Three weeks before the consumption tax was increased last month for the first time in 17 years, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe turned to Nobel laureate Robert Shiller to try to restore a vital ingredient of his economic revolution: optimism.
Abe met the Yale University professor in Tokyo on March 10 to discuss how to reverse what he calls the "shrunken mindset" entrenched in the country after two decades of economic stagnation.
With a public relations team of about 100, TV appearances and use of buzzwords like "Abenomics," Abe is trying to revive a risk-taking spirit to unlock the investment, spending and wage gains needed to sustain his reflation plan.