The Great East Japan Earthquake's impact on the Japanese financial system
Introduction
Japan is located in an area where several tectonic plates meet. Earthquakes frequently strike the Japanese archipelago - minor tremors occur almost on a daily basis, while severe disasters - infrequently, yet they have had harsh consequences in terms of both direct and indirect impact on the economy, thus, on the financial system. Earthquakes are usually associated with devastation and losses, and Japan is no exception. However, Japan is still the third largest economy in the world measured by Gross Domestic Product (Ro, 2013).
The most disastrous earthquakes of the history in Japan of last 100 years took place in 1923, 1995 and 2011- the Great Kanto,
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Although, assuming that Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) holds, the responding stock market indices should reflect the harm caused by the earthquake, because, as EHM states that market prices fully reflect all publicly available information (Fama, 1970). Thus, it means that, if investors are rational and their decisions are not affected by noise traders, one can conclude that the decrease in stocks’ value is explainable by the damage of the catastrophe.
Financial Times reports the performance of global indices - S&P for Americas, FTST Eurofirst 300 for Europe and Nikkei 225 for Asia-Pacific region, plus, the Nikkei 225 is comprised of 225 stocks that are selected from the Japanese common stocks in the first section ranked by trading volume of the Tokyo Stock Exchange (Nikkei indexes, 2014). Therefore, the Nikkei 255 is considered to be a good proxy of the Japanese market capitalization ( Ugbede, Lizam, Kaseri & Idachaba, 2013).
Market capitalization is a way how to determine the value of a company using the stock price, and to presume the likeliness of it’s growth (Amadeo, 2013). Meanwhile the financial system is defined as a network of markets and institutions that bring savers and borrowers together (Hubbard, 2000). Hence, detailed analysis of the Nikkei 225 allows to evaluate the impact of the earthquake on
Page 3: Introduction to the Financial System Page 7: Commercial Banks Page 12: The Share Market and the Corporation Page 15: Corporations Issuing Equity into the Share Market Page 19: Investors in the Share Market Page 24: Short-term Debt Page 28: Medium- to Long-term Debt Page 32: Interest Rate Determination and Forecasting Page 37: The Foreign Exchange Market Page 40: Factors that Influence the Exchange Rate Page 42: Futures Contracts and Forward Rate Agreements Page 47: Options
The three-year SAIC stock price data and its corresponding SSE index are obtained from finance.yahoo.com, as it provides dividend-adjusted closing prices. The two data are ordered in time in Excel (Sort Ascending). It is found that 46 SAIC daily stock prices are missing due to suspension of trading, therefore; 46 corresponding SSE daily index are removed in order to match up dates on the two data series.
Natural disasters are a huge challenge for the planet because of the adverse effects that are associated with them. One of the major earthquakes to have shaken the earth is the Great Sendai Earthquake or Great Tōhoku Earthquake that occurred in 2011. The event started when a powerful earthquake hit the northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011, and resulted in a widespread damage on land. A series of massive tsunamis later devastated many parts of the coastal regions of the country with the worst affected being the Tohoku region. The tsunami further resulted in a major nuclear accident that damaged distant regions on a power station located along the coast. The economic effects of the tsunami qualify it as one of the major natural disasters because it affected Japan’s economic stability as the country ended up resorting to importing as an alternative to cover the loss.
On Friday March 11th, 2011 at 2:46 pm, the fifth largest earthquake recorded since 1900 with a magnitude of 9.0, 1.7 Richter scale points greater than the devastating Vancouver Island earthquake of 1946, struck the coast of Japan, 231 miles northeast of Tokyo1, causing a devastating regional and global catastrophe.
Haiti, Japan, Taiwan...what do they all have in common? All 3 have had unexpected major earthquakes strike them and demolish there land. But what is an earthquake? An earthquake is the movement of earth’s tectonic plates. They happen because a mass energy causes the constantly moving tectonic plates to pass one another in either a transform, convergent or divergent movement, after a long period of time pushing against each other. They usually occur in cities located on the border of the tectonic plates like California, British Columbia (west coast) and Japan. Depending on the intensity of the earthquake, it has the potential to cause a lot of destruction and hurt many civilians. It can degrade community to a point where it would take years to recover. However much destruction has been caused, there are precautions that could be taken before hand to reduce the damage. This report will be comparing 3 major recent earthquakes from Haiti, Japan and Taiwan and how each country is doing post-earthquake.
According to the records of earthquake intensity, this is the strongest earthquake occurred in Japan and one of the most powerful earthquakes in the world ( ). When the Pacific land crashed down and the North American land slide up, the resulting of landslide and outburst of the bottom turn to create earthquake in the Pacific Ocean, and it was the biggest impact in 1200 years. Furthermore, the earthquake occurred from 130 kilometer east of the city of Honshu, Japan on March 11, 2011, and the main shock lasted for 40 minutes. The earthquake created magnitude scale to 9.0 Mw, and 165-foot movement occurred to the seafloor during the earthquake ( ). Moreover, at that time, most city of Japanese affected by that earthquake, and a nuclear power industry is one of the victims which was crashed by the earthquake. Because of that, it release of radiation to large area not only in Japan but also get oversea to another country such as China, Viet
Earthquakes occur daily as plates of lithosphere travel on asthenosphere; however, some earthquakes are larger and cause more damage than others. Major earthquake zones include the circum-pacific region, Indonesia to Europe, Caribbean and Sandwich Islands, mid-ocean ridges, and East Africa. Larger earthquakes are rarer than smaller earthquakes, yet when they do occur, they are memorable. The Japan earthquake of 2011 and the Haiti earthquake of 2010 are memorable for unfavorable circumstances, yet are excellent sources of study for seismologists and geologists.
On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 earthquake shook northeastern Japan. The earthquake was felt around the globe. Debris that was washed away still continues to wash up on the beaches of California and other beaches in the US. The residents of this small island are still recovering from this natural disaster. As a result of the earthquake, 19,000 lives were lost and 1.2 buildings were damaged. The earthquake/tsunami cost Japan $574 billion. To make matters worse, the waves of the tsunami damaged a nuclear power plant located in Japan and caused the radioactive material to leak out into the surrounding area.
On Friday at 2:46 p.m. local time, near the northeast coast of Japan, there was a magnitude of 9.0 disastrous earthquake occurred on March 11, 2011 (“Poster of the Great Tohoku Earthquake”, 2012). Earthquakes occur at fault when a fracture in the earth along which movement occurs. When strain builds up, the fault slips and earthquake is created. Earthquake, the most destructive natural disasters of all is caused by the movement of the tectonic plates in the lithosphere. The ground shaking is produced by a rapid released of energy and stress in the Earth. When the stress is release, it sends vibrations known as seismic waves that produced at the focus of the earthquake. Honshu earthquake is considered as one of the deadliest earthquakes and
Currently share market is well known to all. It is known that the economic stability and prosperity of a country depend on the condition of her share market. Many brokerage houses are now operating in our country to help investors. When Bangladesh economy looks like a good shape based on capital/share market, that time Trading on the Dhaka Stock Exchange index was halted after it fell by 660 points, or 9.25%, in less than an hour. Chittagong Stock Market also met a similar fate. An abrupt crash of the market sparked violent protests from the Bangladeshi investors. It was the biggest one-day fall in its 55-year history. It is estimated that over three million people - many of them small-scale individual investors - have lost
The next earthquake that will be discussed took place on March 11th in 2011. In Japan, not only was there a disastrous earthquake of an. 8.9 magnitude but a mortifying tsunami. Due to the earthquakes epicenter being located off shore this caused the shoreline to retract back out to sea and then pound back to the shoreline. Unfortunately, tsunamis are not easy to prepare for, the size in which they can occur is only known once it is in full motion. This tsunami took buildings out to sea, along with people, cars, and various other seemingly permanent objects. When all of the commotion was over, the Japanese still had to endure more than 100 after shocks while trying to find missing family members and friends. No ne could
An earthquake shook northeastern japan on March 11, 2011. It was a magnitude -9 earthquake so it caused a savage tsunami. The great earthquake was felt around the world from the antarctica's ice sheet and norway’s fjords. Even years later things are getting washed up on north America s beaches. 250 miles of japan’s coastline Honshu dropped almost 2 feet . The jolt moved 8 feet of Honshu eastward. The tsunami broke icebergs in parts of Antarctica such as Sulzberger ice shelves.
Earthquakes have definitely affected Japanese life. The most major earthquakes in Japanese history have taken a heavy toll of human lives and property. To prevent some of the damage, scientists have been trying to predict the occurrence of earthquakes
The deregulation of financial markets catalysed by Globalisation worldwide has impacted on the amount of trade within the Japanese economy beneficially allowing easier access to foreign currencies, facilitating a higher flow of goods between nation, by relaxing laws that severely prevented foreign buying of currency, and floating the yen. These drivers have helped boost Japan's trade and recovery from its recession. Technology has allowed finances to be traded and communication to be near to instantaneous. This has increased dramatically the amount of FDI into Japan largely thanks to the numerous strategies the Japanese government has taken to promote economic growth and hence development. Finance and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) have increased as a direct result of globalisation doubling from $63 billion in 2001 to $144 billion in
Author Hubert et al. (2011) examined the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. In the results, Japan was impacted on both imports and exports by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. However, the impact on international trade mostly remained small. Also, another author Meng et al. (2015) studied the impact of natural disaster in China and