Large conglomerates known as zaibatsu have long been credited with leading Japanese industrialization during the Meiji Period (1868-1912). I develop a new dataset collected from corporate genealogies and estimate the likelihood of first entry with discrete choice econometric methods. I find zaibatsu are indeed more likely to pioneer new industries relative to independent firms. This may be due to their ability to finance investments internally, autonomy from shareholder interference, and lower risk aversion from being diversified. Nevertheless, zaibatsu lag independent firms in introducing innovative technologies, possibly from their preference for scale and monopolistic industries, conservative ownership, and organizational complexity.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau in its series Working Papers with number
07-32.