The History of Japanese Economic Development
The History of Japanese Economic Development

Author: Kenichi Ohno

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-07

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 131544402X

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This is an easy-to-read book that explains how and why Japan industrialized rapidly. It traces historical development from the feudal Edo period to high income and technology in the current period. Catch-up industrialization is analyzed from a broad perspective including social, economic and political aspects. Historical data, research and contesting arguments are amply supplied. Japan’s unique experience is contrasted with the practices of today’s developing countries. Negative aspects such as social ills, policy failures, military movements and war years are also covered. Nineteenth-century Japan already had a happy combination of strong entrepreneurship and relatively wise government, which was the result of Japan’s long evolutionary history. Measured contacts with high civilizations of China, India and the West allowed cumulative growth without being destroyed by them. Imported ideas and technology were absorbed with adjustments to fit the local context. The book grew out of a graduate course for government officials from developing countries. It offers a comprehensive look and new insights at Japan’s industrial path that are often missing in standard historical chronicles. Written in an accessible and lively form, the book engages scholars as well as novices with no prior knowledge of Japan.

MITI and the Japanese Miracle
MITI and the Japanese Miracle

Author: Chalmers Johnson

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 1982-06

Total Pages: 818

ISBN-13: 080476560X

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The focus of this book is on the Japanese economic bureaucracy, particularly on the famous Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), as the leading state actor in the economy. Although MITI was not the only important agent affecting the economy, nor was the state as a whole always predominant, I do not want to be overly modest about the importance of this subject. The particular speed, form, and consequences of Japanese economic growth are not intelligible without reference to the contributions of MITI. Collaboration between the state and big business has long been acknowledged as the defining characteristic of the Japanese economic system, but for too long the state's role in this collaboration has been either condemned as overweening or dismissed as merely supportive, without anyone's ever analyzing the matter. The history of MITI is central to the economic and political history of modern Japan. Equally important, however, the methods and achievements of the Japanese economic bureaucracy are central to the continuing debate between advocates of the communist-type command economies and advocates of the Western-type mixed market economies. The fully bureaucratized command economies misallocate resources and stifle initiative; in order to function at all, they must lock up their populations behind iron curtains or other more or less impermeable barriers. The mixed market economies struggle to find ways to intrude politically determined priorities into their market systems without catching a bad case of the "English disease" or being frustrated by the American-type legal sprawl. The Japanese, of course, do not have all the answers. But given the fact that virtually all solutions to any of the critical problems of the late twentieth century--energy supply, environmental protection, technological innovation, and so forth--involve an expansion of official bureaucracy, the particular Japanese priorities and procedures are instructive. At the very least they should forewarn a foreign observer that the Japanese achievements were not won without a price being paid.

The Changing Economics of Medical Technology
The Changing Economics of Medical Technology

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 1991-02-01

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 030904491X

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Americans praise medical technology for saving lives and improving health. Yet, new technology is often cited as a key factor in skyrocketing medical costs. This volume, second in the Medical Innovation at the Crossroads series, examines how economic incentives for innovation are changing and what that means for the future of health care. Up-to-date with a wide variety of examples and case studies, this book explores how payment, patent, and regulatory policiesâ€"as well as the involvement of numerous government agenciesâ€"affect the introduction and use of new pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and surgical procedures. The volume also includes detailed comparisons of policies and patterns of technological innovation in Western Europe and Japan. This fact-filled and practical book will be of interest to economists, policymakers, health administrators, health care practitioners, and the concerned public.

Developmental State Building
Developmental State Building

Author: Yusuke Takagi

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-01-18

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 9811329044

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This open access book modifies and revitalizes the concept of the ‘developmental state’ to understand the politics of emerging economy through nuanced analysis on the roles of human agency in the context of structural transformation. In other words, there is a revived interest in the ‘developmental state’ concept. The nature of the ‘emerging state’ is characterized by its attitude toward economic development and industrialization. Emerging states have engaged in the promotion of agriculture, trade, and industry and played a transformative role to pursue a certain path of economic development. Their success has cast doubt about the principle of laissez faire among the people in the developing world. This doubt, together with the progress of democratization, has prompted policymakers to discover when and how economic policies should deviate from laissez faire, what prevents political leaders and state institutions from being captured by vested interests, and what induce them to drive economic development. This book offers both historical and contemporary case studies from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Rwanda. They illustrate how institutions are designed to be developmental, how political coalitions are formed to be growth-oriented, and how technocratic agencies are embedded in a network of business organizations as a part of their efforts for state building.

Labour-Intensive Industrialization in Global History
Labour-Intensive Industrialization in Global History

Author: Gareth Austin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-09-13

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 113507982X

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The prevailing view of industrialization has focussed on technology, capital, entrepreneurship and the institutions that enabled them to be deployed. Labour was often equated with other factors of production, and assigned a relatively passive role. Yet it was labour absorption and the improvement of the quality of labour over the course of several centuries that underscored the timing, pace and quality of global industrialization. While science and technology developed in the West and whereas the use of fossil fuels, especially coal and oil, were vital to this process, the more recent history has been underpinned by the development of comparatively resource- and energy-saving technology, without which the diffusion of industrialization would not have been possible. The labour-intensive, resource-saving path, which emerged in East Asia under the influence of Western technology and institutions, and is diffusing across the world, suggests the most realistic route humans could take for a further diffusion of industrialization, which might respond to the rising expectations of living standards without catastrophic environmental degradation.

Technology and Industrial Development in Japan
Technology and Industrial Development in Japan

Author: Hiroyuki Odagiri

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 9780198288022

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This book studies the industrial development of Japan since the mid-nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on how the various industries built technological capabilities. The Japanese were extraordinarily creative in searching out and learning to use modern technologies, and the authors investigate the emergence of entrepreneurs who began new and risky businesses, how the business organizations evolved to cope with changing technological conditions, and how the managers, engineers, and workers acquired organizational and technological skills through technology importation, learning-by-doing, and their own R & D activities. The book investigates the interaction between private entrepreneurial activities and public policy, through a general examination of economic and industrial development, a study of the evolution of management systems, and six industrial case studies: textile, iron and steel, electrical and communications equipment, automobiles, shipbuilding and aircraft, and pharmaceuticals. The authors show how the Japanese government has played an important supportive role in the continuing innovation, without being a substitute for aggressive business enterprise constantly venturing into unfamiliar terrains.

The Postwar Japanese System
The Postwar Japanese System

Author: William K. Tabb

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1995-04-20

Total Pages: 423

ISBN-13: 0195358295

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While other industrialized and developing countries look towards Japan as an economic model, the political, cultural, and social arrangements that have so far allowed Japan to succeed are eroding. In particular, Japan faces a system of industrial relations that places great strain on all of Japanese society. In The Postwar Japanese System, William Tabb distinguishes between those aspects of Japanese success that can and cannot be transferred successfully to help in the revitalization of the American economy. The author discusses Japanese economic history from before the Meiji Restoration to the present, and looks at Japanese politics, state-corporate relations, the labor relations system in Japan and the nature of work as experienced by Japanese employees. He examines the organization of the Japanese corporation versus the American corporation, industrial policy, education, urban and regional reorganization, and Japan's role in the world today (and tomorrow). And, Tabb thoughtfully explores the fundamental social, political, and economic transitions the Japanese are currently experiencing. The Postwar Japanese System succeeds in placing the economic "miracle" in its proper social and political framework. A broad, intelligent overview of the Japanese political economy, the book suggests important implications for the United States in the story of Japan's prosperity and current distress. It will be a key resource for all those interested in Japanese society.

Japanese Economic Development
Japanese Economic Development

Author: Penelope Francks

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-02-07

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 1134661827

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This newly revised, clearly-presented text looks at Japan's economic history from the nineteenth century through to World War II. Working within a framework based on the theories and approaches of development studies, Francks demonstrates the relevance of Japan's pre-war experience to the problems facing developing countries today, and draws out the historical roots of the institutions and practices on which Japan's post-war economic miracle was based. New features include: * fresh theoretical perspectives * additional material derived from new sources * an increased number of case studies * fully up-dated references and bibliography. This broad-ranging textbook is both topical and easy-to-use and will be of immense use to those seeking an understanding of Japanese economic development.

Capital as Will and Imagination
Capital as Will and Imagination

Author: Mark D. Metzler

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2013-04-15

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 080146790X

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Joseph Schumpeter’s conceptions of entrepreneurship, innovation, and creative destruction have been hugely influential. He pioneered the study of economic development and of technological paradigm shifts and was a forerunner of the emerging field of evolutionary economics. He is not thought of as a theorist of credit-supercharged high-speed growth, but this is what he became in postwar Japan. As Mark Metzler shows in Capital as Will and Imagination, economists and planners in postwar Japan seized upon Schumpeter’s ideas and put them directly to work. The inflationary creation of credit, as theorized by Schumpeter, was a vital but mostly unrecognized aspect of the successful stabilization of Japanese capitalism after World War II and was integral to Japan’s postwar success. It also helps to explain Japan’s bubble, and the global bubbles that have followed it. The heterodox analysis presented in Capital as Will and Imagination goes beyond the economic history of postwar Japan; it opens up a new view of the core circuits of modern capital in general.