Investor Behavior in the October 1987 Stock Market Crash: The Case of Japan

In a questionnaire survey we asked Japanese institutional investors to recall what they thought and did during the worldwide stock market crash in October, 1987. The results confirm that the drop in U. S. stock prices was the primary factor on their minds, and other news stories in the United States dominated Japanese news stories. A comparison with an earlier survey of U. 5. institutional investors at the time of the crash (Shiller [1987])shows a remarkable similarity between Japanese and U. S. institutional investors in a number of attitudinal and behavioral dimensions. The results suggest that events in the United States were the proximate cause of the crash in Japan, but that the transmission mechanism of the crash was very similar in both countries.