South Korea, Japan and the financial crisis: in search of an institutional interpretation

Abstract

This dissertation examines the corporate structure as a key factor that caused the miraculous growth and the unwelcome financial crisis in South Korea and Japan. In comparing and contrasting the corporate structure, that is, the chaebol in South Korea and the keiretsu in Japan as well as the relationship between these industrial organisations and their particular governments, this study finds that, like the state in the eye of statist proponents and the market in the eye of neo-liberalists, the corporate structure has played a critical role in the growth and crisis of the South Korean and Japanese economies and the shaping of their particular forms of growth and crisis. This study brings the larger issue of institutions in economic development to our understanding through the analysis of the South Korean and Japanese development.