著者

石崎 昭彦

出版者

産業学会

雑誌

産業学会研究年報 (ISSN:09187162)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.1996, no.11, pp.15-34,96, 1996-03-30 (Released:2009-10-08)

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During the eighties and the early nineties, the world economy has undergone a structural metamorphosis. This has been caused by the loss of international competitiveness of the U. S. and the further strengthening of the Japanese economy. The growing trade deficit of the U. S. and the growing trade surplus of Japan are the most telling symptoms of this development.The industrial structure of the U. S. has experienced the following alterations: falling relative importance of manufacturing in GDP; rising relative weight of agriculture; increasing relative share of the tertiary industries. Deindustrialization is a common phenomenon in every developed country, but that of the U. S. has gone not a little further than in other countries. The problem is that the American manufacturing industry has lost much of its international competitiveness, so that, even when there has been an increase in domestic demand, it has come to lack the capacity to meet it. Particularly the machinery and equipments industries have been affected. The result has been a large deficit in trade in manufactures. Moreover, manufacturing employment has diminished. On the other hand, the tertiary industries, which have enjoyed relative advantage, have further benefited from deregulations and have absorbed labor and capital. Thus, there has been a contrasting development between manufacturing and the services.In stark contrast to the developments in the U. S., the relative weight of the manufacturing industries has risen in Japan. The tertiary industries have gained in importance in terms of their relative share of total employment, but in terms of their relative share of GDP their importance has not risen, but stagnated. The gain in importance of the manufacturing industries is a result of their increasing international competitiveness. Their exports, particularly the exports of machinery and equipments, have registered remarkable increases. On the other hand, the development of tertiary industries has been hampered by excessive regulations by the government and by irrational taxation system. As a consequence, there has resulted a tendency for overexpansion of the manufacturing industries, which have absorbed labor and capital from the other sectors of the economy. It is this overexpansion, which has generated surpluses for exports of their products.These contrasting developments in the U. S. and Japan have now reached a phase of readjustment. In both the U. S. and Japan forces have been at work to remedy this extreme imbalance.