Slow agricultural development has restrained economic growth and poverty alleviation in Cambodia. The country's volatile history has left a legacy of weak tenure security and large areas of underutilized land. This study estimates the impact of access to land on poverty in a logistic regression...

This paper reviews the reasons why Japan has failed to resolve the economic and financial distress that started in 1990 with the collapse of asset prices despite many efforts to stimulate the economy and redesign the financial system. Why has recovery not yet occurred, and is Japan in a second...

The Chinese economy has been growing with an average of 10 per cent during the last 25 years. Walking in downtown Shanghai or Beijing, you can find some spots that are so luxurious that they are unrivalled in the world. China does not fit the picture of an average developing country. However,...

This paper examines the origins and dynamic evolution of the lifetime employment system in Japan from the beginning of the 20th century to present. Based on the historical perspective developed in the paper, we derive implications to the future course of the Japanese employment system. In this...

Amakudari, or the reemployment of the officials retired from the government into senior management positions in private companies, is one of the informal institutions most frequently mentioned in the literature of Japanese political economy. However, few studies have examined it systematically....

Japan has been slow in carrying out economic reforms that many astute observers of the Japanese political economy believe are needed but have been blocked due to the opposition by powerful interest groups. In contrast, South Korea undertook speedy economic reforms soon after the 1997-98 crisis....

This paper attempts to explain why institutional changes, whose direction look obvious at the beginning, arouse controversies and, more often than not, face ‘setbacks’. It starts from critically assessing North’s (1981; 1990) analysis of relating transaction cost and economic performance and...

After the burst of the "bubble" economy and the subsequent recession of the 1990's, a new era of M&A started in Japan. Following the deregulation in a number of non-tradable sectors, a relatively large number of foreign firms have entered the Japanese market, using M&As as a tool for market...

In Mongolia with 2.5 million inhabitants, population density is extremely low. It has a sever climate. Three quarters of the countries territory are grasslands, with the remaining area being deserts or mountain areas. This description does not depict Mongolia as a very attractive place, but...