Japan’s economy could regain all the ground it lost during the pandemic much faster than many analysts expect if a vaccine becomes available, according to a prominent economist who was once a favored candidate to become Bank of Japan governor.
"We could see a U-shaped recovery,” Columbia University professor Takatoshi Ito said in an interview Tuesday as global stocks rose to within a whisker of an all-time high, lifted partly by optimism over potential medical breakthroughs. "It relies on having a vaccine, but we could be back where we were before 2022.”
With some analysts expecting Japan’s recovery to take as long as four years, Ito acknowledged he’s among the more bullish economic forecasters. But he pointed to the return of equity markets to pre-coronavirus levels as a sign investors agree a virus cure could make the current global crisis short-lived compared with the last one in 2009.