The subtitle is What the World Can Learn from Japan's Lost Decades and the author is William Pesek (2014).
What drew me to the book is that Abenomics play an important role in the analysis. And in focusing on that topic, the author draws out the general factors that keep Japan stuck in place. They are:
-a continued reliance on fiscal and monetary largesse to paper over bad debts that can date back to the 1980s, rather than allowing creative destruction to work its magic
-a sexism that is baked into the culture and therefore eliminates the creativity and productivity that comes with greater inclusion
-a debt/GDP ratio that is the largest in the developed world and whose management subsumes all other policy considerations
-an insularity and groupthink inherent to the society that values the status quo over progress, exemplified by the government's handling of the Fukushima disaster (in which it protected the vested interests and lacked transparency in communicating the dangers that existed)
-a parochial thinking in Japanese culture that prevents it from engaging the rest of the world and thereby using that engagement to spur growth
-an amateur foreign and domestic policy approach that antagonizes its neighbors and its people, with Abe's visit to the Yakusuni shrine and the secrecy bill as the best recent examples (all because the LDP is trying to cater to the nation's political right wing)
Japan is a country with bad demographics and a stunningly massive debt load. The tricks of Abenomics (as they relate to fiscal and monetary stimulus) only represent a bigger and more marketed version of what has been going on for over 20 years already. We know they don't work and what's missing is the "third arrow" - structural reform that addresses the list of problems above. Without it, the eventual pain at the end is just that much greater.
