Japan's Economic Dilemma
The Institutional Origins of
Prosperity and Stagnation
Bai Gao
Description
The Japanese economy, after
decades of seemingly unsurpassable competitiveness, experienced a major crisis in the
1990s. Observers of Japan are faced with a challenging question: How can one explain Japan's
reversal from stunning prosperity to dismal stagnation? Bai Gao, in this illuminating,
comprehensive analysis of Japan's economic story goes beyond other analyses to
demonstrate how the same economic institutions could produce both stunning economic
success and the slump of the 1990s. By comparing the factors that sustained miracle growth
in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s with the factors that led to the bubble economy of the
late 1980s, Gao sheds new light on internal tensions in the Japanese economic system and
how, finally, they 'burst the bubble' in the 1990s. Those who have been following the
lively debate over 'What Became of the Japanese Miracle?' will be rewarded by Gao's
richly detailed, historically informed, and multilayered contribution.
Chapter Contents
1. Introduction; 2. Three
theoretical issues; 3. The rise of the coordination and stability principles; 4.
Coordination, excessive competition, and the high growth; 5. Stability, total employment,
and the welfare society; 6. The roads toward the bubble; 7. The crisis of the welfare
society; 8. Epilogue.
298 pages