Why the Japanese Economy is not Growing: micro barriers to productivity growth McKinsey Global Institute with assistance from our Advisory Committee Masahiko Aoki Alan Garber Paul Romer Washington July 2000 This report is copyrighted by McKinsey & Company, Inc.; no part of it may be circulated, quoted, or reproduced for distribution without prior written approval from McKinsey & Company, Inc.. McKinsey Global Institute The McKinsey Global Institute was established in 1990 as an independent research group within McKinsey & Company, Inc. to conduct original research on important global issues. Its primary purpose is to develop insights into global economic issues and reach a better understanding of the workings of the global economy for the benefit of McKinsey clients and consultants. From time to time the Institute issues public reports. These reports are issued at the discretion of the Institute’s Director and its McKinsey Advisory Board, when they conclude that the Institute’s international perspective and its ability to access McKinsey’s knowledge of industry economics enable it to provide a valuable fact base to policy debates. The McKinsey Advisory Board is made up of McKinsey partners from Europe, the Pacific Basin and the Americas. The staff for the Institute are drawn primarily from McKinsey’s consultants who serve 6-12 month assignments and then return to client work. The Institute also commissions leading academics to participate in its research. The Institute’s Director is William Lewis, a McKinsey partner. The Institute is located in Washington, D.C. Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY CHAPTER 1: OBJECTIVES AND APPROACH CHAPTER 2: SYNTHESIS AND IMPLICATIONS CHAPTER 3: AGGREGATE ANALYSIS CHAPTER 4: SECTOR CASE STUDIES . Retailing . Food processing . Residential construction . Health care Preface This report is an end product of a nine-month long project by the McKinsey Global Institute, working in collaboration with McKinsey’s Tokyo Office, on the economic performance of Japan. McKinsey undertook this project as an important step in developing our understanding of how the global economy is working. The stagnation of the Japanese economy for the decade of the 90s, after four decades of extremely rapid growth and convergence with the US, is one of the most important problems of today’s global economy. Japan has the world’s third largest economy (after the US and China), and traditional macroeconomic policy remedies have failed to generate growth. In our project, we wanted to find out whether structural barriers at the microeconomic level were now limiting Japan’s growth potential. This project builds upon the previous work of the McKinsey Global Institute in assessing economic performance among the major economies of the world. Our early reports addressed separately labor and capital productivity, and employment 1, the fundamental components of economic performance. Later we combined these components to address the overall performance of Sweden, Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil, Korea, the UK, Russia and Poland 2. In all countries, economic performance is compared with the US and other relevant economies. This study continues our efforts to assess economic performance at the country level. As before, the core of our work is conducting sector case studies to measure differences in productivity, output and employment performance across countries and to determine the reasons for the differences. This work provides the basis for 1 Service Sector Productivity, McKinsey Global Institute, Washington, D.C., October 1992; Manufacturing Productivity, McKinsey Global Institute, Washington, D.C., October 1993; Employment Performance, McKinsey Global Institute, Washington, D.C., November 1994; Capital Productivity, McKinsey Global Institute, Washington, D.C., June 1996. 2 Sweden’s Economic Performance, McKinsey Global Institute, Stockholm, September 1995; Australia’s Economic Performance, McKinsey/Australia and McKinsey Global Institute, Sydney, November 1995; Removing Barriers to Growth in France and Germany, McKinsey Global Institute, March 1997; Boosting Dutch Economic Performance, McKinsey Global Institute and Max Geldens Foundation for Societal Renewal, September 1997; Productivity-The Key to an Accelerated Development Path for Brazil, McKinsey Brazil Office and McKinsey Global Institute, Sao Paulo, Washington, March 1998; Productivity-led Growth for Korea, McKinsey Seoul Office and McKinsey Global Institute, Seoul, Washington, March 1998; Driving Productivity and Growth in the U.K. Economy, McKinsey London Office and McKinsey Global Institute, October 1998; Unlocking Economic Growth in Russia, McKinsey Global Institute, October 1999; Poland’s Economic Performance, McKinsey Global Institute, March 2000 our conclusions about how to improve economic performance in Japan. This report consists of four chapters and an executive summary. Chapter One describes our project objectives and approach. Chapter Two presents the Synthesis of our findings including our overall conclusions about the economic performance of Japan and how to improve it. Chapter Three describes our analysis and conclusions at the aggregate level. Chapter Four contains the four sector case studies: retailing, food processing, residential construction, and healthcare. Each case starts with a short executive summary, and then gives the results of our productivity calculations and growth prospects and discusses the reasons for the differences we found between Japan and benchmark countries. A core group of three consultants from McKinsey’s Tokyo Office and two consultants from the McKinsey Global Institute made up the working team for this project. The Tokyo based consultants were James Kondo, Makiko Shinoda and Naoko Shozuzawa. The Global Institute consultants were Angelique Augereau and Ali Rowghani. Administrative assistance was provided by Emi Kusaka, Masae Taniguchi and Leslie Hill Jenkins. James Kondo was responsible for day to day management of the project. This project was conducted under the direction of Yoshinori Yokoyama and myself with assistance from Vincent Palmade and Shinichi Ueyama. In carrying out the work we were fortunate to have an external advisory committee. The committee members were Masahiko Aoki, Alan Garber and Paul Romer, all of Stanford University. The working team had three meetings with the advisory committee to review progress during the course of the project and benefited from many written comments and individual discussions. Throughout the project we also benefited from McKinsey consultant’s unique worldwide perspective on knowledge of the industries investigated in our case studies. This knowledge has been developed through work with clients and investment in understanding industry structure and behavior to support our client work. McKinsey sector leaders provided input to our case studies and reviewed our results. McKinsey’s research and information department provided invaluable information and insight under very tight time constraints. Finally we could not have undertaken the work without the information received in our numerous interviews with corporations, industry associations, government officials and others. We thank all individuals concerned for their time and help, but stress that we are solely responsible for the results. We should also emphasize that our work is independent and has not been commissioned or sponsored in anyway by any business, governmental or other institution. Bill Lewis Director of the McKinsey Global Institute July, 2000 Executive Summary Since 1990, gross domestic product per capita—the single most important measure of a country’s economic health and standard of living—has grown by a meager 0.6 percent in Japan, compared with 1.7 percent in the United States. As a result, the gap in GDP per capita between Japan and the United States widened from 10 percent in 1990 to over 20 percent in 1999 (Exhibit 1). Japan’s unemployment rate rose from 2.3 percent in 1990 to 4.9 percent in 2000. In mid-1998, the unemployment rate surpassed that of the United States. Japan’s government, once lauded for its masterful management of the economy, has only exacerbated the country’s problems with futile attempts at a Keynesian stimulus. The country’s debt-to-GDP ratio grew from 60 percent in 1990 to nearly 120 percent in 1999—twice the level of the United States and Germany. In short, the past decade has seen the Japanese economy go from model to muddle. Yet as the failed government programs show, the real causes of Japan’s decline are not well understood. In fact, there is a real lack of detailed information about the performance of the Japanese economy at the micro level. To fill this information gap and to measure performance at the individual-company and industry level, the McKinsey Global Institute recently completed a yearlong study of the Japanese economy. The resulting detailed understanding of that economy not only provides unique insights into the causes of Japan’s spectacular decline but also lays the groundwork for policies that would reverse the slide and cause Japan to grow again. Overall, we found that Japan’s once-vaunted workforce is actually 31 percent less productive than that of the United States. The country’s capital productivity is worse still, trailing that of the United States by 39 percent (Exhibit 2). These aggregate numbers, telling as they are, hide the true explanation for Japan’s woeful performance. Surprisingly, we found that the Japanese economy was never as strong as it