BANK RENTS AND UNCERTAINTY. A Legacy of the Subjectivists

Is it possible to bail Japan out of its lingering financial slump by the means of transition to an Anglo-American financial system and a convergence to Basel pragmatism? This paper argues that the imprudent convergence to an Anglo-American type management in credit risks without the preconditions for diversifying risks and uncertainty have problematically encouraged herd behaviors in lending by the Japanese banks. This paper also sheds light on the understated role of bank rents, which contributed to mediating financial resources to new industries and to pooling monitoring skills within banks. The ill-planned transition may have lost Japan the important components of the traditional “rent-based†monitoring system, which Japan should have reserved in alternative forms. One of these components was the role of transferring rents for incubating new enterprises. The other was giving lenders the incentive and time for developing what we call a relation-based non-algorithmic monitoring style.