Modern mainstream economics is attracting an increasing number of critics of its high degree of abstraction and lack of relevance to economic reality. Economists are calling for a better reflection of the reality of imperfect information, the role of banks and credit markets, the mechanisms of...

In this paper we examine how financial constraints, especially fluctuations in the supply of credit, affect the capital structure of 1537 publicly listed Japanese firms from 1980 to 2007, in a data set with 33,000 observations. It is one of the first studies to do so and is inspired by the...

This eye-opening book offers a disturbing new look at Japan's post-war economy and the key factors that shaped it. It gives special emphasis to the 1980s and 1990s when Japan's economy experienced vast swings in activity.According to the author, the most recent upheaval in the Japanese economy...

Since the 1970s, many central banks – including the Bank of England, the Bank of France, the Bank of Korea and the Bank of Japan – have announced that they have ceased direct credit controls. Researchers have tended to accept 'what they say', without gathering empirical evidence on 'what...

Im Jahr 1990 erlebte Japan eine nie gekannte Wirtschaftskrise. Binnen Jahresfrist verlor der Nikkei-Index über 40%. Die fallenden Börsen schlugen bis auf den Immobilienmarkt durch. Banken sperrten Kredite, Firmen mussten Insolvenz anmelden, Grundstückspreise fielen, bis sie 1996 in den...

Monetary targeting has been abandoned in deregulated and liberalised financial systems. Theoretically, this could imply that emerging markets that have not yet deregulated financial markets could employ monetarist policies. We analyse the case of China, in order to explore whether monetary...