Board Composition and Corporate Governance in Japanese Firms

笔者与哈佛法学院的J.Mark Ramseyer教授一起，以“外部董事”为研究对象，对日本企业的董事会构成与企业绩效之间的关系进行了研究。第一篇论文（谁任命他们，他们做什么？），本研究使用东京证券交易所1,000多家上市公司的财务数据，考察了1985 ~ 1990年（所谓的"泡沫经济时期”）和1990 ~ 1995年（混乱和停滞时期）的关系。第二篇论文（关系银行业务重要吗？）和第三纸张（日本破产中的利益冲突），重点关注银行与其贷款公司之间的关系（借款人），考察了借款企业的公司治理以及日本银行在借款人陷入财务困境时的行为和作用。关于日本企业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;基于这种传统智慧的政策主张，如强烈建议增加外部董事作为董事会成员，强调重建与包括“主银行”在内的贷款银行的密切关系。”，都是完全错误的。国内外普遍认为，贷款银行，尤其是“主银行”，在借款人陷入困境时采取行动救助借款人，并成功地进行了重建。我们的研究表明，使用大量的微观数据，如果有几个这样的情况，故事并不普遍，它是远离真相。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.