[PEN-L:9378] Re: soft budget constraint

["Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>]

    MITI is still very important, certainly much more
powerful than anything like it in the US or even in most of
Western Europe.  But, yes, the MOF is more powerful.  The
closest equivalent in Europe would be France where there is
both overall indicative planning (done by the EPA in
Japan), quite active industrial policy (spread among
several agencies in France), but with the real whip hand
being that of the Ministry of Finance, although in France
the Bank of France was just taken out from under the
Ministry's supervision, in anticipation of Maastricht
monetary unification in the EU and converging on German
monetarist policies.
Barkley Rosser
On Fri, 4 Apr 1997 05:21:20 -0800 (PST) Robin Hahnel
<RHAHNEL@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I stand corrected on the relative importance of MITI and the Ministry
> of Finance in the Japanese economic oligarchy. I think Rosser has better
> information on this than I do.

--
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
rosserjb@xxxxxxx