ABSTRACT
This paper presents the economic policy of the Japanese government for the support of developing countries and transition economies. The Japanese government has kept to a pro-globalization approach in domestic economic policy. On the other hand, Japan has been criticizing international financial institutions and the United States for their pro-globalization approach in development assistance policy. Although Japan appears to maintain a similar stance in macroeconomic policy, it will often adopt a development assistance policy quite different from the international financial institutions and the United States, especially toward Asian nations. This is the reason why the economists and the policymakers in the world wonder whether Japan has a clear idea regarding its economic policy. In this paper, I try to describe the Japanese approach (the approach of the Japanese government) in relation to developing countries and transition economies and summarize the Japanese economic policy to assist development and transition (Section 1), while analyzing Japan’s stance to democratization (Section 2) and chronologically introducing the efforts to establish an Asian Monetary Fund (AMF) (Section 3).
