2016 Reports

Lessons From Koizumi-Era Financial Services Sector Reforms

Fink, Naomi

Japan’s “lost decades of growth” owe to insufficient countermeasures to address (a) demographic changes and (b) belated and incomplete adaptation of the services sector in particular to globalisation. The combination of a strong bureaucracy, a high level of per- capita GDP at the outset and redistributive dynamics between industrial sectors have softened the impact of deflationary shocks but allowed policy immobilism to flourish. The Koizumi reform agenda was successful in resolving Japan’s banking crisis, and endeavoured to capitalise on this success to go beyond financial services reform, and to implement capital market reform.