The "Hidden" Side of the "Flying-Geese" Model of Catch-Up Growth: Japan's Dirigiste Institutional Setup and a Deepening Financial Morass

Terutomo Ozawa
Additional contact information
Terutomo Ozawa: Economics, Colorado State University

No 20, Economics Study Area Working Papers from East-West Center, Economics Study Area

Abstract: Japan is in the eleventh year of stagnation with a prolonged financial malaise. Just a little over a decade ago, Japan's Phenomenal growth was admired and even feared as a juggernaut. Japanese scholars and policymakers came to often describe Japan's industrial advance in terms of the so-called "flying-geese" model of catch-up growth, a sanguine expression that has also been played up in the media. Japan once did play the role of Asia's lead goose before the burst of the 1987-1990 asset bubble. The model is useful in capturing the essence of Japan's successful industrial upgrading and Asia's trade-led growth but fails to explain why such a success would ever lead to the present economic predicament. This is because it ignores the institutional, especially financial, underpinnings of Japan's catch-up strategy. What were the key enabling institutional features of Japan's once effective FG catch-up strategy? How did they function? Why did they come to cause the 1987-1990 bubble and the current financial imbroglio? How will Japan be "reformed"? All these developments and issues need to be examined as path-dependent evolutionary events within a reformulated "flying-geese" model, and "institutional" model of FG catch-up.

Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2001-05
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.eastwestcenter.org/fileadmin/stored/pdfs/ECONwp020.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.eastwestcenter.org/fileadmin/stored/pdfs/ECONwp020.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.eastwestcenter.org/fileadmin/stored/pdfs/ECONwp020.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ewc:wpaper:wp20

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Study Area Working Papers from East-West Center, Economics Study Area Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Brenda Higashimoto (higashib@eastwestcenter.org this e-mail address is bad, please contact repec@repec.org).