Context
Japan is a country in East Asia with a population of 126.3 million (World Bank, 2019).
Its economy has been stale over the last decades,
however a three-pronged strategy introduced by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe – inevitably dubbed “Abenomics” –
has stabilised the yen exchange rate,
fattened the stock market, boosted corporate investment and encouraged the public to go out and spend.
GDP Analysis
From the early 90s until early 200s, Japan was in ‘The Lost Decade’, real GDP only grew by 1.14% annually.
From 2000 to 2020, in the span of two decades, Japan has experienced two recessions.
2002 to 2008 showed a slow and steady economic growth, however, during 2008,
real GDP plummeted drastically due to the Economic Crisis of 2008.
Japan was relatively immune as many banks did not have much of RMBS and CDO in their portfolio,
however, the decrease in exports surrounding the economic crisis,
the appreciation of yen since the outbreak of the Lehman Brothers issue, the stagnation of
the financial market triggered this.
Whilst they were able to recover with higher GDP, Japan fell again into another recession in 2020
due to the outbreak of COVID-19.
The recession was also mainly due to a severe decrease in domestic consumption,
which accounts for more than half of Japan’s economy.
For the past two decades, Japan followed the standard business cycle as it has gone
through a recovery, boom, recession, trough within decades.
Real GDP for Japan (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JPNRGDPEXP)
Real GDP Growth for Japan (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2019&locations=JP&start=2000)
GDP per capita for Japan (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=JP)