Download Financing Japan`s World War II Occupation of Southeast Asia Prof

Asia Reasearch Institute
AND
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
n.a.t.i.o.n.a.l u.n.i.v.e.r.s.i.t.y o.f s.i.n.g.a.p.o.r.e
JOINT SEMINAR
Financing Japan’s World War II Occupation
of Southeast Asia
Prof Gregg Huff
(and Prof Shinobu Majima)
CHAIRMAN
Assoc Prof Huang Jianli,
Department of History
Thursday, 6 December 2012, 4 – 5.30pm
Asia Research Institute Seminar Room, Tower Block, Level 10, 469A
Bukit Timah Road, National University of Singapore @ BTC
Abstract:
This seminar explores how Japan financed its World War II occupation of Southeast Asia, the transfer of resources to Japan, and the
monetary and inflation consequences of Japanese policies. In Malaya, Burma, Indonesia and the Philippines, the issue of military
scrip to pay for resources and occupying armies greatly increased money supply. Despite high inflation, hyperinflation hardly
occurred because of a sustained transactions demand for money, because of Japan’s strong enforcement of monetary monopoly,
and because of declining Japanese military capability to ship resources home. In Thailand and Indochina, occupation costs and
bilateral clearing arrangements created near open-ended Japanese purchasing power and allowed the transfer to Japan of as much
as a third of Indochina’s annual GDP. Although the Thai and Indochinese governments financed Japanese demands mainly by
printing large quantities of money, inflation rose only in line with monetary expansion due to money’s continued use as a store of
value in rice-surplus areas.
About the Speaker
Gregg Huff is Senior Research Fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford. He researches Southeast Asian economics and economic history,
is the author of The Economic Growth of Singapore: Trade and Development in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press)
and has published articles in Economic Development and Cultural Change, the Cambridge Jounal of Economics, Oxford Economic
Papers, the Journal of Economic History, Financial History Review, Explorations in Economic History, Economic History Review, the
Journal of Development Studies and World Development.
(Shinobu Majima is Professor in Economic History at Gakushuin University, Tokyo.)
 6516 3839   6774 2528
For enquiries, please contact the Department of History