In many ways, the current financial distress in Japan traces itself to the limited range of non-bank financial intermediaries available. That limited availability is itself a creature of regulation. By examining the recent deregulation of commercial paper issues by financial intermediaries, we...

The debate over the role bureaucrats played in the postwar Japanese economy has been the wrong debate. To date, it has been a debate about effectiveness: the government tried to promote growth through interventionist policies, but did it succeed? In fact, the government never tried. Majority...

Basic as it has become to studies of the Japanese economy, the concept of the "Keiretsu" is sheer fiction -- a creature of the academic imagination with no basis in real economic behavior. Almost all scholars writing on the subject use the categorization found in the annual Keiretsu no kenkyu...

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...

In several fields, modern academics trumpet the contingency of social science and the indeterminacy of institutional structures. The Japanese experience during the first half of the 20th century, however, instead tracks what much-derided chauvinists have claimed all along: modern legal...

For decades, scholars outside of economics have explained Japanese economic growth through prudent government management. Although economists have been more critical, even they have usually viewed favorably the role the government played in finance. In these favorable accounts, they often give...

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)...