分析日本財務危機和經濟復原解決之道

Abstract

Since Financial Crisis in US in 2008 and series of European economic instabilities including Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, the sovereign default risk, a problem for developing countries in the past, becomes a more common problem even for developed countries. Japan is not an exception. Japan has been suffering from stagnation after real estate market bubble-burst in 1990. This continuing stagnation put both academic and policy makers into the potential possibility of Japanese sovereign default. Although there are a number of researches about Japanese sovereign default risk, little research has offered comparative review for economic conditions, as well as cultural conditions. Thus, this study attempt to compare Japan with both high default risk countries (Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy) and low default risk countries (United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Canada) in terms of both economic and cultural indices. The results show that Japan’s economic condition is more close to the ones of low sovereign default risk countries while its culture is rather similar to the one of high default risk countries. The study goes further to analyze the main economics issues of Japan and proposes the solution. Due to recovering from inflated debt after the bubble burst, Japanese companies started to save cash rather than investment for future growth. This decrease in domestic investment from private company led to lower GDP growth and shrinking consumption so that Japanese government had to increase expenditure resulting increasing deficit. All the problems created vicious cycle leading economic stagnation, even deflation. Thus, increasing investment of domestic company would be the key to recover Japanese economy in the future. However, it can be difficult to achieve because this risk-averse attitude of Japanese companies come from special Japanese culture which is the tendency toward to risk avoidance.

Since Financial Crisis in US in 2008 and series of European economic instabilities including Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, the sovereign default risk, a problem for developing countries in the past, becomes a more common problem even for developed countries. Japan is not an exception. Japan has been suffering from stagnation after real estate market bubble-burst in 1990. This continuing stagnation put both academic and policy makers into the potential possibility of Japanese sovereign default. Although there are a number of researches about Japanese sovereign default risk, little research has offered comparative review for economic conditions, as well as cultural conditions. Thus, this study attempt to compare Japan with both high default risk countries (Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy) and low default risk countries (United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Canada) in terms of both economic and cultural indices. The results show that Japan’s economic condition is more close to the ones of low sovereign default risk countries while its culture is rather similar to the one of high default risk countries. The study goes further to analyze the main economics issues of Japan and proposes the solution. Due to recovering from inflated debt after the bubble burst, Japanese companies started to save cash rather than investment for future growth. This decrease in domestic investment from private company led to lower GDP growth and shrinking consumption so that Japanese government had to increase expenditure resulting increasing deficit. All the problems created vicious cycle leading economic stagnation, even deflation. Thus, increasing investment of domestic company would be the key to recover Japanese economy in the future. However, it can be difficult to achieve because this risk-averse attitude of Japanese companies come from special Japanese culture which is the tendency toward to risk avoidance.