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Land Investment by Japanese Firms during and after the Bubble Period *1, *2

March 2004
Toshitaka Sekine *3
Towa Tachibana *4

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  • *1 This working paper is a translation of the original paper in Japanese (Bank of Japan Research and Statistics Department Working Paper Series 03-06)
  • *2 We thank Jochi Nakajima for his resourceful research assistance. We have benefited from comments by Shin-ichi Fukuda, Shigenori Shiratsuka, and many staff members at the Research and Statistics Department of the Bank of Japan.
  • *3 Reseaech and Statistics Department, E-mail: toshitaka.sekine@boj.or.jp
  • *4 Reseaech and Statistics Department, E-mail: towa.tachibana@boj.or.jp.

Abstract

This paper investigates (i) what has determined the land investment behavior of Japanese firms since the latter half of the 1980s; and (ii) how the current market prices of their land assets diverge from their shadow prices (marginal values of land investment). To do so, we estimate nonlinear land investment functions using micro panel corporate data, and calculate the partial q for land assets taking account of their collateral role.

The land investment functions reveal that firms, in particular those in the real estate related industries, have been net sellers of land in the 1990s, mainly in response to the decline in sales and the deterioration in financial conditions after the bursting of the bubble. Moreover, manufacturing firms have also sold land because of the hike in the overseas production ratio.

Partial q shows that the market price of land held by the real estate related industries has exceeded its shadow price since the latter half of the 1980s. For other industries, market land prices declined to the level of their shadow prices around the middle of the 1990s. However, since then market prices have once again found themselves above their shadow prices, in the face of the pessimistic expectations revealed by distressed share prices after 1997.

JEL Classification Number:
E22, G12, R30, C24

Keywords:
land investment, multiple q, friction model