After decades of growth, Japan now faces an economic crisis. This volume examines the origins of Japan’s current economic difficulties, particularly the collapse of the equity and real estate market bubbles in the late 1980s. It looks at the link between these price shocks, the downturn in economic growth and the onset of deflation, and analyses the failure of Japanese monetary and fiscal policies to reverse the decline. Various policy options are explored, but the volume concludes that the prospects for Japan’s economic recovery are still uncertain because of the lack of political will to adopt the measures necessary for overcoming the ‘lost decade’.
