Japan Since 1980

ISBN-13: 9780521856720 / Angielski / Twarda / 2008 / 328 str.

Thomas F. Cargill; Takayuki Sakamoto

Opis

This book tells the story of the performance of Japan s economic and political institutions starting in the late 1970s through late 2007. The authors explain how Japan s flawed response to new economic, political, and technological forces requiring more open markets and more democratic political institutions ushered in a lost decade and a half of economic development from 1990 to 2005. Japan s impressive economic performance in the 1980s in fact masked an accident waiting to happen, the accident being the burst of the bubble in equity and real estate prices in 1990 and 1991. Japan s iron triangle of politicians, bureaucrats, and client industries, combined with a flawed financial liberalization process and policy errors by the Bank of Japan and the Ministry of Finance, brought Japan to an abyss of deflation, recession, and insolvency by the late 1990s. The turning point was the election of Koizumi as prime minister in 2001. Koizumi took advantage of important institutional changes in Japan s electoral system and policy making and implemented many changes in economic policy. The book explores Koizumi s economic reform, new developments in Japanese people s socioeconomic conditions, the politics and economy after Koizumi, and the economic and political challenges facing Japan in the new century."

Recenzje

'The Cargill and Sakamoto book is a masterful review of the recent economic and political history of Japan. The authors detail the persistent efforts of Japanese policy makers to liberate themselves from past traditions and economic policies that caused the economic downturn of the lost decade. They rightfully advise their readers that this effort is still ongoing, even as Japan faces even more daunting demographic challenges in the future.' Hal Scott, Harvard Law School

Spis treści

1. Introduction and overview; 2. Economic and political institutions in the 1970s; 3. The 'high water mark' of the Japanese economy - a 'model' of financial liberalization: 1980 to 1985; 4. An accident waiting to happen - the bubble economy from 1985 to 1990; 5. Economic and financial distress from 1990 to 2001 and the turning point; 6. Why did the economic and financial distress last so long?; 7. Transition of political institutions in the 1990s and the new century; 8. Political economy of Japan's fiscal program; 9. Koizumi administration's reform in broad perspective: fiscal consolidation and market reform; 10. Japan's corporate governance, labor practices, and citizens' social and economic life at the beginning of the new century; 11. Japanese political economy in the first decade of the new century.