Japan's financial markets : conflict and consensus in policymaking /

Horne is an official at the Australian Treasury who has written previously on the Japanese economy. In this work, he examines Japanese case studies of financial processes, focusing on the public and private participants; the former includes ministries, their departments, and the governing Liberal Democratic party. Horne emphasizes the interaction in terms of conflicts, dominance, consensus, argument, and outcomes. He stresses conflicts within the public service and their immobilist effect in regulatory policy-making. The book, a political history of financial developments from the 1960s to 1983, focuses on the actors-especially several bureaus in the Ministry of Finance-and their lines, rather than on static institutions, laws, and financial activity. Individual chapters discuss the formulation of policies in the government bond market, the certificates of deposit market, trading in government bonds, the postal savings system, the new foreign exchange law, the yen bond market, and the influence of career and retirement patterns on slowing down the rate of change in financial policy-making. The book is technical but interesting for financial operatives, and can be instructive for public officials involved in financial regulation. Particularly useful to financial institutions and departments of finance in schools of business.-B. Mieczkowski, Ithaca College