2022年度の活動報告
March 26, 2023 Musashi University International Symposium 'Is Long-Term Economic Stagnation in Japan and the World the Beginning of a New Great Depression?'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB1MNxzA0eE
[Program]
● Opening Remarks (Shinji Yokokawa, Radhika Desai)
● Report
Robert Gordon (Northwestern University)
“Innovation and Headwinds as Sources of U.S. Secular Stagnation.”
Minqi Li (University of Utah)
“Secular Stagnation and Fiscal Crisis in US and China.”
Hiroshi Nishi (Hannan University)
“Sources of Productivity Growth: Is Japan Still Suffering from Baumol's Disease.”
Thomas Palley (Former Senior Economic Adviser to the AFL-CIO)
“Keynes’ Denial of Conflict: the Original Sin and Why Keynesians Struggle to Explain Stagnation."
David Kotz (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
“A Social Structure of Accumulation Theory of Secular Stagnation.”
● Panel Discussion
James Kenneth Galbraith (University of Texas at Austin)
Myles Carroll (Ochanomizu University)
Alan Freeman (University of Manitoba, Canada)
● Closing Remarks (Shinji Yokokawa, Radhika Desai)
[Overview]
From World War II until the 1980s, Japan's economy had the highest growth rate and was more equitable among developed countries. For 30 years after the bubble burst in 1990, Japan had the lowest growth rate among developed countries and experienced a noticeable widening income gap. These lost 30 years attracted much attention as a special Japanese economic "long-term economic stagnation," tracing the stagnation of the American economy in the 1930s (Hansen's long-term stagnation theory). Entering the 2000s, not only Japan but also Europe and the United States fell into long-term economic stagnation. Economic stagnation is not a unique phenomenon in Japan but a global phenomenon, and discussions about the "long-term economic stagnation theory," including mainstream economics, are reigniting. This symposium clarifies that understanding the current long-term stagnation requires a long-term historical perspective and a geopolitical perspective of capitalism.
The symposiums revisit the phenomenon of Japanese capitalism considering the fate of the North Atlantic and developing economies and place it in a longer historical political and geopolitical economy of capitalism from a variety of political and disciplinary perspectives including, Marxian, Keynesian, Rgulationists, and World System theories.
The presentations deal with three topics that go to the heart of secular stagnation.
(1) Japanese capitalism was once an admired model of miraculous growth with a relatively egalitarian distribution of income, fell into secular stagnation in the early 1990s. The phenomenon has since fascinated observers, provoked debates, provided policy advocates elsewhere with much grist for their policy mills, yielding a range of policy proposals, some of them mutually contradictory, and, most importantly, burdened an entire population, and particularly its young. Japan’s secular stagnation has raised new questions about policy difficulties on a range of fronts -- dramatically lowered growth rate, deteriorating labor conditions, rising class and gender inequality, a profound and many-faceted crisis of social reproduction and a deepening fiscal crisis of the state -- all of which have important international ramifications.
(2) Interest in and the importance of Japan’s secular stagnation grew rapidly after 2008 as many have sought to understand the economic malaise of the North Atlantic by analogy and comparison with all or parts of the Japanese condition, particularly its monetary policy.
(3) Are the term, secular stagnation, and Japan’s experience, relevant to understanding deteriorating condition of capitalism in its homelands today? Are we facing a serious crisis like the Great Depression in the 1930s?
Robert Gordon examined “six headwinds” (inequality, education, demographics, fiscal debt, social behavior, and climate change) that exacerbate long-term economic stagnation (Gordon 2012, 2014). However, at the symposium he focused on the slowdown in technological progress following the end of the second and third industrial revolutions as a cause of secular stagnation.
Minqi Li calculates the long-term ratio of government debt to GDP, predicts a fiscal crisis in the US and China, and shows that the decline of American hegemony would lead to long-term stagnation and that China would not be the next hegemony.
Hiroshi Nishi examines the sources of aggregate labor productivity dynamics in Japan (1995–2018) and investigates the extent to which Baumol’s growth disease has affected Japanese economic performance.
Thomas Palley criticizes mainstream Keynesians who argue that a lack of demand leads to sluggish production and employment growth. Palley argues that Keynes’s General Theory (1936) was a huge step forward relative to classical economics. Still, it was also a step backward in denying capitalism’s conflictual nature.
David Kotz further develops Hansen’s state-market relation. Kotz distinguishes two types of Social Structure of Accumulation: regulated and liberal SSAs. He shows that the structural crisis phase of a liberal SSA (1929–1937 and 2007–present) gives rise to secular stagnation.
[Program]
● Opening Remarks (Shinji Yokokawa, Radhika Desai)
● Report
Robert Gordon (Northwestern University)
“Innovation and Headwinds as Sources of U.S. Secular Stagnation.”
Minqi Li (University of Utah)
“Secular Stagnation and Fiscal Crisis in US and China.”
Hiroshi Nishi (Hannan University)
“Sources of Productivity Growth: Is Japan Still Suffering from Baumol's Disease.”
Thomas Palley (Former Senior Economic Adviser to the AFL-CIO)
“Keynes’ Denial of Conflict: the Original Sin and Why Keynesians Struggle to Explain Stagnation."
David Kotz (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
“A Social Structure of Accumulation Theory of Secular Stagnation.”
● Panel Discussion
James Kenneth Galbraith (University of Texas at Austin)
Myles Carroll (Ochanomizu University)
Alan Freeman (University of Manitoba, Canada)
● Closing Remarks (Shinji Yokokawa, Radhika Desai)
[Overview]
From World War II until the 1980s, Japan's economy had the highest growth rate and was more equitable among developed countries. For 30 years after the bubble burst in 1990, Japan had the lowest growth rate among developed countries and experienced a noticeable widening income gap. These lost 30 years attracted much attention as a special Japanese economic "long-term economic stagnation," tracing the stagnation of the American economy in the 1930s (Hansen's long-term stagnation theory). Entering the 2000s, not only Japan but also Europe and the United States fell into long-term economic stagnation. Economic stagnation is not a unique phenomenon in Japan but a global phenomenon, and discussions about the "long-term economic stagnation theory," including mainstream economics, are reigniting. This symposium clarifies that understanding the current long-term stagnation requires a long-term historical perspective and a geopolitical perspective of capitalism.
The symposiums revisit the phenomenon of Japanese capitalism considering the fate of the North Atlantic and developing economies and place it in a longer historical political and geopolitical economy of capitalism from a variety of political and disciplinary perspectives including, Marxian, Keynesian, Rgulationists, and World System theories.
The presentations deal with three topics that go to the heart of secular stagnation.
(1) Japanese capitalism was once an admired model of miraculous growth with a relatively egalitarian distribution of income, fell into secular stagnation in the early 1990s. The phenomenon has since fascinated observers, provoked debates, provided policy advocates elsewhere with much grist for their policy mills, yielding a range of policy proposals, some of them mutually contradictory, and, most importantly, burdened an entire population, and particularly its young. Japan’s secular stagnation has raised new questions about policy difficulties on a range of fronts -- dramatically lowered growth rate, deteriorating labor conditions, rising class and gender inequality, a profound and many-faceted crisis of social reproduction and a deepening fiscal crisis of the state -- all of which have important international ramifications.
(2) Interest in and the importance of Japan’s secular stagnation grew rapidly after 2008 as many have sought to understand the economic malaise of the North Atlantic by analogy and comparison with all or parts of the Japanese condition, particularly its monetary policy.
(3) Are the term, secular stagnation, and Japan’s experience, relevant to understanding deteriorating condition of capitalism in its homelands today? Are we facing a serious crisis like the Great Depression in the 1930s?
Robert Gordon examined “six headwinds” (inequality, education, demographics, fiscal debt, social behavior, and climate change) that exacerbate long-term economic stagnation (Gordon 2012, 2014). However, at the symposium he focused on the slowdown in technological progress following the end of the second and third industrial revolutions as a cause of secular stagnation.
Minqi Li calculates the long-term ratio of government debt to GDP, predicts a fiscal crisis in the US and China, and shows that the decline of American hegemony would lead to long-term stagnation and that China would not be the next hegemony.
Hiroshi Nishi examines the sources of aggregate labor productivity dynamics in Japan (1995–2018) and investigates the extent to which Baumol’s growth disease has affected Japanese economic performance.
Thomas Palley criticizes mainstream Keynesians who argue that a lack of demand leads to sluggish production and employment growth. Palley argues that Keynes’s General Theory (1936) was a huge step forward relative to classical economics. Still, it was also a step backward in denying capitalism’s conflictual nature.
David Kotz further develops Hansen’s state-market relation. Kotz distinguishes two types of Social Structure of Accumulation: regulated and liberal SSAs. He shows that the structural crisis phase of a liberal SSA (1929–1937 and 2007–present) gives rise to secular stagnation.