← Search

Review of Financial Studies Vol. 27 No. 9 2014

The Ownership of Japanese Corporations in the 20th Century

Julian Franks1; Colin Mayer2,3; Hideaki Miyajima4,5

1 London Business School · 2 Center for Economic and Policy Research · 3 University of Oxford · 4 Waseda University · 5 Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry

Abstract

Twentieth century Japan provides a remarkable laboratory for examining how an externally imposed institutional and regulatory intervention affects the ownership of corporations. In the first half of the century, Japan had weak legal protection but strong institutional arrangements. The institutions were dismantled after the war and replaced by a strong form of legal protection. This inversion resulted in a switch from Japan being a country in which equity markets flourished and ownership was dispersed in the first half of the century to one in which banks and companies dominated with interlocking shareholdings in the second half of the century.

DOI
10.1093/rfs/hhu018
Volume
27
Issue
9
Pages
2580-2625
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite