Book Description
Despite popular perceptions to the contrary, Japanese government and industry have in fact enacted substantial reforms. Yet Japan never emulated the American model. As government officials and industry leaders scrutinized their options, they selected reforms to modify or reinforce preexisting institutions rather than to abandon them. In Japan Remodeled, Steven Vogel explains the nature and extent of these reforms and why they were enacted.
Vogel demonstrates how government and industry have devised innovative solutions. The cumulative result of many small adjustments is, he argues, an emerging Japan that has a substantially redesigned economic model characterized by more selectivity in business partnerships, more differentiation across sectors and companies, and more openness to foreign players.
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"Japan Remodeled provides a very broad discussion of Japanese capitalism, covering a number of industries and firms in a way that masterfully surveys the Japanese economy as a whole. It provides an elegant explanation for why things haven't changed more than they have, which is simply that the Japanese don't want more change. Steven Vogel brilliantly gets the story right, neither exaggerating nor minimizing the changes that have occurred; he is both commonsensical and honest about Japanese politics."-Mark Tilton, Purdue University