Business Groups and the Big Push: Meiji Japan’s Mass Privatization and Subsequent Growth RANDALL MORCK MASAO NAKAMURA Paul Rosenstein-Rodan argues that economic development requires coordinated investment in many interdependent industries, and prescribes a flood of state-controlled investment across all sectors—a so-called big push. Widespread government failure defeated twentieth-century ‘big push’ schemes. But spillovers across firms and industries, and from public goods, hold-up problems, and capital market limitations are real, and justify coordinated growth across sectors if it can be done without government failures. Large, extensively diversified pyramidal business groups of listed firms dominate the histories of developed economies and the economies of developing economies. Arguing that such groups provided this coordination in prewar Japan after a state-run big push failed, © The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail:
[email protected]. doi:10.1093/es/khm076 Advance Access publication September 25, 2007 RANDALL MORCK is Stephen A. Jarislowsky Distinguished Professor of Finance and University Professor at the School of Business at the University of Alberta; as well as Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Contact information: School of Business, University of Alberta, 3-23 Business Building, Edmonton, AB, Canada, T6G 2R6. E-mail:
[email protected]. MASAO NAKAMURA is Konwakai Japan Research Chair and Professor at the Sauder School of Business and the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia. Contact information: Sauder School of Business, The University of British Columbia, 2053 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2.