抄録
Post-Keynesian economists have given greater importance to the role of income distribution in the analysis of employment and economic growth. According to post-Keynesian theory, income distribution has a dualrole-(1) higher wage share may stimulate aggregate demand and economic growth by increasing household consumption (wage-led economy) and (2) lower profit share may result in lower investment demand (profit-led economy). Since the combined effect is ambiguous from a theoretical viewpoint, it is important to obtain empirical evidence to identify the dominant effect. Empirical researches on post-Keynesian theories have been ongoing; see for example Stockhammer and Onaran (2004), Naastepad and Strom (2006), etc. However, there are few works that use a Japanese dataset. This paper constructs a simple Kaleckian model, based on Blecker (1989) and Bhaduri and Marglin (1990), and examines the role of income distribution in the Japanese case. We estimate a structural vector auto regression (SVAR) model for five variables; profit share, capacity utilization, capital accumulation, exports, and imports. The first three variables are the key in a Kaleckian model to discuss the role of distribution with regard to demand and growth. The last two trade variables are employed to evaluate the effect of international trade. Blecker (1989) argued that increasing international price competition prevents the wage-led economy from being realized, since the higher wage costs may reduce international competitiveness. In this paper, we discuss whether Blecker's claim holds true. We find from the impulse response analysis that the Japanese economy has been a profit-led economy in the period from 1980 to 2004, i.e., a higher profit share tends to increase aggregate demand and growth. An increase in profit share depresses consumption in the short run but will raise investment demand in the long run to overcome the initial reduction. Moreover, the effect of profit share on exports is very limited and too weak to have a significant effect on production and growth. Our findings imply that workers have an incentive to accept an increase in profit share because they would be able to enjoy the long-run benefit from increasing employment and wage income, although in the short run, they must suffer from an initial reduction in the wage income. In the last part of this paper, we conduct a simulation analysis using the estimated results and discuss the possibility of this kind of coordination.
