The Lost Decade and Employment Adjustment Behavior of Japan's Firms (in Japanese) -Changes in Mechanism for disciplining firms

The purpose of this paper is to empirically analyze the factors supporting the employment maintenance policy of Japanese firms and bringing about the change in the policy in the period of "The Lost Decade," from the view point of corporate governance taking into consideration the attribution of managers. We conduct analyses for the period divided into two periods of "employment maintenance" and "active in downsizing" at the turning point of 1997. The results reveal that main banks, financial institutions, cross-shareholdings by business corporations and enterprise unions had the restraining effect on downsizing and encouraged employment maintenance in firms before 1996, on the contrary after 1997, these effects became weaker and foreign shareholders increased their impacts on downsizing instead. This implies that the main player to monitor and discipline poor performing firms has shifted from main banks to foreign investors. The results of our analyses in consideration of the attribution of managers show the impacts of each stakeholder on the employment policy in promoted-manager firms, however the effects are not observed in owner firms. Thus, it is revealed that the effects of each stakeholder differ depending on the attribution of managers, and stakeholders affect managers' decision making on employment maintenance or downsizing, however they have little effect on their decision making in owner firms. "Does the Difference Between "Corporate interest" and "Personal interest" in Corporate Crime Influence Sentencing? -Econometric Analysis of Sentencing Factors in the Corporate Tax Evasion-" Based on the fact that corporate crime has two types of motives-"corporate interest"and "personal interest"-court decisions often suggest that the type of motive a defendant had may affect sentencing. This paper verifies such an effect on corporate tax evasion cases including in "corporate interest"and "personal interest"cases by extracting factors from written judgments and utilizing econometric analysis. We found (1) in determining the appropriate punishment, judges integrate imprisonment term and suspension term, (2) "corporate interest" has a negative effect on sentencing, (3) the volume of tax evasion has a positive effect on sentencing and (4) the ratio of tax evasion has a positive effect on sentencing. We think that the result is reasonable from a social standpoint and preceding studies but is not justifiable from a standpoint of crime deterrent. Therefore, we argue that we should rethink criminal liability and crime deterrents in sentencing theory in cases of corporate crime. Moreover, we expect econometric analysis to play a significant role in sentencing, which will contribute enhanced transparency in criminal justice procedures and in sentencing, especially in the jury system introduced in 2009.