The Ownership of Japanese Corporations in the 20th Century

The Ownership of Japanese Corporations in the 20th Century

Julian Franks, Colin Mayer, Hideaki Miyajima

Series number :

Serial Number: 
410/2014

Date posted :

February 01 2014

Last revised :

February 26 2014
SSRN Share

Keywords

  • Japan • 
  • corporate ownership • 
  • insider system • 
  • trust • 
  • investor protection

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.

View full abstract

Authors

Professor
Real name:
Colin Mayer
Fellow, Research Member
Blavatnik School of Government and Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
Prof.
Real name:
Hideaki Miyajima
Waseda University