We examine whether financial conglomeration enhances efficiency of capital allocation or conflicts of interest, focusing on pricing and allocation of IPO stocks in Japan. Regarding underwriting of IPO stocks, our results are consistent with the bank certification hypothesis. As for IPO...

In this study, we investigate whether multiple main bank relationships reduce the so-called quot;hold-up costsquot; of bank financing (Rajan (1992)) by examining the panel data of Japanese companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, first and second sections during the period from 1991 to...

We examine how foreign and domestic portfolio investors similarly or dissimilarly invest in Japanese firms for the period of 1985-1998. We propose the agency as well as relational explanations of foreign and domestic institutional investor biases. These explanations can explain bias patterns of...

This study examines dynamics among the art, Japanese land, Japanese and U.S. stock market prices during the sample period from 1976 to 1998. We find that the Japanese land prices caused both art and Japanese stock prices to co-move during the sample period. We interpret this finding as...

In this paper, we examine how alternative corporate governance mechanisms work in Japan, using the panel data on the equity ownership and bank loans of manufacturing companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) first section over the 1985-1998 period. First, we find that the main bank...

In the Japanese initial public offering (IPO) market, initial first-day and one-year aftermarket returns are unusual, with a mean (median) of 0.417 (0.314) and −0.322 (−0.316), respectively. Our study relates this result to a globally popular book building pricing system that is blended with...