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.

About the Author
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.

Reviews
"The Fable of the Keiretsu is so important and well written, it should become a classic in both the academic and popular literature on Japan. Urban legends about Japan view the country as following some kind of Confucian collectivism that does not follow behavior that would be consistent with economic rationality. Yoshiro Miwa and Mark Ramseyer instead argue that the facts about Japan conform closely with what would be both observed and expected in a market economy in which firms maximize profits." - Daniel F. Spulber, Northwestern University"



Book Information
ISBN 9780226532707
Author Yoshiro Miwa
Format Hardback
Page Count 192
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 425g
Dimensions(mm) 24mm * 16mm * 2mm