Like Germany, Japan had a very successful economic model that fell on hard times in the 1990s. What changed to make the model less successful? How does this compare with the decline of Germany’s social market economy model? What do both teach us about the future of CMEs in the face of globalization?

What will be an ideal response?

From text: “In the 1980s, the system of guaranteeing bank loans led Japanese corporations to take on excessive debt, which they invested in real estate and other unproductive areas. Simultaneously, the more successful Japanese companies such as Toyota and Nissan fully entered the age of globalization, investing elsewhere in the world so that instead of exporting cars from Japan, they began building them in the United States and Europe. This reduced Japan’s key source of growth: exports. All of this reduced the extent to which keiretsu members continued to coordinate their activity, as the corporate structure of the Japanese economy in the 1990s and 2000s moved perceptibly toward a more “American” model of vertically integrated, globally active corporations.”