Koji Taira

Development, Growth, and the Long Run: Review Article

Ryoshin Minami, the author of The Economic Development ofJapan: A Quantitative Study, the book with which this review article is concerned, is with the Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, and a leading figure in research on Japanese economic growth.1 A protege of Kazushi Ohkawa-Japans Simon Kuznets-who retired in the early 1970s, Minami is also a standard-bearer for the group of economists informally known as the Hitotsubashi Group. From 1950 to the mid-1970s, this group devoted its organized efforts to the compilation and publication of the estimates of long-term economic statistics (LTES). Earlier results of this groups work were edited by Ohkawa and published in Japanese in 1955. The expanded and revised English version of this publication long served as the standard data base for the analysis of Japans long-term economic growth until superceded by 14 volumes of LTES, which were published at varying intervals in the course of the 1960s and 1970s.2 Minami himself edited or coedited three of the LTES volumes.