从长期萧条中走出的日本经济

相对而言,日本的经济很长时间以来都乏善可陈.日本终于处在十五年萧条的尾声,日本还没有完全走出低谷,在最近一两年,我们看到了曙光.现在日本经济有什么样的问题呢?它对中国的影响如何?或对其他国家的影响是什么?     

An Elementary Approach to Approximate Equilibria with Infinitely Many Commodities

We prove the existence of approximate equilibria in a finite exchange economy with a countably infinite number of commodities and nonconvex preferences, when every trader has an excess demand set that is finitely spannable, i.e., that could be covered by a union of its convex subsets in finitely many steps. We show that the bound on the norm of the per capita aggregate excess demand is reciprocally related to the square root of the population. Extensions are also made to the case where countably many commodities are indivisible. The proofs are elementary. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D50, C62, D52.     

Vertical specialization in North–South trade: Industrial relocation,wage and welfare

This paper presents a North–South trade model with vertically linked industries and examines how declining costs of trade across stages of production encourage vertical specialization and affect wages and welfare. As trade costs fall below a threshold, the production of all final goods relocates to the South and vertical specialization emerges. In some industries, production of intermediate goods also relocates against comparative costs because of benefits of co‐location, and further declines in trade costs lead to reshoring. A country may temporarily lose from falling trade costs, but both countries can be better off after trade costs fall sufficiently.     

Can IT be Japan's savior?

This paper constructs a multi-sector model to take explicit account of the very sharp change in the relative price between non-IT and IT goods. The model is calibrated to the Japanese economy, and its solution path from 1990 on is compared to Japan's macroeconomic performance in the 1990s. Compared to the one-sector analysis of Japan in the 1990s [Hayashi, F., Prescott, E.C., 2002. The 1990s in Japan: A lost decade. Rev. Econ. Dynam. 5, 206–235], our model does slightly better or just as well in accounting for Japan's output slump and does worse in accounting for the capital–output ratio. We also show that, to revive a 2% long-term growth in per capita GDP, Japan needs to direct 10% of private total hours to the IT sector. J. Japanese Int. Economies 19 (4) (2005) 543–567.     

The industry origins of Japanese economic growth

This paper presents new data on the sources of growth for the Japanese economy over the period 1960–2000. The principal innovation is the incorporation of detailed information for individual industries, including those involved in the production of computers, communications equipment, and electronic components as information technology equipment. We show that economic growth is dominated by investments and productivity growth in information technology, both for individual industries and the economy as a whole. We also show that the revival of total factor productivity growth accounts for the modest resurgence of the Japanese economy since 1995. J. Japanese Int. Economies 19 (4) (2005) 482–542.