Political and Economic Opening as a Post-Crisis Strategy for Japan

Keywords:

Economic growth, Japan, Trade balance, Technological change, Labour market, population, Energy production

Abstract

In economics literature, the sources of economic growth in general and in Japan in particular have been appraised either from the supply-side, with the emphasis on capital accumulation, labour, total factor productivity and – given the advent of the new growth models – on technological change, or from the demand side. The study on Japanese growth by Chenery et al. (1962) was an early demand-based study that looked at the drivers of economic growth and structural change over the period 1914-1954. Using input-output methods and taking into account the contribution of technological change11 over this long-time period, the authors found two distinct early sub-periods of economic growth: the 1914-1935 and the 1935-1954  sub-periods. The first (1914-1935) is characterised by a rise in domestic income (by 4.5 per cent per annum) with large increases in exports. The second (1935-1954) is marked by the loss of colonial supplies of raw materials and by a substantial fall in exports; this second sub-period is also marked by import substitution policies and by the rising importance of technological change. The findings for the first sub-period mirror Japan’s emergence as an economic and geostrategic power, affirming first its colonial ambitions in East-Asia through the development of its many manufacturing networks, in the region as a whole and in Korea in particular (Inkster, 2001).

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References

Chenery HB, Shuntaro S, Watanabe W (1962) The Pattern of Japanese Growth 1914-1954, Econometrica, 30:1, January, pp. 98-139.

Gordon A (2016) New and Enduring Dual Structures of Employment in Japan: The Rise of Non-Regular Labor, 1980s-2010s, Social Science Japan Journal, doi: 10.1093/ssjj/jyw042

Hutchinson M, Westermann F (eds) (2006) Japan’s Great Stagnation – Financial and Monetary Policy Lessons for Advanced Economies, CESifo Seminars, The MIT Press: Cambridge (MA).

Inkster I (2001) The Japanese Industrial Economy – Late Development and cultural causation, London: Routledge.

Keizai Koho Center (2007) Japan 2008, an International Comparison, Keizai Koho Center, Tokyo.

Keizai Koho Center (2014) Japan 2014, an International Comparison, Keizai Koho Center, Tokyo.

OECD (2015) oecd.org website, https://data.oecd.org/rd/gross-domestic-spending-on-r-d.htm

How to Cite

Political and Economic Opening as a Post-Crisis Strategy for Japan. (1). Journal Global Policy and Governance, 6(2), 3-5. Retrieved from https://transitionacademiapress.org/jgpg/article/view/200

Issue

Section

Special Issue Japan