Corporate Financing and Governance in Japan

This title examines the history of the Japanese financial system, from its 19th-century beginnings through the collapse of the 1990s that concluded with sweeping reforms. It shows why the Japanese financial system developed as it did and how its history affects its ongoing evolution.

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In this book Takeo Hoshi and Anil Kashyap examine the history of the Japanese financial system, from its nineteenth-century beginnings through the collapse of the 1990s that concluded with sweeping reforms. Combining financial theory with new data and original case studies, they show why the Japanese financial system developed as it did and how its history affects its ongoing evolution. The authors describe four major periods within Japan's financial history and speculate on the fifth, into which Japan is now moving. Hoshi and Kashyap show that the largely successful era of bank dominance in post-war Japan is over, largely because deregulation has exposed the banks to competition from capital markets and foreign competitors. The banks are destined to shrink as households change their savings patterns and their customers continue to migrate to new funding sources. Securities markets are set to re-emerge as central to corporate finance and governance.