العقد الضائع (اليابان)

The العـَقد الضائع أوالسنوات العشر المفقودة (失われた十年, Ushinawareta Jūnen) كانت فترة من الركود الاقتصادي في اليابانJapan following the Japanese asset price bubble's collapse in late 1991 and early 1992. The term originally referred to the years from 1991 to 2000, but recently the decade from 2001 to 2010 is often included so that the whole period is referred to as the Lost Score or the Lost 20 Years (失われた二十年, Ushinawareta Nijūnen). Broadly impacting the entire Japanese economy, over the period of 1995 to 2007, GDP fell from $5.33 trillion to $4.36 trillion in nominal terms,real wages fell around 5%, while the country experienced a stagnant price level. While there is some debate on the extent and measurement of Japan's setbacks, the economic effect of the Lost Decade is well established and Japanese policymakers continue to grapple with its consequences.

Causes

Japan's strong economic growth in the second half of the 20th century ended abruptly at the start of the 1990s. The Plaza Accord doubling of the exchange rate value of the dollar versus the yen between 1985 to 1987 fueled a speculative asset price bubble of a massive scale. The bubble was caused by the excessive loan growth quotas dictated on the banks by Japan's central bank, the Bank of Japan, through a policy mechanism known as the "window guidance". As economist Paul Krugman explained, "Japan's banks lent more, with less regard for quality of the borrower, than anyone else's. In doing so they helped inflate the bubble economy to grotesque proportions."

Trying to deflate speculation and keep inflation in check, the Bank of Japan sharply raised inter-bank lending rates in late 1989. This sharp policy caused the bursting of the bubble and the Japanese stock market crashed. Equity and asset prices fell, leaving overly leveraged Japanese banks and insurance companies with books full of bad debt. The financial institutions were bailed out through capital infusions from the government, loans and cheap credit from the central bank, and the ability to postpone the recognition of losses, ultimately turning them into zombie banks. Yalman Onaran of Bloomberg News writing in Salon stated that the zombie banks were one of the reasons for the following long stagnation. Additionally Michael Schuman of Time magazine wrote that these banks kept injecting new funds into unprofitable "zombie firms" to keep them afloat, arguing that they were too big to fail. However, most of these companies were too debt-ridden to do much more than survive on bail-out funds. Schuman believed that Japan's economy did not begin to recover until this practice had ended.

Eventually, many of these failing firms became unsustainable, and a wave of consolidation took place, resulting in four national banks in Japan. Many Japanese firms were burdened with heavy debts, and it became very difficult to obtain credit. Many borrowers turned to sarakin (loan sharks) for loans. As of 2012, the official interest rate was 0.1%; the interest rate has remained below 1% since 1994.

للاستزادة

Fletcher III, W. Miles, and Peter W. von Staden, eds. Japan's 'Lost Decade': Causes, Legacies and Issues of Transformative Change (Routledge, 2014)
Funabashi, Yoichi, and Barak Kushner, eds. Examining Japan's Lost Decades (Routledge, 2015) excerpt
Hayashi, Fumio, and Edward C. Prescott. "The 1990s in Japan: A lost decade." Review of Economic Dynamics (2002) 5#1 pp: 206-235. online

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