Asian countries. An analysis of the geographical and sectoral decomposition of aid flows reveals that assistance programs were mainly allocated in the form of...

The complex interaction between trade and politics is analysed for the Japan-China relationship using Granger causality tests. The purpose is to determine the presence and direction of causation between trade and political events, both positive and negative, and to gauge an idea of the lag...

When a group of affiliated corporations have the option to file a single tax return based on a combined income, what types of groups would take up the option? This study empirically analyses decisions to participate in a single-jurisdiction consolidated tax filing. The data consists of 2,782...

This paper, using Japanese firm-level data, presents findings about innovative activities in the service sector and the role of patents and trade secrets on innovation. According to the analysis, first, service firms have fewer product innovations than do manufacturing firms, but the...

This paper analyzes the determinants of the presence and the number of female and foreign directors among Japanese companies. First, listed and long-established companies, subsidiaries, and unionized companies tend not to have female directors. On the other hand, owner-managed companies are...

This paper investigates asymmetric increasing trends in dependence in major international equity markets. To this end, we develop a multiple-regime smooth-transition copula GARCH model and address several important questions, including the number of regimes and the existence of increasing...

Do financial frictions call for policy cooperation? This paper investigates the implications of financial frictions for monetary policy in the open economy. Welfare analysis shows that there are long-run gains which result from cooperation, but, dynamically, financial frictions per se do not...

The policy package known as Abenomics appears to have influenced the Japanese economy drastically, in particular, in the financial markets. In this paper, focusing on the aggressive monetary easing of Abenomics, the first arrow, we evaluate its role in guiding public perceptions on monetary...

Is there asymmetry in the distribution of government bond returns in developed countries? Can asymmetries be predicted using financial and macroeconomic variables? To answer the first question, we provide evidence for asymmetry in government bond returns in particular for short maturities. This...