This study investigates the role of passive investors in the equity lending market by utilizing the expansion of exchange-traded fund (ETF) markets due to the Bank of Japan’s (BOJ) ETF purchasing program. We find that the BOJ’s purchases increase equity prices particularly for stocks with limited availability in the equity lending market. However, over the longer term, the BOJ’s cumulative purchases reduce lending fees, thus weakening the program’s effects. These findings suggest that ETF managers supply stocks that constitute ETFs to the equity lending market, and the lending behavior of ETFs, influenced by the BOJ’s program, alleviates short-selling constraints.

We investigate the effects of unconventional monetary policies on corporate debt through the risk-taking channel using corporate bond and syndicated loan contracts from 2000 to 2016 in Japan. In this period, the policy rate remained fixed near the zero bound. Using the daily changes in the yield curve on monetary policy meeting days, we identify one call rate shock and two unconventional monetary policy shocks that do not affect short-term rates. We find that QE shocks, which move all medium-to-long-term rates, increase the maturity of debt contracts, especially for syndicated loans. In addition, such QE shocks decrease the size of corporate bonds with short maturity. On the other hand, QQE shocks, which raise medium-term rates and lower long-term rates, decrease the size of loans and corporate bonds with longer maturity. These effects imply the existence of the risk-taking channel of unconventional monetary policy: it stimulates investment in longer-maturity assets and decreases investment in assets with lower yields. Our findings show that unconventional policies affect debt contracts even in an extremely low interest rate environment.

In this study we use a matched dataset of Japanese banks and firms to examine how bank-driven terminations of bank-borrower relationships affect the investments of the borrowers. We find that bank-driven terminations significantly decrease investment, exerting an effect that exceeds that due to credit reductions within continuing relationships. Our results also show that the unwanted effect of bank-driven terminations grows as the loan market deteriorates as a whole, which prevents firms from obtaining funding from other sources after their relationships with banks are terminated. Our findings coincide with previous literature emphasizing financial frictions in the matching process and the importance of relation-specific assets in credit markets.

We investigate the effects of the Bank of Japan’s (BOJ’s) exchange-traded fund (ETF) purchase program on equity risk premia. Utilizing the cross-sectional variations in the amount of individual stock that the BOJ has indirectly purchased in the program, the empirical analysis reveals that: (i) the BOJ’s ETF purchases instantaneously support stock prices on purchase, and (ii) the positive effects on stock prices, combined with the countercyclical nature of the BOJ’s purchases, affect the market beta and coskewness of Japanese stocks, leading to an economically significant decline in risk premia. • Countercyclical BOJ purchases lower Japanese equity risk premia. • BOJ’s ETF program reduces market beta and coskewness of stocks. • Decline in risk premia significantly boosts Japanese stock prices. • Panel data reveal cross-sectional effects of BOJ’s ETF purchases.

Examining a loan-level matched sample of Japanese banks and firms, we study the factors determining the termination of bank–firm relationships. We find that such terminations are mainly driven by bank-side factors and that these bank-driven terminations increase when banks’ capital conditions worsen. Furthermore, a longer relationship duration decreased the probability of termination substantially when the Japanese banking system was stable, whereas the duration effects weakened when the system became fragile.

With rising public attention to climate change, the proliferation of green mutual funds reflects expectations that they will contribute to a sustainable economic transition. This paper investigates the effects of climate news on mutual fund flows and portfolio allocation decisions. Using detailed flow- and holding-level data, we observe that heightened climate news results in significantly larger capital inflows into green funds than into their non-green counterparts. Furthermore, we show that, in response to climate news, green funds decrease their exposure to high-polluting firms relative to low-polluting firms more than non-green funds do. These results suggest that increasing public attention boosts capital reallocation towards green funds and that, in turn, potentially fosters investment relocation towards more environmentally friendly companies.