IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fth/harver/1770.html

The Myth of the Patient Japanese: Corporate Myopia and Financial Distress in Japan and the U.S

Author

Listed:
  • Brian J. Hall
  • David E. Weinstein

Abstract

It is widely believed that the stock-market oriented US financial system forces corporate managers to behave myopically relative to their Japanese counterparts, who operate in a bank-based system. We hypothesize that if US firms are more myopic than Japanese firms, then episodes of financial distress (when myopia should be most pronounced) should cause US firms to decrease their R&D spending (our main proxy for long-term investment) more than Japanese firms. We find no evidence that this is the case. In addition, we show that Japanese firms do not invest more than US firms after the onset of distress. Our results hold up even when US firms are compared to Japanese financial ties to their banks and are thought to be the least myopic (and the most able to weather distress). The results also withstand a variety of robustness checks. Our findings that US and Japanese firms respond similarly to financial distress cast doubt on the view that US managers are more short-sighted than their Japanese counterparts.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Brian J. Hall & David E. Weinstein, 1996. "The Myth of the Patient Japanese: Corporate Myopia and Financial Distress in Japan and the U.S," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 1770, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:fth:harver:1770
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Elena Zoido, 1998. "Un estudio de las participaciones accionariales de los bancos en las empresas españolas," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 22(3), pages 427-467, September.
    2. Heinrich, Ralph P., 1999. "Complementarities in Corporate Governance - A Survey of the Literature with Special Emphasis on Japan," Kiel Working Papers 947, Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
    3. Kaoru Hosono & Masayo Tomiyama & Tsutomu Miyagawa, 2004. "Corporate governance and research and development: Evidence from Japan," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(2), pages 141-164.
    4. Hellwig, Martin, 2000. "Corporate Governance and the Financing of Investment for Structural Change," Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Publications 00-32, Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Universität Mannheim;Sonderforschungsbereich 504, University of Mannheim.
    5. Dewenter, Kathryn L., 2003. "The risk-sharing role of Japanese keiretsu business groups: evidence from restructuring in the 1990s," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 261-274, August.
    6. Felix J. Lopez-Iturriaga & Emilio Lopez-Millan, 2015. "Institutional Framework, Corporate Ownership Structure, and R&D Investment: An International Analysis," HSE Working papers WP BRP 36/MAN/2015, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    7. Hellwig, Martin, 1998. "On the Economics and Politics of Corporate Finance and Corporate Control," Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Publications 98-43, Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Universität Mannheim;Sonderforschungsbereich 504, University of Mannheim.
    8. Gérard Charreaux & Philippe Desbrières, 1998. "Gouvernance des entreprises:valeur partenariale contre valeur actionnariale," Revue Finance Contrôle Stratégie, revues.org, vol. 1(2), pages 57-88, June.
    9. Wahal, Sunil & McConnell, John J., 2000. "Do institutional investors exacerbate managerial myopia?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 307-329, September.
    10. Gérard Charreaux & Philippe Desbrières, 2001. "Corporate Governance: Stakeholder Value Versus Shareholder Value," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 5(2), pages 107-128, June.
    11. Mehdi Nehkili & Evelyne Poincelot, 2000. "La fonction R&D et la latitude managériale: une analyse théorique," Revue Finance Contrôle Stratégie, revues.org, vol. 3(1), pages 5-28, March.
    12. Jun-Koo Kang & Rene M. Stulz, 1997. "Is Bank-Centered Corporate Governance Worth It? A Cross-Sectional Analysis of the Performance of Japanese Firms during the Asset Price Deflation," NBER Working Papers 6238, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fth:harver:1770. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Thomas Krichel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ieharus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.