This book is a collection of papers from the Tokyo Center for Economic Research's (TCER) research project on Japan's financial markets and financial system, including: (1) Current Japanese situation of cashless payments for individuals and households, (2) The possibility that digital currencies replace the current payment system in which the banking system provides the means of credit transactions, (3) Long-turn measurement of the value added generated by Japan's financial intermediaries, with an overview of Japanese banking industry?s business model, (4) Regional financial institutions' recent efforts to support their clients? businesses by consultation, (5) The impact of the digitalization of stock trading on the Japanese market: factor investing and high-frequency trading (HFT), (6) Analysis of theoretical and real-world portfolio allocations based on the concepts of model uncertainty and ambiguity aversion, (7) An empirical analysis on ESG investment in Japan, focusing on the heterogeneity of institutional investors, (8) Japanese firms? corporate governance: financial vs internal governance, (9) Japanese companies? use of corporate insurance as a company-wide decision-making process, (10) The coexistence of zombie firms and debt-free healthy firms since the 1990s. (11) The validity of Japanese government's liquidity provision for troubled firms during the financial crisis and the Covid-19 crisis.

This is an open access book.