Based on the variable rate of gross domestic product per capita growth and its sources, this paper first identifies five phases of economic development that are common to China, Japan, and Korea: M (Malthusian), G (government-led), K (à la Kuznets), H (human capital based) and PD (post...

Economists often identify a reduction in the share of agricultural employment as a quantitative indication of the economic growth of nations. But this process did not occur in earnest in the People's Republic of China until the 1980s and to some extent in Japan until well into the mid-20th...

The Great East Japan Earthquake on 11 March 2011 was the biggest earthquake recorded in Japanese seismic history, and the fourth largest recorded in the world. The scope of the disaster far exceeded that of the Hanshin Earthquake of 1995. The repercussions of this disaster spread far beyond the...

This essay provides a game-theoretic, endogenous view of institutions, and then applies the idea to identify the sources of institutional trajectories of economic development in China, Japan, and Korea. It stylizes the Malthusian-phase of East Asian economies as peasant-based economies in which...

Japan has suffered from sluggish economic growth and recession since the 1990s, a phenomenon dubbed "Japan's Lost Decade." The People's Republic of China, many countries in the eurozone, and the United States may face similar problems in future and they have been concerned by Japan's long-term...

Japan has suffered from sluggish economic growth and recession since the early 1990s. In this paper, we analyze the causes of the prolonged slowdown of the Japanese economy (the lost decade). Economics Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has argued that Japan's lost decade is an example of a liquidity...

We show that σ-convergence in regional productivity growth can be approximated by σ-convergence in sectoral productivity growth and σ-convergence in structural transformation-led productivity growth. Applying this framework to Japanese prefecture-level data from 1874 to 2008, we find support...

The paper explores business cycles and growth dynamics in emerging East Asia within an ultra-low interest rate environment from the perspective of the monetary overinvestment theories of Mises and Hayek. It argues that, given a low interest rate environment in the large industrialized countries,...

Commodity prices have become volatile over the past 2 decades, and their recent sharp decline has decreased the consumer price index inflation rates for most economies. While many Asian economies have benefited from low international oil and food prices, commodity exporters have suffered. Thus,...

The People's Republic of China (PRC) has received enormous inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) in recent years, including significant flows from Japan and the United States (US). We examine these investment flows in detail to gain perspectives on their relative importance for the three...