Over the last century, Japanese consumers have steadily lost their taste for sake. Several large producers dominate the mass market through economies of scale, but the regional brewers have gradually gone out of business. In this environment, a small group of enterprising regional brewers began to create a market for premium sake with the environmental variations so important to French terroir.To produce this terroir sake, brewers must convince local farmers to grow high-risk and high-cost varieties of rice optimized for premium sake. The challenge involves unusually complex incentive and informational requirements. Yet the parties almost never draft elaborate contracts with verifiable terms, and rarely vertically integrate. Instead, they build dense and refined networks of social capital among themselves and combine short-term renewable (and hence terminable) contracts, extremely high (efficiency-wage level) prices, and close monitoring by the brewer. In the process, they give the farmers strong incentives to let the brewers intervene as needed in the farming.The brewers and farmers neither draft elaborate contracts nor vertically integrate for a simple reason: they do not need to do so. The combination of dense networks of social capital, terminable short-term contracts, and high prices gives them all the flexibility they need.

中文翻译：

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为清酒承包风土

在上个世纪，日本消费者逐渐失去了对清酒的品味。几家大型生产商通过规模经济主导了大众市场，但区域酿酒商逐渐倒闭。在这种环境下，一小群有进取心的地区酿酒商开始为优质清酒创造市场，因为环境变化对法国人来说非常重要风土.为了生产这种风土清酒，酿酒商必须说服当地农民种植针对优质清酒优化的高风险和高成本水稻品种。挑战涉及异常复杂的激励和信息要求。然而，双方几乎从不起草带有可验证条款的详尽合同，也很少进行纵向整合。相反，他们在彼此之间建立了密集而精细的社会资本网络，并结合了短期可再生（因此可终止）合同、极高（效率工资水平）价格以及酿酒商的密切监控。在这个过程中，他们给予农民强烈的激励，让酿酒商根据需要干预农业。酿酒商和农民既没有起草详尽的合同，也没有垂直整合，原因很简单：他们不需要这样做。