Henry Laurence compares the pathways to and consequences of financial reform in Britain and Japan in the 1980s and 1990s. In each instance, reform was pushed on the government by a new international financial reality and by the heavy pressure the governments were under to pull their ailing economies out of the economic doldrums. Laurence's main theoretical attention centers on the Japanese case; the British case is dealt with in less detail and is used mainly to provide comparison. As a former London-based fund manager for a Japanese bank, Laurence had firsthand experience with many of the events he describes. His academic training provided him with the necessary theoretical tools to analyze the cases and put them in context.