In this paper we explore the long-term change of the industrial organization of the Japanese banking industry and its efficiency implication. In postwar Japan, the "convoy administration" by the Ministry of Finance rigidly controlled the entry into and exit from the banking industry, as well as...

In this paper we identify networks among banks in pre-war Japan based on director interlocking data, and explore their implications. It was found that nearly 60% of banks had interlocking ties with at least one other bank. The large regional banks tended to have many interlocking ties. One of...

This paper examines the drawing up process as well as implementation of the priority production policy in late 1940's, focusing on the aspect of material allocation and production. As is well-known, the priority production was extremely inward-oriented policy. However, at the starting point, the...

This paper presents an empirical framework to analyze institutional changes, and applies it to the evolution of economic institutions in Japan, specifically main bank system and long-term employment. Ideas of evolutionary biology and organizational ecology are applied to the empirical analysis...

This paper investigates the impact of bank consolidations promoted by government policy, using data from prewar Japan, when the financial authorities promoted them by dint of the Bank Law in 1927. It finds that the policy-promoted consolidation had a positive effect on the deposit growth,...

Economic historians have long accepted the view that in prewar Japan, many of the banks were closely connected with certain industrial companies, and those banks loosely gave loans to the connected companies. However, there has been no attempt to test this view quantitatively. In this paper, we...

This paper addresses the relationship between economic development, income inequality and social stability, using the data of prewar Japan. We have made prefecture-level income inequality index, based on tax and wage statistics with respect to four data points, 1888, 1896, 1921 and 1935....

This paper explores the mechanisms by which the industrial organization of the Japanese cotton spinning industry changed over time, focusing on the rise and fall of the firms that integrated spinning and weaving processes. The basic idea is to decompose the change in the proportion of integrated...

During the Second World War, the Japanese government and private sector searched for and implemented new mechanisms for coordination and new incentives. One of these was sangyo hokokukai or sanpo. Sanpo unit was essentially an organization of the employer and employees of each firm, which held...

This paper examines the development of the Tokyo Stock Exchange since its inception in 1878 to the mid-1930s. Special attention is paid to the increases in the number of listed stocks throughout this period. By the mid-1930s, the Tokyo Stock Exchange had grown to a market bigger (measured...