Japan's Financial Crisis: Institutional Rigidity and Reluctant Change »

Jennifer Amyx is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

"No one has laid out micro data on the Japanese Ministry of Finance as clearly as Amyx does here. And no wonder they haven't. As Amyx's footnotes testify, the data she has put together were gathered painstakingly from a wide variety of sources, including many interviews with the very people making the decisions. With these data, Amyx gives us with nuance and detail, the inside scoop on the officials who operated some of the most important levers of economic policy during Japan's bubble-and-burst years."--Frances Rosenbluth, Yale University

"A lucidly written and succinct account of why financial supervision in Japan, which had been so successful in the 1970s, became dysfunctional after the 1980s. Deceptively simple, but full of sound views, this timely work serves as a good and coherent account of how the powers of the Ministry of Finance and Japanese politicians were undermined."--Nobuhiro Hiwatari, Tokyo University

Henry Laurence - Political Science Quarterly

This is an important contribution to our understanding of regulatory reform, and essential reading for students of Japan's financial markets.