Adair Turner, a former chairman of the United Kingdom’s Financial Services Authority and former member of the UK’s Financial Policy Committee, is Chairman of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. His latest book is Between Debt and the Devil.
Japan’s GDP growth lags most other developed economies, and will likely continue to do so as the population slowly declines. But what matters for human welfare is GDP per capita, and on this front, the country excels.
TOKYO – Nearly everyone says that Japan’s economic model has imploded. Since 1991, growth has averaged just 0.9% versus 4.5% over the previous two decades. Slow growth, combined with large fiscal deficits and near zero inflation, has driven government debt from 50% of GDP to 236% of GDP.
Abenomics, the cluster of reforms initiated by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe when he came to power six years ago, promised to get inflation up to 2%. But five years of zero interest rates and massive quantitative easing have failed to achieve this. A fertility rate of 1.4 and near-zero immigration mean that Japan’s workforce could shrink by 28% over the next 50 years, making health care for the elderly unaffordable and dramatically increasing the fiscal deficit, which is already running at 4% of GDP. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
TV-Spots für Senioren-Windeln, Probeliegen im Sarg auf der Todesmesse: Japans Industrie stellt sich auf die vergreisende Bevölkerung ein. Für das Land ist der Wandel ein gigantisches Problem.
Seit 1995 berichtet Wieland Wagner, mit Unterbrechungen, für den SPIEGEL aus Tokio. Über Jahrzehnte hat er das Land bereist, Menschen getroffen, die Kultur durchdrungen. Das folgende Kapitel aus seinem neuen Buch „Japan. Abstieg in Würde“ widmet sich der Industrie rund ums Älterwerden.
Wieland Wagner:
Japan. Abstieg in Würde
Wie ein alterndes Land um seine Zukunft ringt
Die Japaner leben im Durchschnitt immer länger, und darauf waren sie lange durchaus stolz: Alljährlich, zum Tag der Ehrung der Alten, den die Nation am dritten Montag im September als amtlichen Feiertag begeht, bekamen die über Hundertjährigen im Namen des Premiers Silberbecher überreicht.
Inzwischen ist diese respektvolle Geste dem Staat zu teuer geworden. Im Jahr 2016 lebten bereits 65.692 über Hundertjährige in Japan, etwa so viele, wie eine mittlere deutsche Stadt Einwohner hat. Von den Hochbetagten waren 87,5 Prozent Frauen.Bei der ersten offiziellen Zählung 1963 hatte Japan dagegen erst 153 Hundertjährige. Dieser Tage, wo die Jubilare zahlreicher und zahlreicher werden, sind die Becher, die sie geschenkt bekommen, nur noch versilbert. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Only two weeks in and 2018 is already breaking records – mostly in a good way. But that leaves 50 potentially less enjoyable weeks to go. So rather than focus on promising current events, I think I’d better dip back into my annual forecast bag and share a few more highlights with you.
Last week I called 2018 “the Year of the Octopus” because it has so many tentacles. There are many more than eight, so I should probably have made it the Year of the Centipede. In any case, let’s run through a few more projections from my still-growing pile.
Optimism and Hong Kong
Two years ago, when I was at the same Bank of America Merrill Lynch investment conference that I attended last week in Hong Kong, the mood in the room was quite somber, even bearish. The sentiment, shared by many at that gathering, turned out to be wrong.
Last week (while still suffering mightily from jet lag) I had a good conversation with my host, Ajay Kapur (who could not have been more delightful), in which we noted the mood of this year’s conference, which was almost universally upbeat. There was a clear consensus among these very seasoned and powerful traders. Given how wrong the mood was last time, Ajay and I wondered whether we should perhaps be a little trepidatious about the Chinese, Hong Kong, and other Asian markets. I’m not sure what to make of the mood this year, but I just thought I would share that experience. Now let’s move on to the forecasts of some of my other friends. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
A PATCHWORK of nondescript houses nestled at the foot of a mountain, Nagicho looks like an ordinary Japanese town. On closer inspection, something extraordinary marks it out: babies. Yuki Fukuda is one of many local mothers with three children. The bump under her winter coat indicates that another is on the way, part of a baby bonanza that has seen the town’s fertility rate double since 2005.
Not surprisingly, reporters have flocked to this remote corner of the country to see if there is something that promotes fecundity in the waterflowing down from Mount Nagi. The cause appears to be more prosaic: economics. Alarmed by the dearth of children, the local government increased incentives to have babies. The fertility rate rose from 1.4 (meaning that the average woman will have 1.4 children in her lifetime, roughly the national rate) to 2.8 in 2014.
Mrs Fukuda will receive a “celebratory” gift of ¥300,000 ($3,530) when she gives birth. A subsidised baby-sitting service is available for just ¥1,800 a day, along with subsidised carseats and other baby accessories. When her children reach secondary school, she will receive ¥90,000 a year for each one who attends. In theory, this stipend is to cover the cost of getting children to school, especially for people who live relatively far away. And whereas usually all but the poorest and the old in Japan have to pay 30% of their health-care bills (with the national government picking up the rest), in Nagicho the local government pays the 30% for children. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economics, Toyo University
Kaoru Hosono, Daisuke Miyakawa, Miho Takizawa12 November 2017, voxeu
Several studies have examined the profitability and productivity of foreign subsidiaries, but less is known about the determinants of success. This column looks at the contribution of resources from 3,800 Japanese parent firms to the business activities of their 20,000 overseas subsidiaries.The results suggest a positive contribution of parent firms’ intangibles to subsidiaries’ production, in particular for smaller subsidiaries.
Given that firms’ overseas activities through foreign direct investment (FDI) have been expanding over the last several decades (Urata and Kawai 2000), numerous studies have examined the determinants of FDI (Head and Ries 2003, Kimura and Kiyota 2006, Todo 2011), as well as its economic implications, such as what kinds of economic gains parent firms obtain from FDI (Federico and Minerva 2008, Todo and Shimizutani 2008, Yamashita and Fukao 2010, Hijzen et al. 2011), and what kinds of economic gains are obtained by firms located in host countries (Todo 2006).
Daniel Gros is Director of the Brussels-based Center for European Policy Studies. He has worked for the International Monetary Fund, and served as an economic adviser to the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the French prime minister and finance minister. He is the editor of Economie Internationale and International Finance.
Daniel Gros, Project Syndicate
Contrary to popular belief, Japan has been extraordinarily successful in achieving economic growth, given its rapidly aging population and lack of inflation. For Europe, where the demographic future looks a lot like Japan’s past, there is much to be learned from this experience.
BRUSSELS – Demography is not destiny, at least not entirely. Over centuries, policy can affect fertility decisions, and migration can transform a country, as the experience of the United States shows. Over shorter time horizons, however, demographic trends must be taken as given, and can have a profound impact on growth. Yet demographic factors are often neglected in economic reporting, leading to significant distortions in assessments of countries’ performance. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Japan.
With real output – the key measure of economic performance – having risen by only about 15% since 2000, or less than 1% per year, Japan easily seems the least dynamic of the worlds’ major economies. But given Japan’s demographics – the country’s working-age population has been shrinking by almost 1% per year since the start of this century – this result is remarkable. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, previously served as Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department (2001-2003), and was President George W. Bush’s special envoy to Northern Ireland and Coordinator for the Future of Afghanistan. He is the author of A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order.
AUG 16, 2017 Project Syndicate
TOKYO – It is too soon to know whether and how the challenge posed by North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs will be resolved. But it is not too early to consider what that challenge could mean for a part of the world that has in many ways defied history.
The moniker “Asian Miracle” goes some way toward conveying just how extraordinary the last half-century of economic growth in many Asian countries has been. The first economy to take off was Japan, which, despite a slowdown in recent decades and a relatively small population, remains the world’s third-largest economy.
China’s ascent began a bit later, but is no less impressive: the country achieved over three decades of double-digit average GDP growth, making it the world’s second-largest economy today. India, soon to be the world’s most populous country, has lately been experiencing an impressive 7-8% annual rate of GDP growth. And the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations averaged some 5% growth in recent years. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Gastkommentar: Warum sich die Chefin der US-Notenbank fatal geirrt haben könnte.
Vor kurzem machte die Chefin der US-Notenbank, Janet Yellen, eine bemerkenswerte Aussage: Auf einer Pressekonferenz in London sagte sie, dass sie nicht mehr damit rechne, in ihrem Leben nochmals eine schwere Finanzkrise wie im Jahr 2008 zu erleben. Sie begründete ihren Optimismus mit den Reformen des Finanzsystems und damit, dass die Banken jetzt krisenfest seien.
Können wir der Fed-Chefin wirklich glauben? Der Sturm der vergangenen Finanzkrise ist abgeebbt, und die Aktien- und Immobilienmärkte bewegen sich in einem langfristigen Aufwärtstrend. Dies ist nicht zuletzt der expansiven Geldpolitik von Yellen und ihren Kollegen in der Eurozone und in Asien zu verdanken. Knapp ein Jahrzehnt lang rekordtiefe Zinsen verfehlen ihre Wirkung an den Finanzmärkten nicht, und auch die globale Konjunktur hat seit einiger Zeit wieder an Fahrt aufgenommen. Trotzdem ist die Nervosität überall zu spüren, und viele Anleger fragen sich: „Wo stehen wir heute? Und wie sicher sind unsere Anlagen?“
Derzeit arbeiten rund 1.000 Mitarbeiter der Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group in London Tokio – Japans drittgrößte Bank Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG) wird einem Pressebericht zufolge wegen des Brexits ihre Europa-Zentrale von London nach Frankfurt verlegen. Damit sei auch ein Umzug von Beschäftigten verbunden, berichtete die Wirtschaftszeitung „Nikkei“ berichtete am Samstag, ohne dies zu beziffern. Derzeit arbeiten rund 1.000 SMFG-Mitarbeiter in London.
Die beiden größten japanischen Wertpapierhändler Nomura Holdings und Daiwa Securities haben sich bereits für Frankfurt als ihren künftigen Standort in der EU entschieden. Nach dem geplanten EU-Austritt Großbritanniens brauchen in London ansässige Finanzinstitute eine eigene Gesellschaft mit Banklizenz in einem EU-Land, um ihre Produkte und Dienstleistungen in den verbleibenden 27 Mitgliedstaaten vertreiben zu dürfen.Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
What happens if advanced economies remain stuck in a long-lasting funk marked by tepid growth, low interest rates, aging populations and stagnant productivity? Japan offers an example of the impact on banks, and our analysis suggests that there could also be far-reaching consequences for insurance companies, pension funds, and asset-management firms.
You might argue that this scenario of economic malaise has already materialized; after all, interest rates and economic growth have been low since the financial crisis in 2008. The question is whether the post-crisis landscape represents a temporary departure from the pace of growth we’ve come to expect since World War II, or whether it’s the start of a new normal.
Notwithstanding the recent increase in long-term yields in some advanced economies, the Japanese experience suggests that we cannot be sure whether an exit from a low-growth/low interest rate trap is imminent or permanent. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
TOKYO – Nearly everyone says that Japan’s economic model has imploded. Since 1991, growth has averaged just 0.9% versus 4.5% over the previous two decades. Slow growth, combined with large fiscal deficits and near zero inflation, has driven government debt from 50% of GDP to 236% of GDP.