Emerging from the ruins of the Second World War, the Japanese economy
has grown at double-digit rate throughout much of the 1950s and 1960s,
and, when the oil crisis of the 1970s slowed growth throughout the
industrialized world, Japanese growth throughout the industrialized
world, Japanese growth rates remained relatively strong. There have been
many attempts by scholars from a wide range of disciplines to explain
this remarkable history, but for economists interested in the
quantitative analysis of economic growth and the principal question
addressed is how Japan was able to grow so rapidly.
The contributors focus their efforts on the accurate measurement and
comparison of Japanese and U.S. economic growth. Assuming that any
sustained increase in real GNP must be due either to an increase in the
quantity of capital and labor used in production or to the more
efficient use of these inputs, the authors analyze the individual
contributions of various factors and their importance in the process of
output growth.
These essays extend the methodology of growth analysis and offer many
insights into the factors leading to the superior performance of the
Japanese economy. They demonstrate that growth is a complex process and
no single factor can explain the Japanese 'miracle.'