Event Report: Japan's Abenomics Reforms after Seven Years

On Wednesday, February 26, 2020 the Centre for the Study of Global Japan invited Professor Takeo Hoshi from the Graduate School of Economics, University of Tokyo, Japan. Professor Hoshi is the former Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), Professor of Finance (by courtesy) at the Graduate School of Business, and Director of the Japan Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), all at Stanford University. He brought his expertise to deliver a talk on Japan’s Abenomics Reforms. His talk posed important questions around the success of Abenomics and what types of challenges are yet to be addressed. He explained how the Japanese economy suffered from both demand shortages and structural problems before the policy and how Abenomics is a mixture of demand stimulus and structural reforms. Professor Hoshi claims that the policy has made substantial progress toward solving the demand shortages. However, structural reforms have been limited, and thus there is more work to be done.

The Q&A session following the talk was moderated by Professor Phillip Lipscy, Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Japan. Many U of T undergraduate students were in attendance and a lively discussion was held through the questions that were asked.

The Centre for the Study of Global Japan would like to thank Professor Takeo Hoshi and all of the attendees for their highly engaged participation. We would also like to thank the Consulate-General of Japan in Toronto for their support of this event.

To learn more about Professor Hoshi and his research, please visit the following link:

http://www.e.u-tokyo.ac.jp/fservice/faculty/hoshi/hoshi.e/hoshi01.e.html