Literature suggests two distinct paths to stock market development: an approach based on legal protections for investors, and an approach based on self-regulation of listed companies by stock exchanges. This paper traces China's attempts to pursue both approaches, while focusing on the role of...

The fact of a small number of hostile takeover bids in Japan the recent past, together with technical amendments of the Civil Code that would allow a poison pill-like security, raises the question of how a poison pill would operate in Japan should it be widely deployed. This paper reviews the...

Analysis of Japanese corporate law reveals a striking amount of formal institutional change in the past ten years, occurring at an ever-accelerating pace. This feature of law reform can be traced to a heightened awareness of the organizational straightjacket imposed on Japanese firms by the...

This book explores the relationship between legal systems and economic development by examining, through a methodology we call the institutional autopsy, a series of high profile corporate governance crises around the world over the past six years. We begin by exposing hidden assumptions in the...

Despite longstanding predictions to the contrary, hostile takeovers have arrived in Japan. This essay explains why, and explores the implications of this phenomenon, not only for Japanese corporate governance, but for our understanding of corporate law development around the world today....

This paper presents a property-rights-based approach to comparative corporate governance. Two central claims are advanced. The first is that property rights institutions are the principal source of diversity among national corporate governance systems. More specifically, firms in a given economy...

This paper examines three decades of Japanese experience with deposit insurance and failing banks, and analyzes the implications of that experience for bank safety net reform in other countries. To date, the literature and policy debate on deposit insurance have been heavily colored by U.S....

This paper analyzes the origins, persistence, and current evolution of a series of non-legal rules (or quot;normsquot;) that have played an important role in Japanese corporate governance. The four central features of the governance environment examined here include: 1) the main bank system, in...

This paper examines three decades of Japanese experience with deposit insurance and failing banks, and analyzes the implications of that experience for bank safety net reform in other countries. To date, the literature and policy debate on deposit insurance have been heavily colored by U.S....

Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) have increased dramatically in size as a result of increased commodity prices and the increase in the foreign currency reserves of Asian trading countries. SWF assets now roughly equal those in hedge and private equity funds combined. This growth, and the shift of...