By Robert Presser on April 21, 2011
Some may recall the teachings of Joseph Schumpeter, the Austrian economist (1883-1950) who advocated the concept of creative destruction. Schumpeter argued that old economic models or investments had to be destroyed in order to liberate the financial and human capital to undertake new, innovative and more profitable ventures. For the first time since the end of WWII, a major developed economy has suffered an economic calamity of the scale deserving an analysis under Schumpeter’s model. The question is whether Japan, as an economic and social society, is prepared to seize this moment to radically change its economic model, or if it will miss the moment and re-create what has not served it well over the past 20 years.
