Katsuhito Iwai

The nature of fiduciary relationships remains a source of confusion and dispute in spite of their long history and wide acceptance in Anglo-American legal system. The purpose of this article is to present a unified theory that is capable of combining a large variety of fiduciary relationships into a distinctive legal category on the basis of the fu...

"Globalization" can be interpreted as a grand experiment of the laissez-faire doctrine of neoclassical economics that the wider and the deeper markets cover the capitalist economy, the more efficient and the more stable it would become. The "once a hundred years" global economic crisis of 2007-9 stands as a testament to the grand failure of this gr...

"Globalization" can be understood as a grand experiment to test the laissez-faire doctrine of neoclassical economics, which claims that a capitalist economy will become more efficient and stable as markets spread deeper and wider around the world. The "once a century" global economic crisis of 2007-9 stands as a testament to the failure of this gra...

The present article is an attempt to end the age-old controversy over the nature of corporate personality. It is, however, not by declaring victory for one side or the other, but by declaring victory for both. The key to this claim is an observation that an incorporated firm is composed of not one but two ownership relations: shareholders own the c...

Between a classical firm and a business corporation lies a fundamental difference in legal structure. While the first consists of a single ownership relation between owners and assets, the second consists of two overlapping ownership relations—between shareholders and the corporation, and between the corporation and corporate assets. The latter leg...

The law speaks of a corporation as a 'legal person' -- as a subject of rights and duties capable of owning real property, entering into contracts, and suing and being sued in its own name separate and distinct from its shareholders. For many centuries there have been a heated controversy between corporate nominalists and corporate realists as to th...

This paper develops mathematically tractable evolutionary models that can be used to analyze the development of industrial structure as a dynamic process moved by complex interactions among innovations, imitations and investments of satisficing firms striving for survival and growth. It demonstrates that what the industry will approach in the long-...

After the first section, introducing some typical problems of family capitalism, the following three sections of the paper consider the ambiguity of the legal framework defining the modern corporation, the two way relation between technology and property rights and the different mechanisms by which the control of the firms can be transferred to new...

In the traditional economic theory, whether classical or neoclassical, the long-run state of the economy is an equilibrium state in which all profits in excess of normal rate vanish completely. If there is a theory of long-run profits, it is a theory about the determination of the normal rate of profit. This paper challenges this long-held traditio...

In the traditional economic theory, whether classical or neoclassical, the long-run state of the economy is an equilibrium state in which all profits in excess of normal rate vanish completely. If there is a theory of long-run profits, it is a theory about the determination of the normal rate of profit. This paper challenges this long-held traditio...

The paper first considers a number of theoretical aspects surrounding the ambiguity of the legal framework defining the modern corporation and the two-way relation between technology and property rights. It then looks at the evolution of corporate governance through time, paying particular attention to the different roles played by the American occ...

The present article is a fresh attempt to 'end' the age-old controversy on the nature of corporate personality by declaring victory for both corporate nominalism and corporate realism. The key to this claim is the observation that an incorporated business firm is composed of not one but two ownership relations: the shareholders own the corporation...

Since millennium, economists have advanced two competing theories on the evolution of money. Commodity theory asserts that money has evolved spontaneously from one of the useful commodities through a long process of barter exchanges, and cartal theory argues that money was introduced by a communal agreement or political decree or legislative action...

This paper develops a search-theoretic model of a decentralized economy with heterogeneous individuals trading goods endowed for goods in need among themselves. It characterizes both barter and monetary systems as two different forms of trade equilibrium and demonstrates that while the existence of a barter equilibrium requires a well-balanced dist...

It is well known that the Japanese firm is characterized with a behavioral mode and organizational structure that are quite different from the model of the firm portrayed in traditional neoclassical economics. In general, a firm is an economic organization composed of three different groupsânamely, employees (workers), managers, and stockholders (c...

Business firms strive for survival and growth. They innovate in order to grow; they imitate in order to survive. The purpose of this paper, the second in the series on Schumpeterian dynamics. is to construct a simple mathematical model which is capable of studying the evolution of an industry's state of technology as a dynamic outcome of the intera...

This paper develops a simple evolutionary model of innovation and imitation. It analyzes how dynamic interactions between equilibrating force of imitation and disequilibrating force of innovation mold the evolutionary pattern of an industry's state of technology and shows that in this Schumpeterian world the industry will never approach a neoclassi...

A fiduciary is a person who undertakes to act for the benefit of another person. He owes the duty of loyalty to beneficiary, is required to disgorge any unauthorized gain from his position, and has the burden of disproving his disloyalty in litigation. This article presents a theory that unifies a wide variety of human relationships as fiduciary re...