デジタル神経系統とネットワークの生産力 : ME化段階からデジタル経済革命への展開

抄録

The 1990s, especially the past year has been a very severe one for the Japanese economy. Statistics indicate that real GDP decreased nearly 3% of 1997. In spite of the various structural reform policies, we still don't see a revived Japanese economy. Economic activities in Japan stagnated owing to depression, in part because of the monetary crisis in Southeast Asia, and the weaknesses in the Japanese financial system became more apparent. It is said that one of reasons for the difference in performance between the Japanese economy and the good U.S. economy is the difference in a quantity of the information investment. But newest data that I got suggest that the Japanese information investment is by no means so small. In fact, a link between computer investment and productivity in Japan fall into the productivity paradox like in U.S. for the early '90 s. In this paper, I treat the remarkable features of the phenomenon of the paradox and features of the origins in the Japanese economy. The main points described are as follows: 1) The rate of information investment to equipment investment increases to 23% in 1998, but the information investment has grown more slowly since 1995. New data signify that Information Infrastructure in Japan has equipped already. 2) Both the growth of nominal GDP and the TFP growth have slowed substantially since 1992. Computers were not contributing significantly to productivity at the industry and macro-level. But they signify that lower prices don't reflect some of increases in productivity rather than that computers didn't create some of value. 3) The cause of the paradox isn't IT investment behavior but style of exploitation of information systems. Lots of large firms improved information systems to merely dismiss their white colors. Therefore, it has disturbed real restructuring of organization. 4) I propose that private sector should exploit information systems as "the tools of production which can be called Digital Nervous System"