Despite the many economic studies documenting the problems governments face in trying to control or guide economic growth, the literature on postwar Japan posits an exception: during the first three years after World War II, the Japanese government (working with the Allied occupation)...

The Japanese government, in collaboration with local governments, guarantees the credit of small businesses. During the last decade, it spent annually an average of 2 billion US dollars under these programs. In addition, during the last stage of the Japan's "financial crisis" (Oct. 1998-Mar....

This is the last of the 4 discussion papers that, together with the Introduction and Summary paper (Miwa, 2010c), comprise the report of my recent investigation: "A Study of Financing Behavior of Japanese Firms with Firm-Level Data from Corporate Enterprise Quarterly Statistics - 1994~2009". In...

The Reality of Trade Credit and its Link to Bank Borrowing and Inventory: (1) Overall Discussion and Preliminary Investigation". This is the third of the 4 discussion papers that, together with the Introduction and Summary paper (Miwa, 2010c), comprise the report of my recent investigation: "A...

This is an invitation to the field of health economics, for those who have followed the literature in Japan, for those interested in health-care policy issues, and especially for professionals in the medical field. I particularly welcome readers who wonder why the Japanese government has been so...