一路 BBS

 找回密码
 注册
搜索
查看: 1105|回复: 2
打印 上一主题 下一主题

Economics of Japan--What Is Going on?

[复制链接]
跳转到指定楼层
楼主
发表于 4-25-2015 11:59:47 | 只看该作者 回帖奖励 |倒序浏览 |阅读模式
Study of Japan has fallen out of favor, having been replaced by Sinology. So there are not many up-to-date studies (on Japan) as I would like. What triggers this posting is (3).

(1) Paul Krugman, The Japan Story. New York Times, Feb 5, 2013 (blog).
krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/the-japan-story

Note:
(a) "Dean Baker is annoyed at Robert Samuelson"
(i) Dean Baker
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Baker
(1958- ; PhD in economics from the University of Michigan)
(ii) Robert J Samuelson
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_J._Samuelson
(1945- ; received his bachelor's degree in 1967 from Harvard University, where he majored in government; He shares the same last name as Economics Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson, who also wrote for Newsweek, but they are not related)

(b) "you should never make comments on Japanese growth or lack thereof without taking demography into account. Japan has low fertility and low immigration; this has translated into a dramatically aging population and a declining working-age population. So what does Japan’s performance look like if you calculate real GDP per working-age adult? (In the picture below I define working-age as 15-64; this is one case in which you DO NOT WANT to look at FRED, which defines working age as 16+ and therefore takes no account of aging)."
(i) Federal Reserve Economic Data
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Economic_Data
(FRED; a database maintained by the Research division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis that has more than 247,000 economic time series from 79 sources)
(ii) I can not find support for Krugman's assertion that FRED "defines working age as 16+ and therefore takes no account of aging."
(A) Working Age Population: Aged 15-64: All Persons for Japan©; 2015-01: 77,359,841.376 Persons; Monthly, Seasonally Adjusted, LFWA64TTJPM647S, Updated: 2015-03-04 9:04 AM CST (source: OECD).
research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LFWA64TTJPM647S

* 2015-01 = January, 2015
* CST = Central Standard Time
* The graphic is dramatic: year 1970 (71m), peaked in mid-1990s (87m) and then dwindled to the current 77.4m.
(B) In comparison:
* US:
Working Age Population: Aged 15-64: All Persons for the United States©; 2015-02: 204,142,686.141 Persons; Monthly, Seasonally Adjusted, LFWA64TTUSM647S, Updated: 2015-04-03 11:21 AM CDT (source: OECD)
research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S
(the graphic shows increase at roughly the same rate since 1977 (135.4m))
* China defines "working age" population differently (16-60), and see its steady drop starting 2012 and each year since.  See
Fan Anqi, China's Labor Force Shrinking. China.org.cn, Jan 22, 2015.
www.china.org.cn/china/2015-01/22/content_34625754.htm

But China only gave the precise figure only for 2013 (919.54m; reported in January 2014)--and otherwise gave net changes for years before and after.

(c) "I’ve used a log scale, so you can view vertical distances as percentage changes. If we look at growth from the early 1990s to the business cycle peak in 2007, we have growth of about 1.2% per year. That’s actually not bad; you can argue that demographically adjusted, the whole tale of Japanese stagnation is a myth. What is true is that there were two long periods of depressed output relative to trend, one in the mid-1990s and another, much worse, between 1997 and 2007 [sic; should be 2007-2010]."
(i) Not "log scale" or semi-log scale, but actually linear (scale).
(ii) View the updated version -- plus comparison with US and euro area (EA)--in

Paul Krugman, Notes on Japan. New York Times, Oct 28, 2014 (blog).
krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/notes-on-japan/
(graphic heading: "Real GDP per Working-Age Resident, 1993=1")

(d) Forget "liquidity trap" broached in the latter part of the blog.
(i) You may get an general idea of what the term means in
(A) www.investopedia.com/terms/l/liquiditytrap.asp
(B) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidity_trap
(ii) However, as the preceding Wikipedia page makes clear, this is a concept of Keynesians, rejected by Austrian school of economists.




回复

使用道具 举报

沙发
 楼主| 发表于 4-25-2015 12:02:13 | 只看该作者
In chronological order.
(2)
(a) TB, The Economist explains: The Mystery of Japan’s Sluggish Exports. Economist, Oct 6, 2014 (blog).
www.economist.com/blogs/economis ... conomist-explains-5

Quote:

“WHEN a country’s currency loses nearly a quarter of its value, its exports normally pick up. * * * Yet in Japan the relationship has broken down. The yen is down by around 22% since the end of 2012, but rather than rising, export volumes actually fell by 1.5% in 2013 and by 0.4% between January and August this year. Why?

“Another [the second] explanation is that carmakers, which account for a large chunk of exports, have kept prices in local currencies high. They have used the yen’s fall to bolster their profits rather than to sell more cars.

“The most worrying explanation of all [four explanations] is that Japanese products appear to have lost competitiveness, [less and less] exports since 1986.

(b) Five months later, Japan’s exports remain languid. See

Mitsuru Obe, Growth in Japan Exports Slows Sharply, Wall Street Journal, Mar 18, 2015
www.wsj.com/articles/japans-expo ... s-demand-1426639861
(“Economists blame Japan’s export sluggishness on companies’ unwillingness to take advantage of the weaker yen to cut prices. Japanese exporters have lowered the foreign-currency prices of their products by only 7% over the past two years, even though the yen has depreciated by around 30% against the dollar during that time, according to the Bank of Japan”)

Note: View the graphic, whose heading is “Grounded; Japan's export volumes have been largely flat over the past two years."  As in everything else (such as computers), sales can be measured either by volume (unit shipped) or valu
回复 支持 反对

使用道具 举报

板凳
 楼主| 发表于 4-25-2015 12:02:30 | 只看该作者
(3)
(a) Thomas Streater, A Road Map to China’s Future from Japan’s Past; Mizuho’s Kengo Yoshida studies Japan’s history for lessons on China’s property, bank and leisure stocks. Barron's, Apr 24, 2015.
online.barrons.com/articles/a-road-map-to-chinas-future-from-japans-past-1429844646

Note:
(i) Kengo YOSHIDA 吉田 劍悟
(ii) "Just before the bubble burst, Japan’s total loans [debts] to GDP peaked at around 220%."
(iii) “In 1985, after the Plaza Accord, the yen appreciated and exporters had trouble and the economy went bad. So the government decided to lower interest rates.”
(A) Five nations (France, West Germany, Japan, UK and US) signed Plaza Accord on Sept 22, 1985 at Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.  Wikipedia
(B) For the economic data, see next, which, however, did not contain Japan’s GDP growth rates in pertinent years.

Google compiles World Bank’s GDP growth rates for Korea, Japan and US--from 1961 to 2013 (inclusive)
www.google.com/publicdata/explor ... amp;hl=en&dl=en

, which shows Japan's GDP growth rates for 1985, 1986 and 1987 were 6.33, 2.83 and 4.11%, respectively (US in 1986 was just slightly better, at 3.5%).

(b) Box 1.4 Did the Plaza Accord Cause Japan's Lost Decades?  
www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2011/01/c1/box1_4.pdf

Quote:

“it [Plaza Accord] triggered an exceptionally large appreciation of the yen, amounting to 46 percent against the dollar and 30 percent in real effective terms by the end of 1986. (The deutsche mark appreciated similarly.) As a result, Japan’s export and GDP growth essentially halted in the first half of 1986.

"The [Japanese] authorities worried that higher interest rates would further strengthen the yen [higher interest rates would attract hot money from abroad coming into Japan, which inevitably cause yen appreciation (because, to park there, hot money has to been converted into local currency)] and feared that appreciation would eventually have serious effects on the economy. In the end, external demand [for Japanese goods] did indeed diminish. But it did not collapse. Real exports continued to grow in the five years after Plaza, by an average of 2½ percent a year (half the rate of the previous five years), while the current account surplus diminished by a moderate 2 percentage points of GDP. (Similarly, Germany’s currency appreciation failed to derail its export or GDP expansion, even with a smaller monetary response.)

Note:
(i) Box 1.4 appeared in
World Economic Outlook(WEO): Tensions from the Two-Speed Recovery; Unemployment, commodities, and capital flows. IMF, April 2011 (released Apr 11, 2011).
www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2011/01/

(ii) "Japan was one of the world’s fastest-growing economies for three decades but has averaged only 1.1 percent real GDP growth since 1990, while prices have steadily declined. Consequently, the size of Japan’s economy [NOMINAL GDP] today is about the same as in the early 1990s."
(A) The "real" GDP growth rate subtract inflation (usually). See generally real versus nominal value (economics)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_versus_nominal_value_(economics)
(B) Figure 1.4.1 in Box 1.4 displayed Japan’s nominal GDP (1970-2009).
(C) Real GDP in Japan (DISCONTINUED); 2011: 4,383,325 Millions of 2011 US Dollars; Annual, Not Seasonally Adjusted, JPNRGDPR, Updated: 2012-12-10 10:32 AM CST. FRED, Dec 10, 2012.
research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/JPNRGDPR
(D) In other words, Japan’s economy has been growing since 1990 at the rate of 1.1% on average (this is what real GDP means). However, in terms of (when measured with) JAPANESE YEN, Japan’s GDP now is about the same as that of 1990.

(iii) Basically (3)(a) and (b) are in accord. But (3)(b)--the IMF analysis--is scholarly, explaining that Japan’s government overreacted SEVERAL times in the wake of yen shock (Japanese: en-daka 円高) following the Plaza Accord.
(A) Japan tried monetary policy (by changing interest rates). See Japanese Recession
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Recession
(after Plaza Accord: "The [Japanese] government attempted to offset the stronger yen by drastically easing monetary policy between January 1986 and February 1987. During this period, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) cut the discount rate in half from 5 percent to 2.5 percent. Following the economic stimulus, asset prices in the real estate and stock markets inflated, creating one of the biggest financial bubbles in history. The government responded by tightening monetary policy, raising rates five times, to 6 percent in 1989 and 1990. After these increases, the market collapsed")

Read this quotation while consulting the Figure 1.4.1 (left lower panel, whose heading was "Interest Rate Policy 1984-92")--in Box 1.4 of IMF.
(B) Japan also tried fiscal policy (cut tax and/or increase government spending through budget deficit). See Clyde Haberman, Japan Pushes Stimulus Plan, New York Times, May 30, 1987
www.nytimes.com/1987/05/30/busin ... -stimulus-plan.html
(Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone['s fiscal] $43 billion package contains $23.2 billion in spending on national and local public works program, $7.1 billion in tax cuts, $5 billion to provide lower-rate housing loans, $1 billion in direct Government purchases of foreign goods [the last to trim Japan's trade surplus, which was $89.7 billion] * * * But perhaps the program's greatest significance is its indication that the Government has finally broken from the fiscal austerity that Mr Nakasone has preached since taking office in 1982. * * * It [package] would be an addition to the regular budget of $386 billion for the 1987 fiscal year that began April 1. * * * The package was considerably larger than had been anticipated")
回复 支持 反对

使用道具 举报

您需要登录后才可以回帖 登录 | 注册

本版积分规则

快速回复 返回顶部 返回列表