05 Dec What was the “high yen crisis”? How did Japanese firms respond?
Questions for in-class exam #2
1. MITI, during the 1960s-1980s, promoted the scrapping of existing industries once those industries encountered problems and building of new industries. What were the problems that led to curbing:
a. Light manufacturing in the 1950s and early 60s
b. Heavy industry in the early 1970s.
c. Machinery, auto, information equipment, etc. by the late 1980s.
2. What was the “high yen crisis”? How did Japanese firms respond?
3. What was meant by “jumping the yen barrier”? How did this contribute to de-industrialization in Japan beginning in the late 1980s?
4. The late 1980s saw the “financialization” of Japan’s economy, causing what many called the “bubble economy.” Discuss.
5. Koo argues that the Japanese economy in the 1990s suffered from a balance sheet recession. What does this mean? What is the evidence for this?
6. How did the Japanese government use fiscal and monetary policy after the bubble burst?
7. What have Japan’s fiscal and monetary policies been over the last several years?
8. Abe’s economic policies (called “Abenomics”) include efforts to increase the size of Japan’s workforce. What are three policies enacted to achieve this goal?
9. South Korea, in its rush to develop, emulated some Japanese planning practices as well as Japanese industrial organization. Explain.
10. South Korea pursued state-led import-substitution development in the 1960s and 1970s. Unlike many other countries that did this, South Korea’s government promoted exports. How did it promote exporting? How did the country’s exports change over this period?
11. Korea in the 1980s and early 1990s became heavily dependent on technology transfers until Japanese firms began withholding technology from Korea. Why did the Japanese do this?
