Source: Google at https://tinyurl.com/yyenaembKey Points:With food prices up 44% from 2012, they now take 29% of the household budget, up from 23% in 2012As a result, real consumption of food and non-food items both decreasedIf not for spen
Ethan Wu cites me in an Economist essay arguing that, despite rosy headlines, these three countries are “suffering from industrial rot.” He makes the following points:Northeast Asia’s export industries increasingly operate on two tracks. On
Source: Based on data from WSJKey Points:In Tokyo, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave some support to Japan’s currency interventionHe also issued a thinly veiled hint that he “expects” BOJ to raise interest rates at its June meetingBesse
Source: https://data.imf.org/-/media/iData/External-Storage/Documents/2F78EE59F79143A7921E5E203D3AAA80/en/WEOApr2026all.xlsx Note: This excludes countries with less than 3 million people and major oil exportersFLASH: The Ministry of Finance
Source: https://www.boj.or.jp/en/research/research_data/cpi/cpirev.xlsx Note: This shows the gap between prices at the cash register and what prices would have been if the government had not put additional subsidies on food and energy; 96%
Source: https://www.cgdev.org/blog/great-gatsby-curve-younger-and-poorer-how-inequality-explains-learning-outcomes-around-world Note: Income inequality and the degree to which the test scores of children depend on their parents’ income; see
Source: http://www.mof.go.jp/english/jgbs/reference/interest_rate/index.htm Note: See text for explanationKey Points:The Bank of Japan will decide next Monday whether to raise the overnight rate 1% or wait until June to see how the Iran war
Source: https://dataverse.nl/api/access/datafile/554105This is the third in a series begun in this post and followed by this.Smarter tools need smarter workers. Consider what today’s auto mechanic needs to know to work on the software-fille
Source for all charts: Table A1.4 at https://stat.link/vur4y1An eagle-eyed professor pointed out that I had misread one of the OECD tables in my last post on education. I read the figures as showing the educational attainment of the parents
Source: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/888932957403 Note: See text for explanationThere’s research contending that, in the US, a child’s postal code is the best predictor of lifetime income and other conditions. Moreover, it is said, a child who
Source: https://www.boj.or.jp/en/research/research_data/cpi/cpirev.xlsx and https://www.e-stat.go.jp/en/stat-search/file-download?statInfId=000032103932&fileKind=1 Note: see text for explanation; 68% means these items include 68% of the hou
Source: https://www.fccj.or.jp/event/asa-kaiHere is a video of a panel discussion on the economic impact of the war in Iran on Japan, China, and the rest of Asia. It was hosted by Anthony Rowley of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan (
Source: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2011/09/education-reform-in-japan_g17a200a/5kg58z7g95np-en.pdf(Earlier this year, I ran several posts critiquing Sanae Takaichi’s industrial policy, saying that it avoide
Source: Press ReportsKey Points:· Early announcements suggest a 5.26% headline Shunto raise for the 16% of workers who are in unions in coming fiscal year, perhaps less (April through March 2027)· So far, that is translating into just a 3.8
Source: https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/23cc1f1c-c869-4a39-ac51-457725c87103/EVDataExplorer2025.xlsx; for 2025, https://cleantechnica.com/2026/02/03/global-ev-sales-leaders-2025-top-markets-powertrains/ Note: BEV= Battery EV; PHEV
Source: https://www.customs.go.jp/toukei/info/tsdl_e.htmIn case you haven’t noticed, this blog has a search icon at the upper right of the home page. All subscribers, paid or not, can use it find topics in all the prior 240 posts.One of the
Source: https://www.e-stat.go.jp/en/stat-search/file-download?statInfId=000032103932&fileKind=1 Note: See text for how new government energy subsidies are distorting measures of inflationKey Points:The Iran war heightens BOJ’s stagflation d
Source: Google, citing BYD’s quarterly reportsKey Points:Chinese automakers are the first in the world to put three pivotal pioneering technologies into Electric Vehicle being sold this year: 1) charging an EV in only 5 minutes; 2) solid-st
Source: https://www5.cao.go.jp/keizai3/getsurei-e/index-e.html Note: Deeply negative gaps in 2009 and 2021 are due to the global Great Recession and Covid respectivelyTakuji Aida, the economic guru whispering into the ear of Prime Minister
Source: https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.STA:IMTS(While free subscribers will continue to get all my regular Posts, this is the last of the new Memos that I’ll send to free subscribers. After that, the Memos will only go to paid subscri