Japan’s Lost Decade: Lessons for the United States

As the United States and the world seek a strategy to cope with the financial crisis and recession, Japan’s experience can provide useful lessons. Measures that Japan took—and did not take— during its “Lost Decade” of the 1990s can inform the decisions that policy-makers make today.

On March 26, the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies and the Initiative on Business and Public Policy at Brookings, in collaboration with Nikkei and the Japan Center for Economic Research, hosted leading Japanese and American experts to discuss Japan’s experience and its lessons for the United States. Heizo Takenaka, Japan’s former minister of internal affairs and communications and minister of state for privatization of the postal services—positions in which he led efforts to resolve Japan’s banking crisis and privatize the world’s largest savings bank—provided opening remarks.

Heizo Takenaka giving opening remarks.		Douglas Elliott speaking at event.