CIRJE-F-29. Hanazaki, Masaharu and Akiyoshi Horiuchi, "A Vacuum of Governance in the Japanese Bank Management", December 1998.

This paper overviews the bank crisis Japan has faced since the early 1990s. Undeniably, the current bank crisis is the aftermath of the financial over-expansion that occurred in the late 1980s. However, this paper focuses on the issues related to managerial governance in the banking sector. We propose a hypothesis that there has existed a vacuum of governance in the Japanese bank management in the sense that bank managers have enjoyed wide latitude. This hypothesis of the governance vacuum will explain why the bank crisis has been so serious and so protracted.