A01=J. Mark Ramseyer
A01=Yoshiro Miwa
alliance
assistance
Author_J. Mark Ramseyer
Author_Yoshiro Miwa
business
Category=KCM
central planning
conglomerate
corporation
economics
economy
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
government
growth
honor
industrial policy
japan
keiretsu
lending
loyalty
main bank
management
market
marxism
myth
networks
outside directors
preference
profit
regulation
shareholding
trading
urban legend
zaibatsu
Product details
- ISBN 9780226532707
- Weight: 425g
- Dimensions: 16 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 03 Jul 2006
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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For Western economists and journalists, the most distinctive facet of the post-war Japanese business world has been the keiretsu, or the insular business alliances among powerful corporations. Within keiretsu groups, argue these observers, firms preferentially trade, lend money, take and receive technical and financial assistance, and cement their ties through cross-shareholding agreements. In "The Fable of the Keiretsu", Yoshiro Miwa and J. Mark Ramseyer demonstrate that all this talk is really just urban legend. In their insightful analysis, the authors show that the very idea of the keiretsu was created and propagated by Marxist scholars in post-war Japan. Western scholars merely repatriated the legend to show the culturally contingent nature of modern economic analysis. Laying waste to the notion of keiretsu, the authors debunk several related "facts" as well: that Japanese firms maintain special arrangements with a "main bank," that firms are systematically poorly managed, and that the Japanese government guided post-war growth. In demolishing these long-held assumptions, they offer one of the few reliable chronicles of the realities of Japanese business.
Yoshiro Miwa is professor of economics at the University of Tokyo. He is the author or coauthor of several books, including, most recently, State Competence and Economic Growth in Japan. J. Mark Ramseyer is the Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. He is the author or coauthor of several books, including, most recently, Measuring Judicial Independence: The Political Economy of Judging in Japan, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
