 From Industrial Policy to Innovation Policy: Japan's Pursuit of Competitive Advantage*Asian Economic Policy Review, 2007, vol. 2, issue 2, 251-268 Abstract: Japan faces significant challenges in encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship. Attempts to formally model past industrial policy interventions uniformly uncover little, if any, positive impact on productivity, growth, or welfare. The evidence indicates that most resource flows went to large, politically influential “backwards” sectors, suggesting that political economy considerations may be central to the apparent ineffectiveness of Japanese industrial policy. Rather than traditional industrial or science and technology policy, financial and labor market reforms appear more promising. As a group, Japan's industrial firms are competitive relative to their foreign counterparts. Where Japan falls behind is in the heavily regulated service sector. The problems appear to be due less to a lack of industrial policy than to an excess of regulation. Japan may have more to gain through restructuring the lagging service sector than by expending resources in pursuit of marginal gains in the industrial sector. Date: 2007 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:asiapr:v:2:y:2007:i:2:p:251-268 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Asian Economic Policy Review is currently edited by Takatoshi Ito, Akira Kojima, Colin McKenzie and Shujiro Urata More articles in Asian Economic Policy Review from Japan Center for Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC. |
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