In sharp contrast to results in the United States, the average stock price response to an announcement of a seasoned equity issue in Japan is positive. Offer prices in Japan, unlike the United States, are announced several days before the beginning of the subscription period and incorporate a substantial discount. We suggest that the positive announcement effects in Japan are consistent with the underwriter's certification of the issuing firm's value. We characterize the underwriter's risk as a put option and find a positive association between the underwriter's risk and the announcement returns, as well as other results consistent with underwriter certification.

Peek and Rosengren [Peek, J., Rosengren, E., 2005. Unnatural selection: Perverse incentives and the misallocation of credit in Japan. American Economic Review 95, 1144–1166] showed that, when the bubble economy era ended, regulatory forbearance and perverse incentives allowed Japanese banks to engage extensively in evergreening. This is the first comprehensive study to empirically analyze the economics of private debt restructurings of financially distressed companies in Japan, where the corporate monitoring mechanism is not market based but large-stakeholder based – typically, banks and affiliated companies. These stakeholders are expected to efficiently resolve potential bankruptcy or collapse with better information resulting from long-term relationships with the distressed firms. Our study, however, finds that private restructurings led by them failed because of delays in implementing fundamental solutions. Forbearance in addressing the needs of distressed firms demonstrates the weakness of such stakeholders in instituting discipline, hence the need for a system to “monitor the monitor”.

In sharp contrast to results in the United States, the average stock price response to an announcement of a seasoned equity issue in Japan is positive. Offer prices in Japan, unlike the United States, are announced several days before the beginning of the subscription period and incorporate a substantial discount. We suggest that the positive announcement effects in Japan are consistent with the underwriter's certification of the issuing firm's value. We characterize the underwriter's risk as a put option and find a positive association between the underwriter's risk and the announcement returns, as well as other results consistent with underwriter certification.

In May 1997, the Japanese Commercial Code was amended to allow firms to begin granting stock options as compensation to top management and employees. Nearly 350 firms adopted option-based compensation plans between 1997 and 2001. These options typically have five-year lives and are out-of-the-money by about 5% at the grant date. Firms exhibit abnormal stock returns of about 2% around the announcements of plan adoptions. We find improvements in operating performance and observe that dividend policy and volatility remain unchanged post-adoption. Our evidence suggests that well-designed incentive compensation plans are consistent with the creation of shareholder value.