Economic Challenges Facing Japan’s Regional Areas


Book Description

This book analyzes issues related to economic challenges for Japan’s regional revitalization. Japan’s responses to such challenges and to the problem of an aging population are of deep interest to the nations outside of Japan. This book brings together 19 articles contributed by Japan’s leading scholars, originally prepared for an online policy information portal, SPACE NIRA launched by the Nippon Institute for Research Advancement (NIRA) with Dr. Tatsuo Hatta, President of the Asian Growth Research Institute, as its General Editor. This book is a significant and useful reference for all scholars, students, and individuals with an interest in current policy issues in Japan.




Japan's New Regional Reality


Book Description

Japan's regional geoeconomic strategy -- Foreign economic policy, domestic institutions and regional governance -- Geoeconomics of the Asia-Pacific -- Transformation in the Japanese political economy -- Trade and investment : a gradual path -- Money and finance : an uneven path -- Development and foreign aid : a hybrid path.




Japan’s Lost Decade


Book Description

This book discusses Japan’s long-term economic recession and provides remedies for that recession that are useful for other Asian economies. The book addresses why Japan’s economy has stagnated since the bursting of its economic bubble in the 1990s. Its empirical analysis challenges the beliefs of some economists, such as Paul Krugman, that the Japanese economy is caught in a liquidity trap. This book argues that Japan’s economic stagnation stems from a vertical “investment–saving” (IS) curve rather than a liquidity trap. The impact of fiscal policy has declined drastically, and the Japanese economy faces structural problems rather than a temporary downturn. These structural problems have many causes: an aging demographic (a problem that is frequently overlooked), an over-reliance by local governments on transfers from the central government, and Basel capital requirements that have made Japanese banks reluctant to lend money to start-up businesses and small and medium-sized enterprises. This latter issue has discouraged Japanese innovation and technological progress. All these issues are addressed empirically and theoretically, and several remedies for Japan’s long-lasting recession are provided. This volume will be of interest to researchers and policy makers not only in Japan but also the People’s Republic of China, many countries in the eurozone, and the United States, which may face similar challenges in the future.




Restoring Japan's Economic Growth


Book Description

Criticism of current Japanese macroeconomic and financial policies is so wide spread that the reasons for it are assumed to be self-evident. In this volume, Adam Posen explains in depth why a shift in Japanese fiscal and monetary policies, as well as financial reform, would be in Japan's self-interest. He demonstrates that Japanese economic stagnation in the 1990s is the result of mistaken fiscal austerity and financial laissez-faire rather than a structural decline of the "Japan Model." The author outlines a program for putting the country back on the path to solid economic growth - primarily through permanent tax cuts and monetary stabilization - and draws broader lessons from the recent Japanese policy actions that led to the country's continuing stagnation.







Japanese Monetary Policy


Book Description

How has the Bank of Japan (BOJ) helped shape Japan's economic growth during the past two decades? This book comprehensively explores the relations between financial market liberalization and BOJ policies and examines the ways in which these policies promoted economic growth in the 1980s. The authors argue that the structure of Japan's financial markets, particularly restrictions on money-market transactions and the key role of commercial banks in financing corporate investments, allowed the BOJ to influence Japan's economic success. The first two chapters provide the most in-depth English-language discussion of the BOJ's operating procedures and policymaker's views about how BOJ actions affect the Japanese business cycle. Chapter three explores the impact of the BOJ's distinctive window guidance policy on corporate investment, while chapter four looks at how monetary policy affects the term structure of interest rates in Japan. The final two chapters examine the overall effect of monetary policy on real aggregate economic activity. This volume will prove invaluable not only to economists interested in the technical operating procedures of the BOJ, but also to those interested in the Japanese economy and in the operation and outcome of monetary reform in general.




Advances in Visual Informatics


Book Description

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Advances in Visual Informatics, IVIC 2023, held in Selangor, Malaysia in November 2023. The 51 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 101 submissions. The conference focused on 6 tracks: Modeling and Simulation, Mixed Reality and HCI, Systems Integration and IoT, Cybersecurity, Energy Informatics and Intelligent Data Analytics.




Japan's Strategic Challenges in a Changing Regional Environment


Book Description

Japan faces significant challenges in both traditional and non-traditional areas of national security policy as the economic resurgence of China and the loss of US hegemonic clout significantly transform the strategic landscape of the Asia-Pacific region. How is Japan coping with this new global and regional politico-security environment? What strategic moves has it taken to best position itself for the future to maximize its global and regional influence? More importantly, how is Japan perceived within the region by traditionally close regional partners such as the US and Australia, by supporters in Southeast Asia, and by new competitors -- most prominently China and India? What international role do these nations wish Japan to play? In this comprehensive volume, these crucial questions are explored in-depth by a group of scholars both distinguished and diverse.




OECD Territorial Reviews: Japan 2016


Book Description

Japan is embarked on a demographic transition without precedent in human history: the population is both declining and ageing rapidly. This raises important questions about the country's future economic geography, as public policies will need both to respond to these shifts and also to shape them.




Japan's Politics and Economy


Book Description

For some time Japan has been under fire for adjusting too slowly to new realities. While this criticism may be valid on some levels, Japan has been transforming in tandem with both regional and global forces. However, these changes have been largely overshadowed by the immense changes in Asia; including the rise of China, the 1997 Southeast Asian financial crisis and North Korea's development of nuclear weapons. Has Japan, the world's second largest economy, only been muddling through? In this volume the contributors show that although the challenges faced are great, Japan is changing in areas ranging from political leadership, education policy, official development assistance, peace building and security, to defence production, business associations and innovation policy. The book analyses processes of change, focusing on the dynamics of change - rather than structural change or institutional change per se - from four levels: the individual, domestic, regional and global. Forces from outside Japan, such as a changing world order and changes in power relationships in Asia, have driven change along with pressures emerging within Japan, such as the increasing power of public opinion and competitiveness within markets. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Japanese and Asian Studies, Politics, International Relations, Globalization, Business and Economics.