Market Concentration and Growth in Postwar Japan

Abstract

ture of Japan have by now become a subject of economic historians.1 Today, with the hindsight of nearly twenty years, the effect of these and subsequent policies on the structure of manufacturing markets can be traced. These are years of phenomenal growth in the Japanese economy, some of which appears attributable to changes in the structure of manufacturing markets. In this paper an attempt is made to examine the changes in market structure, relying to a large extent on the concentration ratios of fifty-three selected markets. Because of the frequently discussed shortcomings of the ratio as an indicator of the market structure, the result of the examination is not a full description of all changes in the market structure. Further, the reasons cited for the changes and their importance to Japanese development are essentially hypotheses which need further testing, perhaps on a market-by-market basis.