著者

牛嶋 俊一郎

出版者

埼玉大学経済学会

雑誌

社会科学論集 = SHAKAIKAGAKU-RONSHU (The Social Science Review) (ISSN:05597056)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.133, pp.89-120, 2011

---

In Japan, the GDP gap has been estimated by the production function. This approach reveals a long-term trend of Japanese economy, in which the GDP gap fluctuates within a narrow range, and shows the GDP gap does not closely correlate with price development. The aim of this paper is to estimate the GDP gap based on the Okun's law and show that deflation in Japan has a close relation with the GDP gap development in the long stagnation after the asset bubble burst. Unlike existing studies based on the Okun's law, this paper uses potential growth rates, a byproduct of the Okun's law coefficient instead of coefficient itself, to estimate the GDP gap due to the fact that the Okun's law coefficient is not stable over time in Japan and varies according to the estimation period. A new GDP gap estimation tested in this paper clearly shows that the Japanese economy has been suffered from a large GDP gap after the asset bubble burst and deflation is closely related to the GDP gap development.