Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the country’s longest-serving PM from 2006-2007 and 2012-2022, is known for his economic strategies. His economic legacy is often defined as a namesake strategy — “Abenomics”.Wondering where this term originated from? It originated from Ronald Reagan’s economic policies, “Reaganomics”. Hence, Late PM Shinzo Abe’s economic policies are called “Abenomics”.
The term “Abenomics” itself has gained a lot of attention, part of the reason being that it’s a great contrast to what is happening around the world.
Abe, who was shot dead during an election campaign, wanted to revive Japan’s economy back to life after more than two decades of stagnation which had led to the collapse of the asset bubble in the early 1990s.
Abe’s strategy included three “arrows” (loose monetary policy, fiscal stimulus, and structural economic reforms) that were intended to jump-start economic growth and higher salaries.
The Abenomics reform platform was aimed to increase productivity by reducing corporate taxes and red tape, as well as to diversify the increasingly aging workforce of the nation by promoting the participation of more women, pensioners, and immigrants.
Abe in one of his speeches in 2016 said that “we should look toward the future, instead of worrying about the present.”
He even pointed out that Japan might be aging and losing its population, but this should be seen as an incentive.
During his administration, exports increased, economic growth recovered from the lull of the 1990s and 2000s, and unemployment fell to its lowest point in decades.
More so, Japan experienced eight straight quarters of positive growth between 2015 and 2017, which is the longest in almost 30 years.
Finally, Abe’s huge goal of increasing the nominal GDP to 600 trillion yen by 2020 never came to pass and is still unfulfilled to this day.