抄録
Japanese macro data from 1970 to around 2000 reveal clear trends in main macroeconomic variables that economic growth rate decreased while unemployment rate, capital coefficient and labor distribution increased. However, a longer time span back to 1950 shows that the economic performances before and after 1970 were so different that the above main macroeconomic variables moved in opposite directions. People may wonder why the economy changed so much from 1970. One conjecture is that the demand change in capital accumulation contributed largely to this sharp change from 1970. The rate of capital accumulation had been decreased because, after the catching-up process, firms' investment intention decreased. As Yoshikawa (1992) pointed out, the driven force of domestic demand caused by labor movement and households increase had vanished till the first oil crisis. According to Sato (2002), "Heisei-Depression is an extension of the macroeconomic trend from 1970." Following Sato (2002)'s view, this paper built a theoretical model to see if the demand change in capital accumulation can explain the macroeconomic trends observed in the Japanese data. In the literature, the following studies are closely related to the present work. Stockhammer (2003, 2004) showed that demand change contributed to the long lasting high rate of unemployment in Europe. Cassetti (2003) discussed the relation between demand change and economic growth. The main result of the paper is that, the decrease in capital accumulation from 1970 can explain most the macroeconomic trends in this period. This contributes to the literature from the demand economy side. A more general study should put supply side factors, saving rate variation, industry structure, monetary or open economy in to consideration. Until now, there is still no clear conclusion for which side, supply or demand, is the main reason of the lasting depression from 1990s. This paper illustrated that demand change can explain this depression. However, not limited to the 1990s depression, we confirmed Sato (2002)'s prediction by showing that the 1990s depression is an extension of the macroeconomic trend from 1970. The present study reminds us that, it is needed to look into a longer period for discussing policy issue, such as the "socialization of investment" issue. This is also pointed out by Stockhammer (2004).
