Is Japan Really Changing Its Ways?: Regulatory Reform and the Japanese Economy

by Lonny E. Carlile, Mark C. Tilton

Overview

"Deregulation has been at the top of Japan's economic policy agenda for many years. Now, in the midst of a financial crisis that engulfs all of Asia, pressures on the Japanese government for substantial reform—coming from both inside and outside forces—are stronger than ever.

But is Japan actually making the changes necessary to reduce market controls, encourage competition, and create new opportunities for imports? To most outside observers, regulatory reform in Japan is an incomprehensible blur of grandiose proposals and byzantine political maneuvering, which masks developments that could be of tremendous significance to the world at large.

In this book, experts from the United States and Japan cut through the fog that surrounds Japanese regulatory reform. They review the characteristics of Japanese regulation and analyze the content of regulatory reforms proposed to date as well as the political dynamics that shaped them. The book also examines the nuts-and-bolts issues of reforms in major economic sectors and the implications of deregulation for access to Japanese markets for foreign imports. By focusing on both the larger political, economic, and strategic contexts and on the way in which the micro and macro aspects of regulatory reform are interconnected, this volume makes comprehensible the tidal wave of proposals and posturing coming out of Japan.

In addition to the editors, the contributors are Miyajima Hideaki, Elizabeth Norville, Kosuke Oyama, and Yul Sohn.

Lonny E. Carlile is an assistant professor of Japanese Studies in the Center for Japanese Studies/Department of Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Mark C. Tilton is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Purdue University.

"

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815712916
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	10/01/1998
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	246
Product dimensions:	5.88(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.56(d)
Lexile:	1730L (what's this?)

About the Author

"Lonny E. Carlile is an assistant professor of Japanese Studies in the Center for Japanese Studies/Department of Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Mark C. Tilton is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Purdue University."

Table of Contents

1.	Regulatory Reform and the Developmental State	1
2.	The Rise and Development of the Japanese Licensing System	16
3.	The Impact of Deregulation on Corporate Governance and Finance	33
4.	The Politics of Administrative Reform	76
5.	The "Illiberal" Roots of Japanese Financial Regulatory Reform	111
6.	The Policymaking Process behind Petroleum Industry Regulatory Reform	142
7.	Regulatory Reform and Market Opening in Japan	163
8.	Is Japan Really Changing?	197
	Contributors	219
	Index	221
	Tables
	Licensing Categories Used by the Japanese State Bureaucracy, 1985 and 1995
	Items of Licensing Authority by Ministry and Agency, 1985 and 1995
	Dividend Rate (DR) and Sensitivity of DR to Return on Equity (ROE), 1957-94
	Estimation of Investment Functions, 1957-64 and 1965-72
	Ownership Structure, Leveraging Ratio, and Growth Rate of Firms, 1957-64 and 1965-72
	Abstract of Managerial Turnover and Firm Performance, 1959-94, Selected Years
	Regulations on Foreign Investment by Japanese Institutional Investors, 1980-89
	Overseas Subsidiaries of the Top Japanese Life Insurers (as of the end of FY 1987)
	Big Bang Liberalization Measures
	Major Linkages between Japanese and Foreign Financial Institutions
	Structure of Japan's Petroleum Industry and Regulation, 1962 to the Present
	Required Licenses, Registration, and Other Forms of Regulation in the Petroleum-Refining Industry, 1962 to the Present
	Figures
	Distribution of Stockholdings in All Listed Nonfinancial Companies by Type of Investor, 1945-93
	Borrowing-Asset Ratios of Large Companies, 1957-93
	Equity Finance, 1976-94

Editorial Reviews

The outcome of a research project sponsored by the Japan-US Friendship Commission to make sense of the proposals for economic liberalization in Japan and the political constraints that seem to keep the process in stagnation. Specialists from the US and Japan offer eight perspectives, early drafts of which were presented in Honolulu at an April 1996 workshop and other occasions there during that year. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews

"...a valuable source for anyone who wants to understand the problems of regulatory reform in Japan." —Manwoo Lee, Millersville University of Pennsylvania

From the Publisher