Henry Wan, a professor of economics at Cornell University focusing on East Asia, comments on Japan’s economic problems as the Yen nears a 33-month low.
He says:
“The Japanese economy faces long term and structural challenges. Demographically, it is a country with a high and rapidly rising old-age-dependence ratio and falling birth rate.
“Commercially, Japan has few, if any, rapidly rising start-up firms like Amazon or Google. Economically, it has few new products in the world market such as Galaxy tablet computers from Samsung, Korea. With Japanese products concentrated on the high-scale side, and the world’s advanced economies still facing recession, boosting export is not trivial.”
“Further, Japan has a society used to permanent jobs, but is finding many new positions are temporary. So raising Japan’s domestic private consumption is a tall order. Moreover, fiscally, with Japan’s high national debt to national income ratio and fine infrastructure, increasing public spending is hard.”
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