Mass supply disruptions throughout Japan

Supply disruptions have spread through Japan as the humanitarian and nuclear crisis escalated after the devastating earthquake and tsunami.

To help bring electricity back to the devastated areas, utilities across Japan are cutting back and sharing power, imposing rolling blackouts that will affect factories, stores and homes throughout the nation. The emergency effort is expected to last up to two weeks, but could take longer.

“The big question is whether this will seriously affect Japan’s ability to produce goods for any extended period of time,” said Edward Yardeni, an independent economist and investment strategist.

The Bank of Japan, in an effort to pre-empt a further deterioration in the economy, eased monetary policy on Monday by expanding an asset buying program.

‘‘The damage of the earthquake has been geographically widespread, and  thus, for the time being, production is  likely to decline and there is also concern that the sentiment of firms and  households might deteriorate,’’ the central bank said in a statement.

Assembly plants for Japan’s big three automakers — Toyota, Honda and Nissan — were closed on Sunday and planned to remain closed on Monday. Toyota said that its factories would be closed at least through Wednesday.

Rebuilding costs that could run in the tens of billions of dollars may require Japan to make tough decisions about government spending, economists say. Its ratio of government debt to the economy’s annual output is already at 200 percent, the highest among industrialized nations and far higher than in the United States, for example. So reconstruction, economists say, may make cuts in government spending elsewhere a necessity.

One ripple effect could be a reduction in demand for United States Treasury bonds, adding pressure to American interest rates, according Byron R. Wien, vice chairman of Blackstone Advisory Partners. The Japanese have been large buyers of United States bonds, but, Mr. Wien said, “they are going to be using their money to rebuild, so they will be smaller buyers of our debt securities.”

Japan is also a crucial global supplier of electronic goods and parts used in an array of industrial and consumer goods. The country produces an estimated 40 percent of the lightweight chips used to store data in smartphones and tablet computers, and it is also a leading maker of liquid crystal displays used in consumer electronics products.

Most high-tech goods these days are produced through carefully orchestrated procurement and manufacturing networks that combine parts from around the globe, often shipped on tight daily production schedules. Even temporary shortages can drive up prices sharply for a while.

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