Financing Japan's World War II Occupation of Southeast Asia
This article analyzes how Japan financed its World War II occupation of Southeast Asia, the market purchased transfer of resources to Japan, and the monetary and inflation consequences of Japanese policies. Occupation was financed principally by printing large quantities of money. While some Southeast Asian countries had high inflation, hyperinflation hardly occurred because of a sustained transactions demand for money and because of Japan's strong enforcement of monetary monopoly. Highly specialized Southeast Asian economies and loss of Japanese merchant shipping limited resource extraction.
The Journal of Economic History