Using a data set of about 1000 Japanese contracts, I study the relationships among urban labor markets, peasant employment contracts ,and parental control over work-age children. From 1600 to the mid-18th century, the use of contracts for the sale, pledge, or long-term employment of children...

Although some observers urge modern transitional economies to rely on bank finance rather than stock markets, in quot;transitionalquot; Japan at the opening of the 20th century large firms did not rely on debt. Instead, they raised their funds through the stock market, and took a variety of...

Several decades ago, Gerschenkron famously argued that banks facilitate economic growth in quot;backwardquot; countries. To similar effect, theorists sometime claim that banks promote growth by reducing informational asymmetries and thereby improving the allocation of funds. As a fast-growth but...

In Japan, the government wins most of its tax cases against taxpayers. Why? We find, using statistical analysis, that judges who rule for taxpayers do not suffer in their future careers in general. If, however, the loser, whether tax office or payers, appeals and wins, the trial judge's future...

Although sometimes said to reflect distinctively Japanese modes of economic organization or the general importance of path-dependence and culture, the cross-shareholding patterns within the Japanese keiretsu often display a straightforward economic logic. When keiretsu banks trade on debtor...

Japanese communities with nuclear reactors have the reactors because they applied for them, and they applied for them for the money. Among Japanese municipalities, they were some of the most dysfunctional before the reactors had even arrived. Communities depend on young families for the social...

In late 2013, the Japanese Supreme Court voided inheritance rules giving non-marital children half the shares of their marital half-siblings. To punish children for the sins of their parents, it explained, violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution. Like the stigma that most...

Most studies of executive compensation focus on publicly traded companies. The high levels of compensation there are often attributed to agency slack due to ownership by diffused shareholders. If so, pay at private companies more closely held should be much lower. Governments in the United...

Most studies of executive compensation have data on pay, but not on total income. Studies of executives in Japan do not even have good data on pay. Although we too lack direct data on Japanese salaries, from income tax filings we compile data on total executive incomes, and from financial...

During the Second World War, fraudulent recruiters sometimes promised young Korean women factory jobs but sent them instead to war-zone brothels called "comfort stations." Western historians take it on faith that the Japanese military forced Korean women into brothels as well. Unfortunately, in...