Predictable Stock Returns in the United States and Japan: A Study of Long-Term Capital Market Integration

This paper studies the predictability of monthly excess returns on equity portfolios over the domestic short-term interest rate in the U.S. and Japan during the period 1971:1-1989:3. The paper finds that similar variables, including the dividend-price ratio and interest rate variables, help to forecast excess returns in each country. In addition, in the 1980's U.S. variables help to forecast excess Japanese stock returns. There is evidence of common movement in expected excess returns across the two countries, which is suggestive of integration of long-term capital markets.

Monetary policy and the term structure of interest rates in Japan

This paper studies the relation between short-term and long-term interest rates in Japan. The paper finds that there was a change in the behavior of the Japanese term structure in the mid-1980's. Short-term rates became less forecastable from their own past history; at the same time, the ability of the Japanese yield curve to forecast short-term rates increased. In this sense the expectations theory has become a more appropriate description of the Japanese term structure, even though the theory is rejected at conventional levels of statistical significance

Changing patterns in corporate financing and the main bank system in Japan

For most of the postwar period, the U.S. and Japan have had polar opposite corporate financial structures. The U.S. system has featured low leverage and low monitoring of corporate management by investors, while the Japanese system has featured high leverage and high monitoring. During the last 15 years, however, the two systems have begun to converge. Leverage has increased in the U.S., particularly when measured by interest expense ratios, and the increase has been concentrated in certain firms. In Japan, leverage has decreased across the board. In the U.S., debt-holders' interests may now be represented more effectively; Jensen (1989) argues that LBO partners are a new organizational form which can monitor corporations more effectively. In Japan, while the role of a main bank as a delegated monitor is similar to the LBO partners in the U.S., the growing use of public debt held by outsiders rather than main banks suggests the opposite trend. This paper uses cross-sectional data to reveal more clearly the changing capital structure of Japanese corporations

The components of the bid-ask spread in a limit-order market: Evidence from the Tokyo Stock Exchange

This paper analyzes the components of the bid-ask spread in the limit-order book of the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE). While the behavior of spread components in U.S. markets has been extensively studied, little is known about the spread components in a pure limit-order market. We find that both the adverse selection and order handling cost components of the TSE exhibit U-shape patterns independently, in contrast to the findings of Madhavan, Richardson, and Roomans (1997) for U.S. stocks. On the TSE, there does not exist an upstairs market that allows large trades to be prenegotiated or certified as on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). This feature of the TSE provides a valuable opportunity to examine the relationship between trade size and spread components. Our results show that the adverse selection cost increases with trade size while order handling cost decreases with it

Structure-based development of specific inhibitors for individual cathepsins and their medical applications

Specific inhibitors for individual cathepsins have been developed based on their tertiary structures of X-ray crystallography. Cathepsin B-specific inhibitors, CA-074 and CA-030, and cathepsin L specific inhibitors, CLIK-148 and CLIK-195, were designed as the epoxysuccinate derivatives. Cathepsin S inhibitor, CLIK-060, and cathepsin K inhibitor, CLIK-166, were synthesized. These inhibitors can use in vitro and also in vivo, and show no toxicity for experimental animals by the amounts used as the cathepsin inhibitor