REPLAY: Panel on the Japanese Economy with John Greenwood & Richard Katz

Summary: 

We invite you to listen to a replay of last week’s very lively panel discussion on the Japanese economy, from its outlier monetary policy to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s “New Capitalism”. Our panelists are John Greenwood and Richard Katz, and EconVue editor Lyric Hughes Hale is moderator. Please feel free to share the replay of this EconVue+ subscriber event with friends and colleagues.

Discussions about the Japanese economy can be predictable, but this panel was anything but. Greenwood and Katz see the Japanese economy from two entirely different lenses. In combination, they offer the audience a parallax view of the world’s third-largest economy. Their disagreements as well as their points of agreement were equally enlightening. The Q&A session was similarly engaging.

To set the stage: Japan’s inflation rate of 3% is the envy of other central banks. Unlike other countries, Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda has no plans to raise interest rates or tighten monetary policy. With inflation rising worldwide, Japan has once again proven to be the exception to the rule.  Why has Japan escaped -so far- and are there any lessons we can learn? What changes can we expect post-Covid? Could we see a revival in innovation and productivity? Our panelists provide answers to these and other questions on the Japanese economy.

John Greenwood is former chief economist at Invesco. Based in London, he now heads his own consultancy, International Monetary Monitor. He is also known as the father of the Hong Kong Peg, and is one of the most respected voices in global macroeconomics. He believes in the quantity theory of money, and that contrary to conventional wisdom, BOJ monetary policy is tight rather than expansionary.

Richard Katz is New York correspondent for Weekly Toyo Keizai, a leading Japanese business weekly, and is the author of Japan Economy Watch. A long-time observer and commentator on the Japanese economy, he has a different view of how the Bank of Japan operates. Based upon his in-country research, he believes that Japan could see a rebirth of innovation—but there is no guarantee that the country won’t miss yet another opportunity.

Panel Discussion