Designing the Market: Institutions and Reform in Japan and Other Advanced Industrial Countries

FAIN: FO-50098-09

Steven Kent Vogel
University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, CA 94704-5940)

This book project will examine market institutions and market reform in Japan and other advanced industrial countries. It builds upon two previous book projects ("Freer Markets, More Rules" and "Japan Remodeled") yet it seeks to present a broader and bolder argument designed to incite scholars to reconsider how they study political economy and to prompt government officials to re-evaluate the way they assess policy options. The book will focus on two primary country cases, the United States and Japan, with additional comparisons with Western Europe. It will develop two broad issue cases (financial markets and competition regimes), with supplementary cases on intellectual property rights and creating new markets. It will address both government regulation and the private governance of markets, and the interaction between the two.

Media Coverage

The Fallacy of the Free Market (Review)
Author(s): James Kwak
Publication: Washington Monthly
Date: 4/5/2018
Abstract: na
URL: https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/04/05/the-fallacy-of-the-free-market/

Associated Products

“A Socio-Economic Perspective on the Financial Crisis" (Article)
Title: “A Socio-Economic Perspective on the Financial Crisis"
Author: Steven Vogel
Abstract: While it is impossible to assign weights to the multitude of factors that have contributed to the crisis, flawed conceptual frameworks have played a substantial role. For all the overwhelming complexity of the crisis, some fairly pedestrian policy errors were at the heart of the storm. The U.S. financial authorities made the basic mistake that lies at the heart of most recent financial crises: they liberalized financial markets in the sense of giving market actors greater freedom to take risks without strengthening supervision to monitor this activity effectively and to contain the risk to the broader financial system. In addition, they presumed that the most sophisticated investors, large financial institutions, should be allowed considerable freedom to take these risks because they were professionals with deep pockets, and because this activity would enhance the efficiency of financial markets overall. They engaged in piecemeal deregulation, removing restrictions in one area of financial activity without fully considering the impact on other markets. And they overestimated the capability of private sector actors – from rating agencies to self-regulatory organizations – to regulate in the public interest. In short, they committed basic errors of market design.
Year: 2010
Primary URL: http://ser.oxfordjournals.org/content/8/3.toc
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Socio-Economic Review

Marketcraft: How Governments Make Markets Work (Book)
Title: Marketcraft: How Governments Make Markets Work
Author: Steven K. Vogel
Abstract: Modern-day markets do not arise spontaneously or evolve naturally. Rather they are crafted by individuals, firms, and most of all, by governments. Thus "marketcraft" represents a core function of government comparable to statecraft and requires considerable artistry to govern markets effectively. Just as real-world statecraft can be masterful or muddled, so it is with marketcraft. In Marketcraft, Steven Vogel builds his argument upon the recognition that all markets are crafted then systematically explores the implications for analysis and policy. In modern societies, there is no such thing as a free market. Markets are institutions, and contemporary markets are all heavily regulated. The "free market revolution" that began in the 1980s did not see a deregulation of markets, but rather a re-regulation. Vogel looks at a wide range of policy issues to support this concept, focusing in particular on the US and Japan. He examines how the US, the "freest" market economy, is actually among the most heavily regulated advanced economies, while Japan's effort to liberalize its economy counterintuitively expanded the government's role in practice. Marketcraft demonstrates that market institutions need government to function, and in increasingly complex economies, governance itself must feature equally complex policy tools if it is to meet the task. In our era-and despite what anti-government ideologues contend-governmental officials, regardless of party affiliation, should be trained in marketcraft just as much as in statecraft.
Year: 2018
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780190699857
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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