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Unmaking
the Japanese Miracle: Macroeconomic Politics, 1985-2000.
Cornell University Press, 2001. [Japanese Translation:
Nihon Keizai Shippai no Kôzô (Tôyô Keizai Shimposha, 2002.]
In
recent years, Japan's economy has gone from model of success to
object lesson in failure. William W. Grimes offers a richly
detailed insider's view of the key macroeconomic policies and
events in contemporary Japan, as well as a close examination of
the causes and effects of these upheavals. A new preface sets the
book's findings in the context of the continuing intensification
of Japan's financial woes.
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is difficult to believe that the "Bubble Economy" of the
late 1980s and the failed attempts at economic stimulation in the
following decade both arose from the same policies. In Unmaking
the Japanese Miracle, Grimes shows that this is precisely what
happened. Focusing less on what went wrong than on why it went
wrong, Grimes finds that mistaken macroeconomic policies-loose
money in the late 1980s, excessively tight money until 1992, and
only grudging use of expansionary fiscal policy until 1998-largely
caused Japan's economic problems.
Based on scores of
interviews with Japanese policymakers, his is the first political
explanation of why these catastrophic policies were carried out by
the Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Japan, and the Diet. Various
economic shocks were met, Grimes says, with a consistent and often
inappropriate pattern of responses. This pattern has fundamentally
altered because of changes within the three policymaking
institutions since 1998. Amazon.com
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