Following the start of modern economic growth around the end of the 19th century, Japan’s economy had substantially lagged behind leading economies before World War II, but achieved rapid catch-up – the growth miracle – after the war. To explain the patterns, we build a dynamic model and examine the role of barriers to technology adoption. We find that such barriers hampered catch-up in the prewar period and explain about one-third of the postwar miracle. Taking a historical perspective, we argue that factors that acted as the barriers include low capacity to absorb technology, economic and political frictions with the outside world, and a lack of sufficient competition.

在19世纪末开始现代经济增长之后，日本的经济在第二次世界大战之前已经远远落后于主要经济体，但是在战后却迅速追上了增长奇迹。为了解释这些模式，我们建立了一个动态模型并研究了技术采用障碍的作用。我们发现，这些障碍阻碍了战前时期的追赶，并解释了战后奇迹的三分之一。从历史的角度来看，我们认为成为障碍的因素包括吸收技术的能力低下，与外界的经济和政治摩擦以及缺乏足够的竞争。