Archive | September, 2013
Finance sector development

Banking crises and ‘Japanization’: Origins and implications

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Recent research has found that economic recoveries from banking crises tend to be weaker and more prolonged than those from traditional types of deep recessions (see for example IMF 2009). Japan’s “two lost decades” perhaps represent an extreme example of this, and the experience has now passed into the lexicon as “Japanese-style stagnation” or “Japanization” for short. A long period of economic stagnation during peace time is not new, particularly among developing countries; the “lost decade” of Latin America in the 1980s is just one example. But Japanization was a surprising phenomenon observed in a mature market economy where the authorities were supposed to have sufficient policy tools to tackle banking crises and manage the economy.