The Japanese Economy (Economic Ideas Leading to the 21st Century-Vol.1)

摘要

This volume provides a detailed analysis of the Japanese economy of the past 50 years. The book contains the descriptive and analytical materials about Japan's economic growth and comparative analysis with other countries. The book is written in a way that may be accessible to general readers who have little background in economics. Saito has done a good job of providing elementary economic concepts and theoretical elucidation of his studies, while presenting detailed econometric results in appendices for those readers who wish to go further. The book is organized into nine chapters. The first chapter, an introduction, surveys general features of the Japanese economy. It includes changes in the growth rate of real GNP and the industrial composition of Japan since the mid-1880s as well as geographical and demographic background. Chap. 2 through 6 of the book are devoted to the analysis of the contributing factors to Japan's rapid economic growth from 1960 to 1973. Chap. 2 examines the demand factors in Japan's high economic growth by using the growth accounting method and the econometric model method. Chap. 3 deals with the analysis of the supply side factors of Japan's growth based on the Cobb-Douglas type of production function. Saito finds private capital as a driving force of the high economic growth on both demand and supply sides. But as for the latter, the contribution of the technical progress to the GDP growth was higher than that of private capital: one-half of the average GDP growth rate in the 1960-1973 period (9.6 percent) is ascribed to technical progress while the contribution of private capital stock is 35 percent.