Financial Deregulations, Weakness of Market Discipline, and Market Development: Japan's Experience and Lessons for Developing Countries

This paper was presented at the conference on Designing Financial Systems in East Asia and Japan: Toward a Twenty-First Century Paradigm. This two-day conference was co-organized by the International Monetary Fund and the CEI. It was held during September 24-25, 2001 at Hitotsubashi Memorial Hall in Tokyo, Japan. A select group of academics, researchers and policy makers from around the world gathered to examine the timely issue of how the financial systems and corporate governance in East Asia and Japan should be redesigned in order to achieve sustainable economic development. The conference included six sessions with 17 papers. All the presented papers were added to the CEI series of working papers. The series, as well as the contents of the conference, can be reached at http://cei.ier.hit-u.ac.jp.This paper was first presented at the IDB-JCIF Workshop: Financial Crises: Japan's Experience and Implications for Latin America and the Caribbean Co-sponsored by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation on June 11-12, 2001. The author would like to thank Mr. Naokatu Fuji and Ikuko Fueda for their valuable research assistance.33, [34] p