In the past year, Japan's exports fell 45.7%. Exports to all regions were hit - down 52% to America, 45% to China, and 46.7% to Asia as a whole. Japan's mighty national champions, its automakers, have been hit the worst: Toyota's exports are off 56.2%, Honda's 46.3%, Nissan's 62.1%.That's absolutely stunning. It is catastrophic. Words …
Tag: Noah Smith
Shop for Japan? (Noah Smith)
It has often been said, by this writer and others that Japan needs to "raise domestic consumption" in light of the current economic crisis. In actuality, this is a murky concept. There are a number of different reasons for this, and a number of ways it can be done.Reason 1: Correcting international imbalances. "Surplus" countries …
The can kicks back (Noah Smith)
In my earlier post, I stated that Japan's current-account surplus can vanish in one of two ways: either Japan can consume more (which it won't because of debt and demographics), or it can (over)produce less. That is true. But when the adjustment happens is not set in stone.A casual observer might think that Nakagawa Shoichi's …
The accounting reaper cometh (Noah Smith)
A specter is haunting East Asia. Consumption is falling in the world's "deficit" countries, as American and British consumers rebuild their balance sheets. The global current-account and capital-account imbalances are thus coming under immense strain. An accounting identity states that for the imbalances to vanish, one of two things must happen in the "surplus" countries: …
Dollars and yen(ts) (Noah Smith)
There's an interesting article in BusinessWeek asking whether Japan will intervene to push down the strengthening yen. The consensus seems to be that it will, even though such a policy is not necessarily optimal from an economic viewpoint, and may not in fact work. But a weak yen seems to still be an important part …
Omission vs. commission (Noah Smith)
There's been some discussion on this blog about how much responsibility the LDP bears for Japan's current economic woes. Has Japan been helplessly swept up in a crisis of America's making? Or did LDP policies leave Japan more vulnerable than necessary to the storms sweeping the global economy?The answer, as I see it, is "both." …
Work equals force times distance (Noah Smith)
I am waiting in the departure lounge at JFK in New York for my flight to Tokyo. In the mean time, here is another contribution from Noah Smith. - TSHTaro Aso, speaking before a parliamentary committee, recently said that "Japan's belief in hard work contrasted with that of the Judeo-Christian tradition," and that world religions …
Continue reading Work equals force times distance (Noah Smith)
"It’s the institutions" (Noah Smith)
Hi! First, of course, to introduce myself. My name is Noah Smith, and I'm an economics PhD student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (specialty: urban economics and macroeconomics). Between college and graduate school I lived in Osaka, Japan for 2.5 years, from 2003-2006, where I worked as an editor and also a …
Tobias S. Harris 