Squeamishness kills alert: were the atomic bombings unnecessary? Would have Japan surrendered anyway?

06 Aug 2015 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in defence economics, laws of war, war and peace Tags: , ,

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Jim Rose's avatarUtopia, you are standing in it!

Those that argue that Japan surrendered for reasons other than the atomic bomb put forward contradictory arguments.

The first is the Japan was already seeking terms for surrender. That is true, but among those terms was avoiding occupation.

The Japanese leadership had already interpreted the terms of the Potsdam declaration was a sign of weakness. They hoped that by making the invasion of Japan as bloody as possible, they could extract even better terms in light of this sign of weakness at Potsdam. Kyushu, the  obvious initial invasion site in southern Japan, was  being heavily reinforced  by the middle of 1945.

Japan no longer had a realistic prospect of winning the war by the end of 1994 and they knew it.

Japan’s leaders believed they could make the cost of conquering Japan too high for the Allies to accept, leading to some sort of armistice rather than total defeat. The Japanese…

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Creative destruction in oldest businesses

06 Aug 2015 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in economic history, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, survivor principle Tags: , , ,

How The Japan Times reported the atomic bombings

06 Aug 2015 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in laws of war, war and peace Tags: , , , ,

via How The Japan Times reported the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki | The Japan Times.

Unemployment rates across the OECD member countries

30 Jul 2015 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in business cycles, currency unions, economic growth, Euro crisis, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, unemployment Tags: , , , , , , ,

Hourly minimum wages before and after taxes, USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan

26 Jul 2015 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in labour economics, minimum wage, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, population economics, public economics Tags: , , , , , ,

Figure 1: Hourly minimum wage before and after taxes, 2013, US dollars at purchasing power parities, single-person household

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Source: OECD Focus on Minimum Wages after the crisis (2015).

A lot of countries borrowed a lot of money recently

18 Jul 2015 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in budget deficits, fiscal policy, global financial crisis (GFC), great recession, macroeconomics Tags: , , , , ,

Richer is greener: environmentalists are Environmental Kuznets Curve deniers

07 Jul 2015 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, development economics, economic growth, economic history, energy economics, environmental economics, growth disasters, growth miracles, health and safety, industrial organisation, international economics, labour economics, law and economics, liberalism, property rights, public economics Tags: , , , ,

The Kuznets environmental curve describes an empirical regularity between environmental quality and economic growth. Outdoor water, air and other pollution first worse and then improves as a country first experiences economic growth and development.

While many pollutants exhibit this pattern in the Kuznets environmental curve, peak pollution levels occur at different income levels for different pollutants, countries and time periods. John Tierney explains:

In dozens of studies, researchers identified Kuznets curves for a variety of environmental problems.

There are exceptions to the trend, especially in countries with inept governments and poor systems of property rights, but in general, richer is eventually greener.

As incomes go up, people often focus first on cleaning up their drinking water, and then later on air pollutants like sulphur dioxide.

As their wealth grows, people consume more energy, but they move to more efficient and cleaner sources — from wood to coal and oil, and then to natural gas and nuclear power, progressively emitting less carbon per unit of energy.

When I was living in Japan in the mid 1990s, they just completed a period of rapid operation of the Kuznets environmental curve. I was told by my professors at Graduate School that in the 1960s, cities and prefectures welcomed polluting industries because of the better paid jobs they offered. At that time, shipping companies used like to go to Tokyo because the pollution in Tokyo Bay was so bad that it would clean all the barnacles off their ships. That made them sail faster.

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Japanese incomes and wages doubled over the course of the 1960s. The Japanese voter was now prepared to support stricter pollution standards and environmental controls.

In the early 1970s, the ruling LDP stole the long-standing environmental policies of their opponents in a big crack down on pollution because the country could now afforded them.

Plenty of developing countries are democracies now. Their people could demand through the ballot box higher environmental standards and clean tap water but they don’t because of its cost to economic development.

The environmental movement lives in a state of denial regarding the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality.

The Empire of Japan in 1939

03 Jul 2015 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in defence economics, economic history, war and peace Tags: , , , ,

Top performers in science by gender, USA, UK, Japan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand

02 Jul 2015 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in discrimination, economics of education, gender, human capital, labour economics Tags: , , , , ,

Why are Japanese 15-year-old girls as good at science as teenagers anywhere else in the world?

Figure 1: Percentage achieving the proficiency level 5 or higher in sciences by gender, USA, UK, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, 2012

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Source: OECD StatExtract.

Top performers in maths by gender, USA, UK, Japan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand

01 Jul 2015 5 Comments

by Jim Rose in economics of education, gender, human capital, labour economics Tags: , , , , ,

Figure 1: Percentage achieving the proficiency level 5 or higher in mathematics by gender, USA, UK, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, 2012

image

Source: OECD StatExtract.

Top performers in reading by gender, USA, UK, Japan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand

30 Jun 2015 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in discrimination, economics of education, gender, human capital, labour economics Tags: , , , , ,

Figure 1: percentage achieving the proficiency level 5 or higher in reading by gender, USA, UK, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, 2012

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Source: OECD StatExtract.

Japan’s population distribution by age – 1950, 2007, and 2050

26 Jun 2015 Leave a comment

Image by Jim Rose

The Quantity and Quality of Japanese, Singaporean and Hong Kong Lives, 1965 to 1995

23 Jun 2015 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in applied welfare economics, development economics, economic history, Gary Becker, growth miracles Tags: , , , , ,

Figure 1: increase in real GDP and increase in real GDP plus life expectancy GDP increase equivalent, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong, 1965 to 1995

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Source: Becker, Gary S., Tomas J. Philipson, and Rodrigo R. Soares. The Quantity and Quality of Life and the Evolution of World Inequality, NBER Working Paper No. 9765 (June 2003).

GDP per capita is usually used to proxy for the quality of life of individuals living in different countries. Becker and his co-authors computed a "full" growth rate that incorporates the gains in health and life expectancy.

Figure 2 shows that Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore started from similar levels of real GDP per capita PPP in 1960.

Figure 2: GDP per capita in 2014 US$ (converted to 2014 price level with updated 2011 PPPs), Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore, 1960 – 2000

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Source: The Conference Board. 2015. The Conference Board Total Economy Database™, May 2015, http://www.conference-board.org/data/economydatabase/

Who will be the 20 largest economies in 2030?

10 Jun 2015 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in development economics, economic growth, growth miracles, macroeconomics Tags: , , ,

Working age populations of Australia, New Zealand and Japan

18 May 2015 Leave a comment

by Jim Rose in labour economics, labour supply, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: , , , ,

image

HT: OECD

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