Commercial Culture, Political Culture and the Political Economy of Trade Policy: The Case of Japan

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. In this paper we present a model of endogenous trade-policy formation which captures crucial aspects of the Japanese commercial and political culture. We analyze the influence of the portrayed cultural traits and show that cultural idiosyncrasies are important determinants of trade policy formation; especially the complex interaction of the two types of cultures is shown to have significant consequence for the policy outcome. Contrasting our model's behavior with the stylized facts of Japanese politics, we arrive at the conclusion that the model's behavior is compatible with the observed (trade) policy positions held by Japanese politicians over the last fifty years. Terms of use: Documents in

The The Impact of Individualism and Uncertainty Avoidance on Interdependence of Tax Culture and Tax Evasion

“…by coordination games (ALM & MCKEE 2001). For the voting process one might look at models of political culture (KATAYAMA & URSPRUNG 2000, HILLMAN & URSPRUNG 2000.…”

Implicit Mercantilism, Oligopoly, and Trade*

“…Local leaders in so-called mercantile states scoff at the monopoly depiction and typically refer to cultural factors or traditional ethnic values as the source of their uniqueness. Recent papers (Chu, 2001;Katayama and Ursprung, 2000) emphasize the role of culture-economic and political-in the performance of institutions such as Japanese keiretsu. Consistent with the relevance of culture, the foundation of our explanation is the internal distribution system in these neo-mercantile states, which isolates and sustains an asymmetric oligopoly.…”