FINNOV

LSE

Ronald Dore is an associate of the Centre for Economic Performance at LSE. His academic career began in the UK, at SOAS and LSE, but has spanned borders: he has held positions at the University of British Columbia, the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University, the Technical Change Centre, the Institute for Economic growth in Delhi, Imperial College, Harvard University, and MIT.

His earlier books, City Life in Japan (1958), Land Reform in Japan (1959), and Education in Tokugawa Japan (1963) established his reputation as a “Japanologist”, but his later work as a comparative sociologist is better known, particularly British Factory: Japanese Factory and The Diploma Disease, both of which, starting from empirical description (in the one case of two factories of English Electric and two of Hitachi, in the other of the development of educational systems in Britain, Japan, Sri Lanka, Kenya) focussed on the differences between pioneer development and late development. His subsequent work has been more polemical, notably his Stock Market Capitalism: Welfare capitalism: Japan and Germany versus the Anglo-Saxons.(2001)

In the last decade he has taken to directing his polemics at a Japanese audience with paperbacks on Work and Working, Who should the corporation belong to, and Finance hijacks the world economy. The last, published in October 2011 has sold 30,000 copies. Ever more recklessly venturing into fields in which he has no expertise, he is now writing on what he considers the dangerous follies of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation regime and what Japan, sandwiched between the US and China, might do about them.