This study examines the impact of monitoring activities of beneficial investors toward asset managers. We use data from Japan, where the stewardship code requires beneficial investors, such as pension funds, to monitor the engagement of asset managers. We provide evidence that firms with asset managers who have endorsed the code are less likely to have anti-takeover provisions, especially after the code revision. Additional analyses clarify the causality by including ownership of non-signatory investors, a matching procedure, and an alternative definition of the ownership variable. We also confirm that the engagement also changes other corporate governance measurements of Japanese listed companies. Finally, we demonstrate that removing such provisions can improve operational and stock performance.

Following the 2023–2024 Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) capital-efficiency initiative, investors favored low price-to-book (PBR) firms, particularly those with high return on equity (ROE). These effects are concentrated among persistently undervalued firms, increase smoothly with the degree of undervaluation rather than jumping at the regulatory threshold, and are robust to endogenous treatment assignment. Although firms’ value-enhancing plans were already publicly available in corporate governance reports, the TSE’s consolidated compliance list triggered strong market reactions, consistent with a salient informational event. We find no short-run improvements in realized profitability or upward revisions in analyst earnings forecasts, but significant declines in illiquidity and increases in valuation ratios among low-PBR firms. We also find little evidence of a persistent “price-of-shame” mechanism or strong industry-level spillovers, although spillovers through non-industry links cannot be fully ruled out. Overall, the evidence suggests that the reform primarily triggered investor-side repricing of chronic undervaluation rather than immediate changes in firm behavior.

We investigate the impact of relaxing listing requirements on firms’ growth around initial public offerings (IPOs). Japan experienced several deregulations of listing requirements in the late 1990s. We use a dataset that covers both public and private firms for more than 30years, which enables us to compare the firms’ operating growth around IPOs as well as to compare the growth under both strict and relaxed listing requirements. When comparing the matched firms, we find that IPO firms’ excess growth in profitability and productivity diminished after their IPOs, while their excess growth in terms of size (measured by sales and number of employees) still increased in the post-IPO period. This finding indicates that relaxing listing requirements enables high-growth firms to go public but does not lead to subsequent growth in productivity and profitability, although it does enable firms to be larger more after going public.

We use the IPOs of supply-chain partners as precipitating events and test for positive spillovers on private firms (the “IPO spillover hypothesis”). A trading partner’s IPO may benefit its suppliers through increased demand and its customers by reducing an input-related growth constraint. A newly public firm may also transmit additional liquidity to trading partners through trade credit practices. Using Japanese data on important relationships between IPO firms and their private suppliers and customers, we find that suppliers and customers experience significantly higher rates of growth in revenue, cash balances, and PP&E than do other private firms. The paper appears to be the first to document real and financial effects of positive liquidity shocks on supply-chain partners.

Using the large-scale index-linked exchange-traded fund (ETF) purchase program of the Bank of Japan (BOJ), we examine the role of unconventional equity-based monetary policies in the market liquidity of the underlying securities. Using a large sample of Japanese stocks, we document a significant increase in stock illiquidity when a firm's ownership by the BOJ increases. Intensified ETF arbitrage activities partially mediate such effect. The increased illiquidity is concentrated among small and young firms and those whose shares are likely subject to strong buying pressure. Finally, BOJ ownership increases comovement in liquidity and reduces informational efficiency.