Japan experienced high growth of TFP following World War II. This paper studies the sources of this technological growth and documents the role played by different government policies in achieving such growth. We find that in nonagricultural sectors, TFP growth occurred at first through the...

This paper overviews the industrial organization in Japan between the two World Wars. In this period, the change in the industrial structure gave a substantial impact on the industrial organization. On one hand, development of the heavy industries, which had been highly concentrated, raised the...

In pre-war Japan, many banks were controlled by industrial companies through capital and personal relationships. Those banks are known as "organ banks" (kikan ginko). Organ banks engaged in unsound lending to their related companies, which resulted in damage to the banks' financial positions and...

This paper explores the flow of fund around the holding company (headquarters) of Mitsubishi Zaibatsu during the Second World War. From the late 1930s, the Mitsubishi holding company started to raise fund from the outside capital market through selling the shares of its affiliated companies, and...

This paper explores the change in the security portfolio of the holding company of Mitsubishi Zaibatsu (Mitsubishi Partnership) and its implication on the profitability of that company. First we confirmed that Mitsubishi Partnership substantially altered the portfolio from 1925 to 1935,...

This paper investigates how ownership changes affect the plant performance, focusing on the cotton spinning industry in early twentieth century Japan, where many plants experienced ownership changes. Through analyses of detailed plant-level data, it is revealed that, after ownership changes,...

The central bank as the Lender of Last Resort (LLR) is faced with a trade off between the stability of the financial system and the "moral hazard" of banks. In this paper we explore how this trade off was dealt with by the Bank of Japan (BOJ) in the pre-war period, and how LLR lending by the BOJ...

This paper studies the determinants of agrarian tenancy contract choice and its implication on productivity in prewar Japan. Rapid agricultural growth under extensive tenancy relationships in prewar Japan was achieved with the prevalence of a unique rent reduction contract, which was more...

A number of studies have revealed that the effect of industrial policy on productivity growth is negative. Is this because industrial policy fails to control the activities of firms, or because it can effectively control them? This paper attempts to answer these questions, using firm-level data...

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,...