Monday, February 15, 2010

Japan is motoring along again

Japan, where I currently am for just a few more days, today released its figures for 2009Q4 GDP growth. As you can see, it takes all countries a long time to add up all the output going on in their economies - these are figures for October, November and December of last year, not the current quarter, which we're half way through.

Japan is growing again, and growing strongly. While the UK posted a rather meek 0.1% growth in 2009Q4 (that's GDP 0.1% higher in October, November and December 2009 compared to the same months in 2008), Japan has reported growth of 1.1% over the same period.

It seems like Japan is taking off again after many years of sluggish growth - the lost decades we looked briefly at in lectures. Japan is being threatened in its status as the world's second largest economy by China.

However, although total GDP in China may soon surpass Japan's, it will be a long time before GDP per capita (so the GDP per person in the economy) of China will catch up with Japan, if it even ever will...

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