"Why Did "Zombie" Firms Recover in Japan?"

The Japanese economy experienced prolonged recessions during the 1990s. Previous studies suggest that evergreen lending to troubled firms known as "zombie firms" distorted market discipline in terms of stabilizing the Japanese economy and caused significant delays in the economy's recovery. However, the eventual bankruptcy of zombies was rare. In fact, a majority of the "zombie" firms substantially recovered during the first half of the 2000s. The purpose of this paper is to investigate why zombie firms recovered in Japan. We first extend the method of Caballero, Hoshi, and Kashyap (2008) and identify zombies from among the listed firms. Subsequently, we investigate the nature of corporate restructuring that was effective in reviving zombie firms. Our multinomial logistic regressions suggest that reducing the employee strength of zombie firms and selling its fixed assets were beneficial in facilitating their recovery. However, corporate restructuring without accounting transparency or by discouraging incentives for managers was ineffective. In addition, corporate restructuring lacked effectiveness in the absence of favorable macroeconomic environment as well as substantial external financial support.

Why Did ?Zombie? Firms Recover in Japan?

The Japanese economy experienced prolonged recessions during the 1990s. Previous studies suggest that evergreen lending to troubled firms known as ?zombie firms? distorted market discipline in terms of stabilizing the Japanese economy and caused significant delays in the economy?s recovery. However, the eventual bankruptcy of zombies was rare. In fact, a majority of the ?zombie? firms substantially recovered during the first half of the 2000s. The purpose of this paper is to investigate why zombie firms recovered in Japan. We first extend the method of Caballero, Hoshi, and Kashyap (2008) and identify zombies from among the listed firms. Subsequently, we investigate the nature of corporate restructuring that was effective in reviving zombie firms. Our multinomial logistic regressions suggest that reducing the employee strength of zombie firms and selling its fixed assets were beneficial in facilitating their recovery. However, corporate restructuring without accounting transparency or by discouraging incentives for managers was ineffective. In addition, corporate restructuring lacked effectiveness in the absence of favorable macroeconomic environment as well as substantial external financial support.

Pyrimido[1,2-a]-purin-10(3H)-one, M(1)G, is less prone to artifact than base oxidation

Pyrimido[1,2-a]-purin-10(3H)-one (M(1)G) is a secondary DNA damage product arising from primary reactive oxygen species (ROS) damage to membrane lipids or deoxyribose. The present study investigated conditions that might lead to artifactual formation or loss of M(1)G during DNA isolation. The addition of antioxidants, DNA isolation at low temperature or non-phenol extraction methods had no statistically significant effect on the number of M(1)G adducts measured in either control or positive control tissue samples. The number of M(1)G adducts in nuclear DNA isolated from brain, liver, kidney, pancreas, lung and heart of control male rats were 0.8, 1.1, 1.1, 1.1, 1.8 and 4.2 M(1)G/10(8) nt, respectively. In rat liver tissue, the mitochondrial DNA contained a 2-fold greater number of M(1)G adducts compared with nuclear DNA. Overall, the results from this study demonstrated that measuring M(1)G is a reliable way to assess oxidative DNA damage because the number of M(1)G adducts is significantly affected by the amount of ROS production, but not by DNA isolation procedures. In addition, this study confirmed that the background number of M(1)G adducts reported in genomic DNA could have been overestimated by one to three orders of magnitude in previous reports

Concept Design for Creating Essential Hypothesis, Rules, and Goals: Toward a Data Marketplace

The abductive reasoning model has been discussed in the context of business strategy. However, this model seems unrealistic for applications in the real business world considering the unpredictable, competitive business environment. This study improves the model by formulating an experimental case study through a web-based workplace for generating product ideas. We discuss the possible embodiment of product ideas as the basis for configuring features through the use of dynamic quality function deployment. The entire concept design process is proposed as a blueprint for building a data marketplace

Visualize the Organizational Cultures in a Japanese Manufacturing Company with Multi-Dimensional Scaling-How Do We Change Corporate Culture?

There are many companies which try to change their organizational culture to adjust with their business environment and to win market, but most of them seem struggling with the initiative due to the invisibility of organizational culture. We proposed a method to visualize organizational culture, using multi-dimensional scaling analysis with 39 keywords extracted from Cameron and Quinn (2006). Applying the method to a Japanese manufacturing company, we tried to visualize a corporate-level organizational culture and 10 department-level organizational cultures. The results and the interpretation of them were evaluated as good by three employees in the company since they were described the cultures well. Thus it could be an effective method to visualize organizational culture