A growing number of politicians, editorial writers, academics, and business leaders have been urging that the public and private sectors work together more closely in order to improve the performance of the American economy. Much attention has naturally focused on Japan, whose system of business-government cooperation has become widely admired in the United States. Yet while Japanese institutions function extremely well in many respects, Japan hardly provides a model of effective government regulation, the one arena in which the aims of American business and government most conflict.