Most of what we collectively think we know about the Japanese economy is urban legend. In fact -- * The keiretsu do not exist, and never did. An entrepreneurial "research institute" in the 1950s created the rosters to sell to Marxist economists looking for the "monopoly capital" that their...

Many observers describe the last 20 years of the Japanese economy as "the Two Lost Decades". Many also discuss the "bad loans" in the banking sector and the "insufficient" and "delayed" "disposal of the bad loans." They urge policies that will accelerate that disposition. Observers have also...

Research on Japanese corporate finance typically starts from the premise that banks decisively affect corporate behavior. Crucial to this premise in the Japanese context are two claims: that the strength of a firm's relationship with a specific bank (and the funds that the bank makes available...

This is the last of the 4 discussion papers that, together with the Introduction and Summary paper (Miwa, 2010c), comprise the report of my recent investigation: "A Study of Financing Behavior of Japanese Firms with Firm-Level Data from Corporate Enterprise Quarterly Statistics - 1994~2009". In...

From early spring to late summer in 2010 I investigated the financing behavior of Japanese firms with over \20 million in paid-in capital, using firm-level financial data from Hojin Kigyo Tokei Kiho (Corporate Enterprise Quarterly Statistics) of the Ministry of Finance. "A Study of Financing...

This is the second of the 4 discussion papers that, together with the Introduction and Summary paper (Miwa, 2010c), comprise the report of my recent investigation: "A Study of Financing Behavior of Japanese Firms with Firm-Level Data from the Corporate Enterprise Quarterly Statistics -...

The Reality of Trade Credit and its Link to Bank Borrowing and Inventory: (1) Overall Discussion and Preliminary Investigation". This is the third of the 4 discussion papers that, together with the Introduction and Summary paper (Miwa, 2010c), comprise the report of my recent investigation: "A...

This is the first of the 4 discussion papers that, together with the Introduction and Summary paper (Miwa, 2010c), comprise the report of my recent investigation: "A Study of Financing Behavior of Japanese Firms with Firm-Level Data from the Corporate Enterprise Quarterly Statistics -...

From early spring to late summer in 2010 I investigated the financing behavior of Japanese firms with over \10 million in paid-in capital, using firm-level financial data from Hojin Kigyo Tokei Kiho (Corporate Enterprise Quarterly Statistics) of the Ministry of Finance. "A Study of Financing...

This is the third article in my series, “Improving Economic Statistics in order to Improve Economic Policy and Researchâ€. It fleshes out some of the issues presented in the first article, Miwa [2014a]. Focusing on information software, advertisement, and legal services for firms, the...