The U.S.-controlled occupation imposed on Japan in the late 1940s an American-style securities statute. The U.S. statute did not ban insider trading at the time, and neither did the new Japanese law. Not until the 1960s did U.S. prosecutors and judges start to criminalize insider trading. Their...

On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and 38-meter tsunami destroyed Tokyo Electric's Fukushima nuclear power complex. The disaster was not a high-damage, low-probability event. It was a high-damage, high-probability event. Massive earthquakes and tsunami assault the coast every...

Consumers in wealthy countries like the U.S. and Japan usually know what they want, and how to obtain it. In such markets, the sellers who thrive should tend to be those who offer consumers the level of safety they want -- no matter what the law might be. For the most part, U.S. data confirm...

Critics have long complained that lawyers dissipate value. Some do, of course. Some legal work dissipates more value than others, and the lawyers who focus on the most notorious rent-seeking sectors extract a heavy toll in the U.S. Whether lawyers choose to focus on value-dissipating or...

To discourage firms from buying and selling tax deductions, Section 382 of the tax code limits the ability of one firm to use the ‘‘net operating losses'' (NOLs) of another firm that it acquires. Under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the U.S. Treasury lent a large amount of money to...

To discourage firms from trying to buy and sell tax deductions, Sec. 382 of the tax code limits the ability of a firm that acquires another company to use the target's "net operating losses" (NOLs). Under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the Treasury lent a large amount of money to GM....

Prepared for a forthcoming book on the distribution sector in Japan, this essay introduces the distribution network in the apparel industry. We note the varying patterns of cross-market contracting and intra-firm organization in the industry, and trace the economizing logic involved. More...

The Japanese quot;main bank systemquot; figures prominently in the recent literature on quot;relationship banking.quot; By most accounts, the main bank epitomizes relationship finance: traditionally, every large Japanese firm had one, and that bank monitored the firm, participated in its...