著者

柴垣 和夫

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.3, pp.32-43, 2014-10-20 (Released:2017-04-25)

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A new feature of economic policy in advanced capitalist countries since Lehman Shock in 2008 is both of Keynesian and neo-liberalist policies have been carried out simultaneously. We can find a typical example in so called Abenomics in Japan, which are consisted of "three arrows", aggressive monetary easing, massive fiscal stimulus, and structural reforms. The second is a typical Keynesian policy and the third is almost neo-liberalist one related to economic deregulations. The first arrow looks like neo-liberalist policy following to the quantity theory of money apparently, but we can estimate it as a modified Keynesian policy because it was explained by the Governor of the Bank of Japan that monetary easing was introduced to change expectation of market participants from deflation to inflation. The aim of this paper is to examine the historical background and meaning of such a phenomenon of nowadays' economic policy especially about the cyclical adjustment policy. As for the historical background, the first phase was appeared in the 1930s after the great depression. Keynesian fiscal policy such as Takahashi-Zaisei in Japan or New Deal in the US was in operation. Although these policies made a certain success in economic recovery, the precedence of the domestic equilibrium over the international one brought about severe economic and political frictions among imperial powers. The second phase was shown in the 1950〜60s. Being added monetary policy to fiscal policy, Keynesian cyclical adjustment had improved greatly. The policy-mix of fiscal and monetary policies enabled to avoid the economic crisis from business cycle. However, under the collapse of the original IMF system by the suspension of exchange between US dollar and gold in 1971, inflation rate had increased rapidly. With two events, the transition to the floating exchange rate system from the fixed one and the first Oil Crisis in 1973, advanced capitalist countries were attacked violent stagflation with double figures inflation and minus growth rate. This was the signal of the end of Keynesian's period. Failing to find any new policy to overcome stagflation, capitalist recalled the old-fashioned means of economic power based on market. It was called neo-liberalist policy, which is carried out first in UK(Thatcherism) and US (Reaganomics). Under neo-liberalist regime, the structure of the world economy has been changed dramatically accompanied with the end of the cold war, Chinese economic reform and the innovation of information & communication technologies. Passing through the transition period of the 1980s, financial and industrial globalizations have progressed under the initiative of the US in the 1990〜2000s. Financial globalization brought about crises in both of exchange and financial markets frequently. Industrial globalization promoted rapid industrialization of rising countries such as BRICs on one hand, on the other hand promoted deindustrialization of advanced capitalist countries. As a result, working conditions of laborers in advanced countries became worse and the capitalist power to control laborers was strengthened. The third phase under neo-liberalist policy was characterized by coexistence of uneasiness of financial market and stabilized capital-labor relations in industrial sectors. The conclusion of this phase, however, was the Lehman Shock as I noticed at the beginning. According to the examination above, we may conclude that there is no policy to adjust business cycle completely. Coexistence of Keynesian & neo-liberalist policy might be the confession of this fact by capitalism itself.