Ownership Structure And Corporate Performance In The Us And Japan

This paper develops a dynamic continuous-time model in which international risk sharing can yield substantial welfare gains through its positive effect on expected consumption growth. The mechanism linking global diversification to growth is an attendant world portfolio shift from safe, but low-yield, capital into riskier, high-yield capital. The presence of these two types of capital is meant to capture the idea that growth depends on the availability of an ever-increasing array of specialized, hence inherently risky, production inputs. A partial calibration exercise based on Penn World Table consumption data implies steady-state welfare gains from global financial integration that for some regions amount to several times initial wealth.

Debates regarding corporate governance have become increasingly important in Japan as the post-war model of bank-based, stakeholder-oriented corporate governance faces the new pressures associated with globalization and growing investor demands for shareholder value. Bringing together a group of leading scholars from economics, law, sociology and management studies, this book looks at how the Japanese approach to corporate governance and the firm have changed in the post-bubble era. The contributions offer a unique empirical exploration of why and how Japanese firms are reshaping their corporate governance arrangements, leading to greater diversity among firms and new 'hybrid' forms of corporate governance. The book concludes by looking at what effect these incremental but transformative changes may have on Japan's distinctive variety of capitalism.

This study investigates whether ownership structure has significant effects on the performance of publicly-listed companies in China, and in what way if it does. Publicly- listed stock companies allow us to quantify the ownership mix and concentration and thus provide a unique opportunity for studying the above issue. The recent literature on the role of large institutional shareholders in corporate governance provides the theoretical foundation of this study. A typical listed stock company in China has a mixed ownership structure with the state, legal persons (institutions), and domestic individuals as the three predominant groups of shareholders. Each holds about 30 percent of total outstanding shares. Employees and foreign investors together hold less than 10 percent. The ownership concentration is high with the five largest shareholders accounting for 58 percent of the outstanding shares in 1995, compared to 57.8 percent in Czech Republic, 42 percent in Germany and 33 percent in Japan. Results from our empirical analysis show that ownership structure (both the mix and concentration)indeed has significant effects on the performance of stock companies. First, there is a positive and significant correlation between ownership concentration and profitability. Second, the effect of ownership concentration is stronger for companies dominated by legal person shareholders than for those dominated by the state. Third, firms? profitability is positively correlated with the fraction of legal person shares, but it is either negatively correlated or uncorrelated with the fraction of state shares and tradable A-shares held mostly by individuals. Last, labor productivity tends to decline as the proportion of state shares increases. These results suggest the importance of large institutional shareholders in corporate governance and performance, the inefficiency of state ownership, and potential problems in an overly dispersed ownership structure.

Several empirical studies showed that there exist significant differences in corporate ownership structures between different countries. Two different system s of corporate governance seem to have evolved in the past two decades. One group of countries exhibits a high level of ownership structure, illiquid stock markets, strong relations between companies and banks, a high degree of equity stakes hold by ot her companies (crossholdings). The system of these countries is termed as insider sy stem. The other group is characterized by widely dispersed ownership, liquid stock mar kets, a low level of inter- corporate crossholdings, and an active market of corporate c ontrol. The system in those countries is known as outsider system. In this project I dis cussed about the characteristics of the two systems as well as their strengths and weak nesses. I used the United States as an example of countries with outsider systems, and Jap an as an example of countries with insider systems. The U.S. corporate governance system that performed well in the past has recently been heavily criticized as a result of corporate failures like that of Enron. Japanese economy is also passing in a period of stagnation, and it is argued tha t corporate governance system in Japan is the cause of this decline in economic performance. So, reforms are needed to both systems in order to avoid corporate failures in the future and have better economic performance.

This book carefully examines the effects of changes in the corporate governance structure on corporate behavior or company performance, using micro-data from listed companies in Japan. The author found that in Japan the introduction of stock options had neither a positive impact on profitability nor the negative side effects of promoting risk-taking behaviors. Furthermore, he found that corporate diversification and division of corporations showed negative impacts on profitability. The corporate governance structure of Japan has exhibited a large change from the second half of the 1990s to the present. There have been institutional reforms involving enterprise law, such as the introduction of stock options and the removal of the ban on holding companies. With respect to the ownership structure of a company, discernible trends are that the equity holdings of financial institutions and business corporations have fallen while the presence of foreign stockholders has risen. These trends are often pointed out as signs that the Japanese corporate governance structure has been approaching the American model and that this will energize Japanese firms. The author contradicts common academic theories, however, and concludes that the formation of the corporate governance which emphasizes the agency problem between shareholders and corporate managers is inadequate. He suggests that an institutional arrangement for a corporate governance system that values a variety of stakeholders' interests is greatly needed and concludes that perspectives on maximizing surplus values for various stakeholders and distributing the surpluses appropriately among the stakeholders will become increasingly important for the purpose of managing corporations.

Debates regarding corporate governance have become increasingly important in Japan as the post-war model of bank-based, stakeholder-oriented corporate governance faces the new pressures associated with globalization and growing investor demands for shareholder value. Bringing together a group of leading scholars from economics, law, sociology and management studies, this book looks at how the Japanese approach to corporate governance and the firm have changed in the post-bubble era.The contributions offer a unique empirical exploration of why and how Japanese firms are reshaping their corporate governance arrangements, leading to greater diversity among firms and new 'hybrid' forms of corporate governance. The book concludes by looking at what effect these incremental buttransformative changes may have on Japan's distinctive variety of capitalism.

"This book goes back to a symposium held at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign Private and Private International Law in Hamburg on May 15-17 1997"--P. [v].

Using data spanning the 1996-1998 fiscal years of 247 of Japan's largest manufacturers, we empirically evaluate the extent to which a firm's investment behavior and financial performance is influenced by its ownership structure. To do so, we examine six distinct categories of Japanese shareholders: foreign investors, investment funds, pen sion funds, banks and insurance companies, affiliated companies and insiders. Our findings strongly indicate that the relationship between the equity stakes of a particular category of investor and a firm's financial performance and investment behavior is highly idiosyncratic. Such a result emphasizes the importance of making finely grained and contextually relevant distinctions when modeling and evaluating corporate governance relations.