著者

二宮 健史郎

出版者

経済理論学会

雑誌

季刊経済理論 (ISSN:18825184)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.51, no.4, pp.83-95, 2015-01-20

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The recent international monetary crisis, triggered by the 2008 subprime loan crisis in the US, still casts a dark shadow over the world economy. Owing to this upheaval, the financial instability hypothesis proposed by heterodox economist Hyman P. Minsky has received renewed attention. Many mainstream economists admire Minsky's keen insight. The financial instability hypothesis and the formal mathematical models on related topics treat the cumulative debt burden as one of the causes of financial instability. In addition, the Kaleckian and stock-flow consistent models, which explicitly consider interest-bearing debt burden, have, in recent years, been extensively developed. Ninomiya and Tokuda (2011, 2012) introduced the concept of "instability of confidence" and examined the structural change of an economy. In this study, we construct macro-dynamic models that consider interest-bearing debt burdens and the instability of confidence. Furthermore, we examine financial instability and cycles based on the financial instability hypothesis and related mathematical models. This study highlights the following items as significant causes of economic instability: 1)cumulative interest-bearing debt burdens; 2)fragile financial structures; 3)and the instability of confidence. In other words, a robust financial structure plays an important role in addressing a crisis of confidence. This study also suggests that the recent policy of quantitative easing may exert harmful side effects on the economy. This study implies that some new policies and institutional frameworks are needed to construct a robust financial structure. Furthermore, we can prove that there are closed orbits in the dynamic systems by applying Hopf bifurcation theorem. Interest-bearing debt plays important role in terms of financial cycles in this study. The degree of the instability of confidence also has an important role for one of the financial cycles in this study. The financial cycles in this study are quite different from the Kaldorian business cycle.