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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