CIRJE-J-43. Okuno-Fujiwara, Masahiro, "Bubble Economy and Financial System Failures After Its Crush: Form the Viewpoint of '1975' Regime", February 2001.

We analyze the performance of the Japanese Economy in the last 30 years. We do so by emphasizing the fact that an economy is a social system and people are concerned with social values and norms. We point out that the employment security, which became socially guaranteed during the aftermath of the first oil shock, and the coercion of unitarism, rather than plurarism, became prevalent in this period. These factors are behind the birth and continuation of financial bubble in the late 80's as well as the indecisiveness of financial policies in the 90's. They also positively affected the competitiveness of exporting industries but negatively affected regulated and non-tradable industries by regulation captures and accumulation of political rents. What is needed in Japan is to revive a value system that allow plural ways of thinking and improve adaptability.