Board Composition and Corporate Governance in Japanese Firms

我和哈佛大学法学院的J.Mark Ramseyer教授一起研究了日本公司董事会组成和公司业绩之间的关系，重点是“外部董事”。第一篇论文(谁任命他们，他们做什么？)利用东京证券交易所1000多家上市公司的财务数据，考察了1985-90年(所谓的泡沫经济时期)和1990-95年(混乱和停滞时期)之间的关系。第二篇论文(关系银行重要吗？)第三篇论文(《日本破产中的利益冲突》)着眼于银行与其贷款公司(借款人)之间的关系，考察了借款公司的公司治理，以及日本银行在借款人陷入财务困境时所扮演的行为和角色。这三篇论文都得出了相同的结论：关于日本公司的传统观点缺乏坚实的经验基础，我们的检验表明它是错误的；基于这种传统观点的政策主张是完全错误的，如强烈建议增加外部董事作为董事会成员，强调重建与贷款银行(包括主要银行)的密切关系。国内外普遍认为，放贷银行--尤其是“主要银行”--会在借款人陷入困境时采取行动救助他们，并成功地进行重建。我们的研究使用大量的微观数据表明，如果有几个这样的案例，这个故事并不普遍，而且它与事实相去甚远。从这个意义上说，日本的银行-借款人关系与其他经济体没有什么不同。

I, together with Professor J.Mark Ramseyer of Harvard Law School, investigate the relationship between board composition and firm performance of Japanese firms, focusing on "outside directors". The first paper (Who Appoints Them, What Do They Do?), using financial data on 1,000 odd Tokyo Stock Exchange listed firms, examines the relationship for the periods of 1985-90 (so-called the period of Bubble Economy") and 1990-95 (period of disorder and stagnation). The second paper (Does Relationship Banking Matter?) and the third paper (Conflicts of Interests in Japanese Insolvencies), focusing on the relationship between banks and their lending firms (borrowers), examine corporate governance of borrowing firms and the behavior and roles performed by Japanese banks when borrowers fall in financial distress.All three papers reach the same conclusion : the conventional wisdom about Japanese firms lacks firm empirical foundation, and our tests show that it is false ; Those policy claims, based upon this conventional wisdom, such as recommending strongly an increase in outside directors as board members and emphasizing reconstruction of close relationship with lending banks including "main bank.", are totally false. It is widely believed, both at home and abroad, that lending banks, most notably "main bank", take actions in rescuing borrowers when they fall in distress, and succeed in their reconstruction. Out studies show, using massive micro-data, that, if there are a few such cases, the story does not hold in general, and that it is far from the truth. In this sense, bank-borrower relationship in Japans is not different from those in other economies.