Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Miti and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975 by Chalmers A. Johnson ISBN: 0-8047-1206-9 Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr Pub. Date: January, 2004 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (3 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Challenge To Read
Comment: Considered to be one of the first books that pointed the different capitalist style that Japan practiced from 1925 to 1975. A capitalism-style that Chalmers Johnson labeled the "developmental state". MITI and the Japanese Miracle gave Mr. Chalmers Johnson the reputation as the "godfather of Japanese capitalism." This text would later become a reference source for other critics of Japan-style capitalism in the late 1980's and early 1990's.
I found this to be a challenge to read. The first two chapters were a breeze. As you further get into the book, many of the Japanese and agencies become difficult to pronounce. Since I am not familiar in pronouncing the Japanese language, the rest of the book was formidable. If you have a basic ability of pronoucing Japanese, you may find this text to be an easier read.
Rating: 5
Summary: Like a novel
Comment: This book is the classic to be read in the field of the developmental state which refer to East Asian economic developmental strategy not only for Japan. thou Chalmers Johnson is not the one who coined the word, developmental state, he has been most influential in that field by this book. btw dry and technical? I can't see why this book recieves that kind of respose. the overall style of description is something of an well written novel. the author gave the life to the past with details. and that it's interesting enough to be sombering overnight. Below I try to depict the position of this book on the discouse of economics
Johnson revived almost forgotten ghost from the sea of oblivion: mercantilism.
Mercantilism seemed completely beaten away long before modern economics took shape. Mercantilism was a pragmatic adaptation, not a theory of how economies are supposed to operate. It anticipates or at times contradicts market signals, with the goal of channeling resources to (or away from) selected sectors, in the interests of the prosperity of the one or the power of other. But economists argued that such a policy is no more than the terror against market efficiency. The wisdom of the state can¡¯t be claimed to be more efficient than market. Moreover, it often mass-produces rent-seeking distortions on resource allocation. It makes more harms than benefits. The state should not guide the resource allocation. The role of the state lies in other area: providing the public good and responding to market failures.
Johnson labeled this kind of role as the ¡®regulatory state¡¯. The United States and Britain exemplify the ¡®regulatory state.¡¯ Such state¡¯s task is the setting of rules that govern entry, exit, competition, investment, pricing, and other basic functions of the market. That kind of task is called as economic regulation. Economic regulation provides the basic framework of rules needed to keep market operate and responses to the problems of market failure.
But developmental state, as Johnson found in Japan¡¯s success story, holds that economic regulation has the goals beyond market maintenance. Developmental state takes the long term national welfare as the primary mission of state. It actively intervenes in economic activities to improve the international competitiveness. Japan¡¯s economic bureaucrats and business leaders rejected the philosophy of laissez-faire, free trade of open markets. To them, these concepts were little more than protection for the economically powerful exporters. The strategy of developmental state is the denial of extant hierarchy of comparative advantage. To achieve high growth rate, there should be high return sectors. But such sectors, in general, have no relation with developing countries. Then, should developing countries rest with agriculture or labor-intensive industries? Not necessarily. Such sectors tend to be low value-added, in other words, with low growth prospect. If you don¡¯t have it, then make it! Japanese bureaucrats sought to use activist policies to generate ¡®competitive advantages¡¯. In this regard, developmental state is a logical offspring of economic nationalism and neo-mercantilism. Driven by such a motive, developmental state use economic regulation to foster the technological development, capacity growth, and competitiveness of targeted industries considered essential to national economy in the future.
Both models don¡¯t deny the role of the state. But they differ from each other in the perception of resource allocation. The point of neoclassical economics is the efficiency, whereas the one of neo-mercantilism is the effectiveness. There could be no a priori or empirical criterion to judge which model is valid to the real world, for each has its own supporting evidence. The arbiter is the whim of trend. Chalmers Johnson captured the public not for its theoretical superiority but for its timing. The 1980s is the time when orthodox recipes of economics lost its effectiveness. The US lost its competitiveness not only in the world market but also in its domestic market. The word, competitiveness or competitive advantage has seized the day. Competitiveness or competitive advantage is not the word of efficiency but the word of effectiveness. Even if the economy were efficient, it could be not effective on the market. Then what efficiency is for at all? Formidable competitor, Japan, became the teacher. ¡®Japan is No.1.¡¯The US should learn from the superior. It was the reason why Chalmers Johnson took the attention. He was not the only one who drew such a picture of Japan. But the manner he challenged neoclassical economics and its timing were Johnson¡¯s advantage. But the time swung against developmental state theory. Japan has been lost in doldrums. Now the time reveals cracks in and limitations of the developmental state theory. Criticisms focus on a reductionism of the state, incomplete and even misleading elucidation of state-society links and growing doubts about the positive correlation between the state and economic performance. Still the developmental state theory has the validity in explaining certain period (from 1945 to 1973) of Japanese economy. But it lost once the dominant position it enjoyed.
Rating: 4
Summary: An analysis of Japanese economic dev. in the 20th century
Comment: This is a very dry and technical presentation of how the Japanese economy developed during the Showa era. Mr Johnson covers the pre-war colonialist era as well as the post-war reconstruction and focuses on government economic policy. He ends by questioning the Japanese model's effectiveness outside of Japan.
 |
Title: The Logic of Japanese Politics by Gerald L. Curtis ISBN: 0231108435 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 15 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $19.50 |
 |
Title: Shadow Shoguns: The Rise and Fall of Japan's Postwar Political Machine by Jacob M. Schlesinger ISBN: 0804734577 Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr Pub. Date: July, 1999 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
 |
Title: Regime Shift: Comparative Dynamics of the Japanese Political Economy (Cornell Studies in Political Economy) by T. J. Pempel ISBN: 0801485290 Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr Pub. Date: November, 1998 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
 |
Title: The Japanese Way of Politics by Gerald L. Curtis ISBN: 0231066813 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 15 October, 1988 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
 |
Title: Japan: Who Governs?: The Rise of the Developmental State by Chalmers A. Johnson ISBN: 0393314502 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: April, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
