The Japanese Political Economy最新文献

{"title":"Keynes’ denial of conflict: Why The General Theory is a misleading guide to capitalism and stagnation","authors":"T. Palley","doi":"10.1080/2329194X.2023.2212008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2329194X.2023.2212008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Keynes’ General Theory was a huge step forward relative to classical economics, but it was also a step backward in its denial of the conflictual nature of capitalism. There is need to understand Keynes’ technical contributions regarding the workings of monetary economies, but also need to understand the flaws within his thinking and the consequences thereof. Keynes made a fundamental contribution elucidating the mechanism of effective demand, and he also has claim to be the preeminent monetary theorist. However, his critique of classical economics was technocratic and focused on the interest rate mechanism. Reflecting his own liberal political economic disposition, he denied the conflictual nature of capitalism. That is the “original sin” in Keynesian economics, and it has far-reaching implications. It explains why establishment Keynesian economics struggles to explain the current tendency to stagnation. Even more importantly, it has kept economics locked into a false conception of capitalism that undermines the case for Social Democracy.","PeriodicalId":174725,"journal":{"name":"The Japanese Political Economy","volume":"132 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124883860","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Introduction: Feminism in Asia and money and finance","authors":"Nobuharu Yokokawa, Yoshie Hori","doi":"10.1080/2329194x.2022.2154456","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2329194x.2022.2154456","url":null,"abstract":"Yoshie Hori’s “Filipina women’s resilience and survival strategies in the global economy: Focusing on Japan–Philippine relations since the 1970s” investigates the historical relationship between Japan and Filipina women in two phases. In the 1970s, Japan invested directly in the Philippines and hired many Filipina workers in factories. However, Filipina workers actively participated in the union, and the union movements were radical in the Philippines. There was also solidarity with Filipina workers in Japan. As a result, the capital flight began, and the Philippine economy was severely damaged. In the second stage, Filipina women began to migrate overseas. Japan accepted them as entertainers and rural brides. Despite their difficulties, Filipina women built their own networks and settled in Japan. Fumi Iwashima’s “Making and unmaking of housework in rural Japan” highlights the process by which the concept of “housework” was established in rural Japan in the 1950s and 1960s. In Japan, the debate over housework has been exclusively about housewives in wage workers’ households. The historical and theoretical housework situation in rural Japan has not been studied. In the 1950s, neither the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry nor women’s club members understood what housework entailed. The daily activities that are considered housework differed in each survey. The time-use survey revealed that farmers’ attitudes toward housework shifted from viewing it as a junior wife’s chores, which should be done in her spare time, to shareable housework. Although gendered labor division was conserved, categorizing women’s housework visualized overworked junior wives’ work in a rural Japanese context. Fumie Ohashi, in “Social reproduction process in Colonial Hong Kong: The shifting gender relations of the intra-East Asian economy,” traces the shift in gender relations behind the social reproduction process of Hong Kong in the 20th century. Ohashi pays attention to the interwoven spheres of reproduction and production in the historical context. Until the 1950s, Hong Kong attracted spinster women from silk filatures in Canton. By the 1960s, postwar Chinese refugees and migrant women gradually replaced them, although the manufacturing sector soon absorbed them. Middle-class women started to take unpaid domestic duties with the help of imported home appliances, with the introduction of installment payments. In the mid-1970s, Hong Kong began to accept Filipino domestic workers. By focusing on reconfiguring the social reproduction process, Ohashi demonstrates that Hong Kong’s industrialization and its subsequent economic growth were conditioned in the gendered process of social reproduction.","PeriodicalId":174725,"journal":{"name":"The Japanese Political Economy","volume":"333 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115978276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Social reproduction process in colonial Hong Kong: The shifting gender relations of the intra-east Asian economy","authors":"Fumie Ohashi","doi":"10.1080/2329194X.2022.2154227","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2329194X.2022.2154227","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The purpose of this paper is to discuss the shift of gender relations behind the reconfiguration of the social reproduction in colonial Hong Kong. To achieve this, the focus is on the cross-border transfer of labor, goods, services, and information in Hong Kong and neighboring areas of East Asia. Firstly, up to the 1950s, Hong Kong’s reproductive sphere attracted the spinster women who had worked for silk filatures in Canton before Japan’s invasion. While these women took care of the everyday needs of the colonial masters and other upper-class families, they formed trans-local and trans-generational sisterhoods in order to sustain their own lives financially and physically. By the 1960s, new waves of Chinese migrant women gradually replaced the spinsters, although they soon turned to the manufacturing sector for better working conditions. Meanwhile, consumerism was encouraging Hong Kong families to introduce home appliances, typically made in Japan. The installment payment system enabled people to realize their aspirations for modernity, which in turn resulted in the reallocation of women’s labor in the reproductive sphere. By critically tracing such historical trajectories, we can understand that colonial Hong Kong’s industrialization and its subsequent economic growth was conditioned in the gendered process of the social reproduction.","PeriodicalId":174725,"journal":{"name":"The Japanese Political Economy","volume":"216 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115979689","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"G. A. Epstein’s critique of MMT re-estimated","authors":"M. Itoh","doi":"10.1080/2329194X.2022.2142612","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2329194X.2022.2142612","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This is a review article on G. Epstein’s new book What’s Wrong with Modern Money Theory?: A Policy Critique (2019). The first section reviews the main contributions of this book in clarifying the characteristic contents of Modern Money Theory (MMT), and their worrying limitations if applied generally in the world. The second section demonstrates that the Japanese economy in the past decades in fact cannot be a model case to support the applicability of MMT, though it is often cited as a favorable model case for MMT by MMT theorists like R. Wray. We have to wonder and rethink why mere expansive fiscal state policy in cooperation with the central bank could not successfully work for so long, especially from the view of the majority of working people. The third section argues how Marxian political economy can coordinate with such post-Keynesian research fields on monetary policy as MMT. The necessity of a more concrete level of analyses of contemporary capitalism, based on principles of the political economy like in Marx’s Capital and stages theory of capitalist development, is methodologically underlined.","PeriodicalId":174725,"journal":{"name":"The Japanese Political Economy","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125430110","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The return of inflation and the weakness of the side of production","authors":"C. Lapavitsas","doi":"10.1080/2329194X.2022.2142613","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2329194X.2022.2142613","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The acceleration of inflation in the early 2020s following the pandemic shock poses significant risks for financialised capitalism. This article argues that the root causes of inflation do not lie with excessive money creation, as is claimed by Monetarists. By drawing on Keynes’s discussion of war finance, it shows that the causes are to be found primarily in the boost to aggregate demand delivered by core countries of the world economy, while aggregate supply has been persistently weak. Analyzing the weakness of the production side requires recourse to Marxist political economy, especially the role of poor profitability. In this light, a fundamental reason for supply side weakness is the attenuation of the “internal” mechanism of capitalist accumulation in core countries as productivity growth and investment have been feeble since at least the crisis of 2007–2009. The policy options to confront rising inflation are correspondingly difficult.","PeriodicalId":174725,"journal":{"name":"The Japanese Political Economy","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133129969","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Making and unmaking of housework in Rural Japan","authors":"Fumi Iwashima","doi":"10.1080/2329194X.2022.2154228","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2329194X.2022.2154228","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper highlights the process where the notion of \"housework\" was established under the developing market economy in the 1950s and 1960s rural Japan. Analyzing time-use surveys conducted by rural women, this paper asks which tasks rural women designated as housework in their daily work and life, and how housework was experienced to Japanese rural families. Especially in the 1950s, neither the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry or women’s club members had a clear understanding of what housework entailed. The daily activities that are considered housework differed in each survey. The time-use surveys revealed that farmers’ attitude toward housework shifted from considering it as the junior wife’s chores, which should be done in her spare time, to shareable housework, which were worth doing in the working time during work hours to support labor reproduction. Although gendered labor division was conserved, categorizing women’s housework validated junior wives’ work in a rural Japanese context.","PeriodicalId":174725,"journal":{"name":"The Japanese Political Economy","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130306611","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Filipina women’s resilience and survival strategies in the global economy: Focusing on Japan–Philippines relations since the 1970s","authors":"Yoshie Hori","doi":"10.1080/2329194X.2022.2091602","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2329194X.2022.2091602","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article considers two cases of the interaction of Filipina women with Japan. The first section explains foreign direct investment has brought young Filipina women to work for wages in export processing zones. Despite the long working hours, their wages were suppressed to the minimum wage level, which did not allow them to be economically independent. So, they actively participated in illegal union activities to improve their working conditions. Japanese civil society as an international solidarity movement also supported their resistance. This was one of the triggers that made Japan reluctant to invest in the Philippines, but it also led to an increase in Filipina women’s migrants. The second section discusses Japan’s acceptance of Filipina women not as formal workers but as entertainers or “rural brides” to make up for the lack of wives among rural men. Japan tried to use Filipina women for its own convenience. Working abroad has various risks. Even if married officially, divorce and DV are not uncommon due to differences in values and language barriers with Japanese husbands. These Filipina women responded to various difficulties by forming Philippine networks in Japan, which collaborate with Japanese NGOs and people.","PeriodicalId":174725,"journal":{"name":"The Japanese Political Economy","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127040479","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Consumption tax and productive government expenditure in DSGE model","authors":"M. Hayashida, Ryoichi Namba, Hiroyuki Ono, Masaya Yasuoka","doi":"10.1080/2329194X.2022.2040367","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2329194X.2022.2040367","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Our article presents a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model to derive effects of a consumption tax rate increase. In the DSGE model, money and inflation are examined to elucidate the transitional path of policy. Results of a consumption tax rate increase are intuitive: GDP declines because of lower aggregate consumption. With a consumption tax rate increase, we consider the productive government expenditure model. In the standard DSGE model, the production function comprises inputs of capital stock and labor. Policy can change the capital stock and labor inputs to alter the production level. However, the production level can be changed by other policies. For instance, increased public investment in infrastructure by government can change the production level. After setting the DSGE model with productive government expenditure, we attempt derivation of a result. We consider the case in which additional productive government expenditure is financed by a consumption tax. In this case, compared with the case of a consumption tax increase without productive government expenditure, GDP increases even if the consumption tax rate is raised. An increase in productive government expenditure increases marginal labor productivity, thereby raising the wage rate. Consequently, by virtue of a raised wage rate, consumption can increase even if the consumption tax negatively affects aggregate consumption.","PeriodicalId":174725,"journal":{"name":"The Japanese Political Economy","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133583146","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A modern monetary theory advocate’s response to ‘modern monetary theory on money, sovereignty, and policy: A marxist critique with reference to the Eurozone and Greece’ by Costas Lapavitsas and Nicolás Aguila (2020)","authors":"Phil Armstrong","doi":"10.1080/2329194X.2022.2051720","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2329194X.2022.2051720","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The purpose of this paper is to provide a robust defence of Modern Monetary Theory’s (MMT’s) approach to money. It is argued here that, when compared to the commodity variant of the Marxist theory of money, the insights of MMT provide a superior basis from which to develop economic knowledge. In contrast to Lapavitsas and Aguila, the paper provides arguments in support of MMT’s approach which is both theoretically sound and provides satisfying explanations which are in accord with the evidence. This article also highlights the significant mischaracterisation of MMT’s approach in Lapavitsas and Aguila and shows how the authors’ failure to present an accurate picture of the MMT argument results in their critique missing the mark. Effectively, their criticism applies only to an MMT of their own creation. When Lapavitsas and Aguila turn their attention to Greece, they fail to appreciate the value of the insights provided by MMT and their lack of a detailed understanding of monetary operations in the Eurosystem leads them to make several notable errors.","PeriodicalId":174725,"journal":{"name":"The Japanese Political Economy","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127681609","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"World inequality, Latin America catching up, and the asymmetries in power","authors":"V. M. Isidro Luna","doi":"10.1080/2329194X.2022.2056058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2329194X.2022.2056058","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Despite the increase of material wealth through time, the majority of countries throughout the world have been unable to catch up consistently with the core countries. This article shows that between-country inequality has surged, and that wealthy countries can perform better than poor countries in achieving growth in the long term. Also, it demonstrates that Latin America countries have not caught up to the leading countries, and that between the rich and Latin countries there remains “an unbridgeable gulf,” using Harrod and Hirch’s words. Finally, using real and financial variables, this article shows that some Latin American countries have been subjected to exclusion and exploitation and cannot apply the same developmental policies as the richest countries.","PeriodicalId":174725,"journal":{"name":"The Japanese Political Economy","volume":"203 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115643108","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}