Land of the rising derivative action: Revisiting irrationality to understand Japan’s unreluctant shareholder litigant

It was not long ago that there was a consensus in the legal academy that the Japanese were irrational litigants. As the theory went, Japanese people would forgo litigating for financial gain because of their cultural obsession for maintaining social harmony. Based on this theory, it made perfect (bu...

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Main Authors: NAKAHIGASHI, Masafumi, PUCHNIAK, Dan W.
Format: text
Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2012
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Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sol_research/3955
https://search.library.smu.edu.sg/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma99577088502601&context=L&vid=65SMU_INST:SMU_NUI&lang=en&search_scope=Everything&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=Everything&query=any,contains,The%20Derivative%20Action%20in%20Asia:%20A%20Comparative%20and%20Functional%20Approach&offset=0
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spelling sg-smu-ink.sol_research-59132022-08-02T05:54:03Z Land of the rising derivative action: Revisiting irrationality to understand Japan’s unreluctant shareholder litigant NAKAHIGASHI, Masafumi PUCHNIAK, Dan W. It was not long ago that there was a consensus in the legal academy that the Japanese were irrational litigants. As the theory went, Japanese people would forgo litigating for financial gain because of their cultural obsession for maintaining social harmony. Based on this theory, it made perfect (but economically irrational) sense that Japanese shareholders let their US-transplanted derivative action lie moribund for almost four postwar decades when, at the same time, the derivative action was a staple of shareholder litigation in the United States. The 1980s brought a wave of law and economics to the scholarship of Japanese law, which largely discredited the cultural explanation for Japan’s (economically irrational) reluctant litigant. In this new academic era, reasonable minds could disagree as to whether it was the efficiency of settlement or the high cost of litigation that explained the dearth of litigation in Japan. However, the assumption that Japanese litigants were economically rational (i.e., as classical economic rational choice theory predicts, that they would litigate only when the financial benefit from doing so exceeded the cost) was virtually beyond reproach. 2012-01-01T08:00:00Z text https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sol_research/3955 info:doi/10.1017/CBO9780511998027.005 https://search.library.smu.edu.sg/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma99577088502601&context=L&vid=65SMU_INST:SMU_NUI&lang=en&search_scope=Everything&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=Everything&query=any,contains,The%20Derivative%20Action%20in%20Asia:%20A%20Comparative%20and%20Functional%20Approach&offset=0 Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law eng Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University Asian Studies Business Organizations Law
institution Singapore Management University
building SMU Libraries
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider SMU Libraries
collection InK@SMU
language English
topic Asian Studies
Business Organizations Law
spellingShingle Asian Studies
Business Organizations Law
NAKAHIGASHI, Masafumi
PUCHNIAK, Dan W.
Land of the rising derivative action: Revisiting irrationality to understand Japan’s unreluctant shareholder litigant
description It was not long ago that there was a consensus in the legal academy that the Japanese were irrational litigants. As the theory went, Japanese people would forgo litigating for financial gain because of their cultural obsession for maintaining social harmony. Based on this theory, it made perfect (but economically irrational) sense that Japanese shareholders let their US-transplanted derivative action lie moribund for almost four postwar decades when, at the same time, the derivative action was a staple of shareholder litigation in the United States. The 1980s brought a wave of law and economics to the scholarship of Japanese law, which largely discredited the cultural explanation for Japan’s (economically irrational) reluctant litigant. In this new academic era, reasonable minds could disagree as to whether it was the efficiency of settlement or the high cost of litigation that explained the dearth of litigation in Japan. However, the assumption that Japanese litigants were economically rational (i.e., as classical economic rational choice theory predicts, that they would litigate only when the financial benefit from doing so exceeded the cost) was virtually beyond reproach.
format text
author NAKAHIGASHI, Masafumi
PUCHNIAK, Dan W.
author_facet NAKAHIGASHI, Masafumi
PUCHNIAK, Dan W.
author_sort NAKAHIGASHI, Masafumi
title Land of the rising derivative action: Revisiting irrationality to understand Japan’s unreluctant shareholder litigant
title_short Land of the rising derivative action: Revisiting irrationality to understand Japan’s unreluctant shareholder litigant
title_full Land of the rising derivative action: Revisiting irrationality to understand Japan’s unreluctant shareholder litigant
title_fullStr Land of the rising derivative action: Revisiting irrationality to understand Japan’s unreluctant shareholder litigant
title_full_unstemmed Land of the rising derivative action: Revisiting irrationality to understand Japan’s unreluctant shareholder litigant
title_sort land of the rising derivative action: revisiting irrationality to understand japan’s unreluctant shareholder litigant
publisher Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University
publishDate 2012
url https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sol_research/3955
https://search.library.smu.edu.sg/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma99577088502601&context=L&vid=65SMU_INST:SMU_NUI&lang=en&search_scope=Everything&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=Everything&query=any,contains,The%20Derivative%20Action%20in%20Asia:%20A%20Comparative%20and%20Functional%20Approach&offset=0
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