Any good books on Japan's lost decade??

I've looked before on Amazon and never saw anything that really looked great, but now I see that Koo has a relatively new book out about the subject:

Richard C. Koo, " The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics: Lessons from Japan's Great Recession" (Wiley, 7/15/2008)

Unfortunately, the review makes Koo sound a little hokey: "The author developed the idea of yin and yang business cycles where the conventional world of profit maximization is the yang and the world of balance sheet recession, where companies are minimizing debt, is the yin. Once so divided, many varied theories developed in macro economics since the 1930s can be nicely categorized into a single comprehensive theory, i.e., the Holy Grail of macro economics."

Other books on Amazon include...

Christopher Wood's " The Bubble Economy: Japan's Extraordinary Speculative Boom of the 80's and the Dramatic Bust of the 90's" (2005)
(NOTE: The first version of this book was published in 1992, and forecasted further trouble for Japan.)

Saxonhouse and Stern's (eds.) " Japan's Lost Decade: Origins, Consequences and Prospects for Recovery" (Wiley-Blackwell, 2004)
(NOTE: I think both of these guys were economists at Michigan, involved with the Ford School of Public Policy, the World Bank, and various other foreign relations types of organizations.)

Callen and Ostry's (eds.) " Japan's Lost Decade: Policies for Economic Revival" (IMF, 2003)

Yoshikawa's " Japan's Lost Decade" (The Int'l House of Japan, 2001)

Also, Paul Krugman has a special webpage devoted to essays on Japan's lost decade: LINK.

If I had to take a stab in the dark, I'd guess that Wood has one of the better books on the subject in terms of explaining the problem. As far as who would be best from a policy response angle, I don't know. Ostry, the IMF guy, is an economist with a Ph.D. from Chicago, but the book by the Michigan guys is more recent, and about Saxonhouse, who got his Ph.D. from Yale, it is written ( LINK): "At Michigan, Saxonhouse taught regularly his undergraduate and graduate courses on the Japanese economy. He trained many of today's American economists who focus on Japan. He also schooled many elite members of Japan's civil service, who would spend a year at the University, away from their high-profile careers, to learn from him."

Judging from this London Telegraph article from September 23, 2007 (" Chris Wood: The Man Who Predicted the Subprime Crisis"), most posters here would probably love this Wood guy...

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Chris Wood: The Man Who Predicted the Subprime Crisis
Mark Kleinman talks to the influential investment strategist credited with being the first to predict the US sub-prime meltdown.

The world's central bankers might be well advised to steer clear of Christopher Wood. Likewise Adam Applegarth, the chief executive of Northern Rock, the mortgage lender whose share price has sunk faster than the proverbial stone. The reason? Wood, a managing director and chief strategist of the broking firm CLSA, doesn't think much of them right now, and he isn't pulling punches about why.

Bank of England Governor Mervyn King should be "feeling like a schmuck" after the Bank of England's bail-out of Northern Rock, says Wood. As for the bank, he is unimpressed with its dependence on money-market funding – its £80bn in mortgages outstanding supported by just £2bn of shareholders' equity and £78bn of mostly short-term debt, he says, "would not disgrace a Thai finance company prior to the Asian crisis".

Wood, who has a home in Jakarta, is worth listening to. When the history of the 2007 global credit crisis is written from a perspective sufficiently detached to shed more light than heat, few people are likely to emerge with their reputation enhanced further than this former Economist journalist. Then again, few people may emerge from the chaos with their reputation enhanced at all.

Wood may be next to anonymous in Britain's financial community, but across Asia, he has become something of a celebrity among market-watchers, issuing often-surprising and hard-hitting analysis in his regular personal publication, Greed & Fear.

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Whether through modesty or sheer boredom at being asked about it, Wood doesn't see his prophecy of two years ago as cause for self congratulation.

"I was actually too early predicting the US sub-prime meltdown," he said this week. He said it with a straight face – but there aren't many people across the global banking, financial and political systems who wouldn't give their eye-teeth to have had his foresight.

"The US housing market has been like watching a train crash in slow motion. But this is not a housing price bubble, this is a housing finance issue."

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In sum, I don't think there's an authoritative book on the subject yet, and I'm certainly interested in comments from anybody who's read any of these.

FYI, you can read a lot of the books by Saxonhouse/Stern ( LINK) and Callen/Ostry ( LINK) online for free via the preview feature from Google Books.

Mmmm, that seems a little conspiratorial to me. There are valid criticisms of central banking, but if you're going that route, I would check out stuff by Murray Rothbard or check out links provided by the Mises Institute or the Cato Institute.

Thanks, I think murray might be the route I go.

Its free

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Is his book based on that comparison?

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Yea, its not all doom and gloom. Its more about what comes of it (good and bad) and how to handle it. He actually talks about how people were much more generous and willing to help others. No one was starving and everyone was well nourished...