> I'm not sure what is measured by 28-30 percent investment/GDP ratio in
> Japan in the 1990s.
Those are the official OECD statistics, which are meant to be reasonably comparable to other countries. They could be wrong, of course.
> 4. Is the investment crowded in export industries, which are in good
> shape relative to the home market, especially vehicles (note the
> popularity of relatively new Japanese minivans and SUVs in the US market).
Japanese firms just piled in to the minivan/SUV market, and many of these are produced at US-based plants. There does seem to be an investment upturn in info tech right now, which is beginning to draw in a lot of SE Asian imports, good news for Taiwan and South Korea (http://www.jeita.or.jp/english/stat).
> 5. What percentage of these investments are construction/building/land
> development investments?
Don't know offhand, but most data I've seen say Japan does spend more as a % of GDP on real plant and equipment than the US. Their machine-tool sector is almost twice as large as the US, despite the fact that Japan has only half the US population (Gardner has 1999 data at http://www.gardnerweb.com/consump/produce.html).
One other tidbit: the Japanese postal savings system, with something like 1 trillion EUR in rocksolid liquidity, seems to be doing fine. The soundest bank in Japan is publicly owned.
-- Dennis