Author Name | KOBAYASHI Keiichiro (Fellow) /INABA Masaru |
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Creation Date/NO. | March 2002 02-E-004 |
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Abstract
The Japanese economy has suffered from three anomalies since the beginning of the 1990s: persistently low economic growth, continuously declining asset prices, and prevalence of procrastination over the serious problems of nonperforming loans (NPLs).
We present the notion of a complexity externality a coordination failure by which inefficiency in one firm affects other firms' productivity through the network of the division of labor. A simple model illustrates that the spreading of the complexity externality, which was triggered by NPL problems, may lead the economy into a bad equilibrium where these anomalies become conspicuous.
Our empirical results suggest that the Japanese economy shifted to a bad equilibrium at the beginning of the 1990s.