comment on Nishimura, Nakajima, and Kiyota's "Does the natural selection mechanism still work in severe recessions?
Subtitle: examination of the Japanese economy in the 1990s"
By: Tae Okada, Charles Yuji Horioka.
Contributors: Horioka, Charles.; National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series -- no. 13298.; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research) -- working paper no. 13298.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Subjects: Banks and banking -- Japan; Industrial productivity -- Japan -- Econometric models
Description: Nishimura et al. (2005) analyze the entry/exit behavior of Japanese firms during the 1990s and find that relatively efficient firms exited while relatively inefficient firms survived during the banking-crisis period of 1996-97. They conclude that the natural selection mechanism (NSM) apparently malfunctions during severe recessions, but we offer a more plausible interpretation: NSM continued to function effectively even during this period, but aberrant banking practices caused a shift in the type of natural selection from directional to disruptive selection, with the most efficient as well as the least efficient firms being favored and firms of intermediate efficiency being selected against.
Notes: "August 2007."

Includes bibliographical references (p. 5-6).

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