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Economic Communication in the ‘Lost Decade’

This study investigates the relationship among three critical variables in economic communication – recession coverage, the state of the economy and consumer confidence – in Japan. These time-series variables are intricately linked with one another during the period of 1988–99, roughly the ‘Lost Decade’. However, the study discovered that the linkage between these variables in Japan differs from that found for the US during the recession in the early 1990s. Japanese newspaper coverage followed the economy and public sentiment at different time-lags. Additionally, the Japanese’s confidence level, regardless of the economic condition, can be predicted by the economy indicator but not by the recession coverage. Contrary to the literature, the study finds little direct media impact on either the economy or consumer confidence – a phenomenon that could be accounted for by the Japanese’s deep pessimism about recovery and the longer duration of the recession.