A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE CONTROL POWER OF BANKS IN CORPORATE GROUPINGS IN JAPAN AND GERMANY --- AN ANALYSIS OF THE CO-DETERMINATION SYSTEM BASED ON PRINCIPAL-AGENT-THEORY

众所周知，德国的银行体系非常独特，不同于欧洲。德国的“全能银行制度”在经济学意义上或在资源配置意义上都有各种各样的优点和缺点。当银行试图影响或监控企业集团（日本的经连会和德国的康采恩）中的企业时，它们必须在企业内部和外部拥有一些路径，其中包括三条主要路径。第一条路是非常直接的。银行将其官员或董事派往集团公司，他们作为董事会成员或集团公司的官员工作。然后，他们可以监督集团公司是否正确运作，如果必要的话，他们可以建议和纠正公司的决定。银行影响企业的第二条途径是拥有它们的股票，第三条途径是向它们提供长期信贷。无论如何，日本的“主银行“和德国的“豪斯银行”都可以通过上述途径对集团公司进行控制。然而，这种影响力的效果是否对集团企业有利还不清楚。这是一个典型的问题，必须通过实证研究来检验。从理论上讲，只要银行公平、有效、高效地运作，就可以通过上述三条路径降低银行与集团企业之间的代理成本。本文试图从委托代理理论的角度来检验银行与集团企业之间的这种关系。在日本，lts并不总是同质的。银行对集团企业的影响程度在不同时期可能有所不同，泡沫经济破裂后，银行的作用减弱。有必要进一步审查实证研究的结果，以得出判断这种关系的一般性结论。

It is well known that the banking system in Germany is very unique and different from that in an. The system in Germany is very famous as the "universal banking system", which has various merits and demerits in the economic sense or in the sense of resource allocation. When banks try to influence or to monitor the firms in the corporate groupings (keiretsu in Japan and Konzern in Germany) , they must have some routes inside and outside the firms including three major routes. The first route is a very direct one. Banks send their officers or directors to the firms of their group and they work as the member of the board or as the officer of the group-firms. Then they can monitor whether the group-firms operate correctly and if necessary they can advise and correct the decision of the firms. The second route for the banks to influence the firms is to have the stock of them and the third is to give a long term credit to them. Anyway the banks, "main bank"in Japan and "Hausbank" in Germany, can control the group-firms through the above mentioned routes. It is, however, not clear whether the effect of the influence is beneficial for the group-firms or not. This is a typical problem which must be tested by empirical researches. Theoretically speaking, the agency cost between banks and group-firms can be reduced by the above mentioned three routes, if banks act fair, effectively and efficiently. We tried to test this relationship between banks and group firms based on the principal-agent theory. The lts are not always homogenous in Japan. The degree of bank's influence on the group-firms may be different among the periods of the empirical research and the role of the banks is said to have become weaker after the breakdown of the bubble-economies. It would be necessary to examine the results of empirical research further to have a general conclusion to judge the relationship.