Despite the destruction of its social and economic infrastructure during the Second World War, Japan's subsequent remarkable recovery and growth propelled it rapidly into the ranks of the developed nations. In order to trace this post-war transformation formally, the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) convened a committee of independent academics to compile a seventeen-volume History of Japanese Trade and Industry Policy, of which this volume acts as a summary. Translated for the first time into English, it examines the planning, drafting, and implementation of various policies adopted by MITI against their economic and industrial background in the period from 1945 to 1979. It provides an objective overview and analysis of the development of international trade and industry policy that will be of interest to economists, political scientists, policy-makers, and public administration lawyers alike.

As a stunning tide of democratization sweeps across much of the world, countries must cope with increasing problems of economic development, political and social integration, and greater public demand of scarce resources. That ability to respond effectively to these issues depends largely on the institutional choices of each of these newly democratizing countries. With critics of national political institutions in the United States arguing that the American separation-of-powers system promotes ineffectiveness and policy deadlock, many question whether these countries should emulate American institutions or choose parliamentary institutions instead. The essays in this book fully examine whether parliamentary government is superior to the separation-of-powers system through a direct comparison of the two. In addressing specific policy areas—such as innovation and implementation of energy policies after the oil shocks of 1970, management of societal cleavages, setting of government priorities in budgeting, representation of diffuse interest in environmental policy, and management of defense forces—the authors define capabilities that allow governments to respond to policy problems. Do Institutions Matter? includes case studies that bear important evidence on when and how institutions influence government effectiveness. The authors discover a widespread variation among parliamentary systems both in institutional arrangements and in governmental capabilities, and find that many of the failings of policy performance commonly attributed to American political institutions are in fact widely shared among western industrial countries. Moreover, they show how American political institutions inhibit some government capabilities while enhancing others. Changing American institutions to improve some aspects of governmental performance could hurt other widely valued capabilities. The authors draw important guidelines for institutional reformers wh

Whether they should or not, few economists do in fact refrain from making pronouncements on public policy, although the state of the economy (both here and elsewhere) suggests that either the advice given is bad or, if good, that it is ignored . . . I happen to think that we are appallingly ignorant about many aspects of the working of the economic system -- the economics of the firm and industry. Ronald H Coase, Economists and Public Policy In this volume we attempt to address an element of Coase's concern by linking the empirical economics of the fInn and industry more closely to macroeconomic policies, and to demonstrate how to assess some of the effects of those policies. The scope of our study ranges from a structural macroeconomic model of the United States, from which macroeconomic effects are propagated to detailed structural models of SIC four digit industries. The rationale for our approach is very much in the spirit of various integrated macroeconomic/industry models constructed by Dale Jorgenson, working with various collaborators. Our approach is also consistent with, and motivated by, Lawrence Klein's agenda of modeling explicitly and structurally the macro and sectoral elements in the national economy. We also examine the effects of the macroeconomic policies of different countries on the enterprise. In only one case, our examination of crowding out of private investment by government defIcit fmancing, is the linkage among sectors implicit.