Political Economy Quarterly
Online ISSN : 2189-7719
Print ISSN : 1882-5184
ISSN-L : 1882-5184
Volume 46, Issue 2
Displaying 1-13 of 13 articles from this issue
  • Article type: Cover
    2009 Volume 46 Issue 2 Pages Cover1-
    Published: July 20, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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  • Mitsugu YONEDA
    Article type: Article
    2009 Volume 46 Issue 2 Pages 3-5
    Published: July 20, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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  • Eiji SHIOMI
    Article type: Article
    2009 Volume 46 Issue 2 Pages 6-16
    Published: July 20, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    This paper examines some features of evolution and results for airline deregulation and open-sky policy in the United States. This focuses on the interaction between the domestic policy and the international policy and impact of these policies on airline markets. The dominance by major airlines in oligopoly markets have continued. The dominance raises constrains for fair competitiveness and provides the importance of competition policy applied for dominant conducts as well as airline market structure. In international airline markets, open-sky policy and strategic alliances led by U.S. have caused some changes of international airline regime. Under the liberalized markets, competition policy and anti-trust immunity have become important issues.
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  • Katsuo IWATA
    Article type: Article
    2009 Volume 46 Issue 2 Pages 17-29
    Published: July 20, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    WTO is a trade system, which extends philosophy of GATT, i.e. freedom, indiscriminateness and multilateralism. WTO requires not only free trade but also free investment, protection of intellectual property and open agricultural markets. However, agricultural markets appear more exclusive than manufacturing markets due to agriculture protection policies of developed countries. Few countries, i.e. Brazil, Argentina and Australia request full opening of agricultural markets. Asian and African countries demand open agricultural markets, while they require higher export price of agricultural products through fair trade. Smith and Ricardo illustrate principle of foreign trade. Smith's notion of absolute production cost and Ricardo's relative production cost are seen as basic principle of foreign trade policies. The relative production cost theory has been applied to international division of labour between industrial countries and agricultural countries. In the areas of sluggish capitalistic development and in former colonies agriculture has been a specific trade sector. Former colonies were forced to be suppliers of food and materials. Today developing countries are involved in international allocation by agribusinesses and multinational enterprises, thus it seems difficult for them to achieve self-reliant economic development. Developing countries demand free trade due to detriment in agricultural sector. Today's world economy pursues spread of free trade, while protection policies are taken. US subsidies and EU CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) remarkably hinder open agriculture markets, which is one of reasons why the WTO principles can not be fully enforced. The Japanese government takes full open market policy for manufacturing, while protection policy is applied to some agricultural products. Capitalism needs protection of agricultural sector for various types of land ownership, development of agriculture-related sectors, and domination of domestic markets by agribusinesses and multinational enterprises. Increasing integration of regional economies, i.e. EU and NAFTA also drives protection of regional markets. Today's international economy appears to spread WTO principles as well as to accept protection policies.
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  • Yoichi TORIHATA
    Article type: Article
    2009 Volume 46 Issue 2 Pages 30-39
    Published: July 20, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The framework of regulation and supervision which depend on market discipline has collapsed in the subprime financial crisis. It means that "the originate to distribute model" which was supposed to strengthen the safety of financial system has caused financial crisis by increasing the risk and fragility of financial system in reverse. The financial technology such as securitization and derivatives which was supposed to disperse the risk of individual financial institutions to a variety of risk taker made easier the financial institution take more risk and pursue more return. And these risk-sharing methods divide people into those who take gain and those who pay loss. As a result, "the originate to distribute model" has promoted the speculative behavior of financial institutions and paralyzed the risk management system of these institutions. Ultimately, the regulation and supervision which admit the free to maximize the speculative return in short horizon has a conflict between speculative market and regulation inevitable. According to the saying of Joseph. Stiglitz, "Markets only work well when private rewards are aligned with social returns". So, We need to regulate the speculative behavior of financial institutions by making a principles of sound compensation practices. And also, we need to regulate the practices of predatory lending by strengthening the protection for consumers, especially against the vulnerable people. Also, I agree to the saying of Mr. Stiglitz "the worst practices were those that were simultaneously exploitive and risky-loans beyond people's ability to pay, involving repeated refinancing which generate large transactions costs", I want to emphasize the need to be a usury law (and this also should apply to credit cards) limiting the effective rate of interest paid by users of the financial facility. We must curb the speculative and predatory activities of the financial institutions to make our financial system truly safety and efficient.
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  • Takeo KINOSHITA
    Article type: Article
    2009 Volume 46 Issue 2 Pages 40-50
    Published: July 20, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    While Japan has encountered the major employment crisis, it is non-regular employees on whom the job cuts have fallen the hardest. It has become clear that many prominent employers openly discriminate against those non-regular workers in terms of pay and workers' protection. Today mass of non-regular workers are synonym for working poor. In the middle of the employment crisis, we should not work out a solution at the sacrifice of those non-regular workers, especially agency workers. Now we should convert from the Japanese old-fashioned seniority system. In order to survey prospects of the conversion from the old system we need a novel framework of analysis. From my perspective, ongoing measures to promote employment taken by the Government are nothing but a temporary makeshift and are by no means aiming at a radical system change. European countries currently adopted positive manpower development policy and I think it necessary for Japan to adapt such policy to its labor market. Based on the new diagram for analysis this paper provides a basic framework for the conversion.
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  • Kenshiro NINOIMIYA
    Article type: Article
    2009 Volume 46 Issue 2 Pages 51-57
    Published: July 20, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Minsky (1982; 1986) proposed a financial instability hypothesis, which emphasized that the complicated financial structure underlying the capitalist economy generates business fluctuations and cycles. Many non-neo-classical economists have developed his idea since Taylor and O'Connell (1985), who proved that an economy would fall into a financial crisis when a decline in expected profit rates aggravated the financial condition of firms and increased household preferences for liquidity. Recent works, for example, by Chiarella, Flaschel and Semmler (2001), Asada (2006; 2007), and Ninomiya and Sanyal (2009), incorporated the dynamic equation of the debt burden of firms into non-linear economic dynamic models to indicate financial conditions. On the other hand, Bernanke and Gertler (1989) proposed a financial accelerator hypothesis, which emphasized a strong affinity between assets and economic activity. Uchida (1987) and Ueda (2006) reformulated Taylor and O'Connell's idea by introducing the notion of risk aversion into the theory of portfolio selection under uncertainty and discussed financial instability. In fact, the stock of financial assets of households increased outstandingly and households preferred to invest risky assets during the bubble economy in Japan in the latter half of the 1980s. Uchida and Ueda's discussions are interesting, but their models are mainly comparative static analysis. This paper introduces Uchida and Ueda's idea into a macrodynamic model of financial instability in an oligopolistic (or short-run) economy. We construct a model by incorporating the dynamic equations of the debt burden of firms and financial assets of households and demonstrate financial instability. For example, the stock of financial assets increases when an economy is expanding. A decrease of risk aversion leads the investors to shift portfolio preferences toward bonds that are risky assets. As a result, the increase in wealth leads to a decrease in interest rate. The decrease in interest rate promotes investment demand. The dynamic system becomes unstable in this case. This paper also demonstrates that there is a closed orbit in the model by applying the Hopf bifurcation theorem.
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  • Shun NAGATA
    Article type: Article
    2009 Volume 46 Issue 2 Pages 58-69
    Published: July 20, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In contemporary Japan, an increase in the number of atypical employment, such as part-time, fixed-term, and temporary agency workers, is a serious social problem. This paper discusses the connection between atypical employment and labor policy in Japan. The first section examines the deterioration of Japanese workers' living conditions. Their living conditions are characterized by: i) the growing poverty rate (as revealed by OECD report), ii) a rapid increase in the number of the working poor, and iii) the poor working conditions of atypical employment. The second section considers characteristics of Japanese current labor policies. It argues that because of insufficient protection of working conditions, atypical employment is in disadvantageous positions in labor market. Therefore, we need to consider policy options to improve working conditions of atypical employment. The third section considers equal treatment policies in the EU countries. Under the EU legal directives, the EU countries have promoted such policies by providing equality treatments to atypical employment. These EU directives include the directive on part-time work of 1997, that on fixed term work of 1999, and that on temporary agency work of 2008. These directives brought about improvements in employment status of atypical employment by narrowing the wage gap between typical employment and atypical employment. The analysis suggests that policies to improve working conditions of atypical employment are effective in reducing the number of the working poor.
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  • Yuka OZAWA
    Article type: Article
    2009 Volume 46 Issue 2 Pages 70-80
    Published: July 20, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In the process of reorganizing welfare states since the Oil Shocks, the priorities have shifted towards employment-oriented social policies. In fact, a number of countries have adopted the return to work policies for the welfare recipients, especially those of working age. These policies are better known under the names of "Workfare Policies" or "Activation Policies". France has adopted similar measures especially since the late 1990s when Workfare Policies were extended to recipients of the RMI in an attempt to tackle the problem of "inactivity traps". This paper examines the effects and consequences of Workfare Policies in France, especially as far as the financial incentive schemes are concerned. The examination yielded the following findings and interpretations. The purpose of the French financial incentive schemes is to increase the disposable income for the welfare recipients who find jobs by allowing them to receive benefits within a limited period after being employed. Those incentive schemes include the exemption of income tax and resident tax, and the housing allowance. However, those financial incentive schemes failed to induce the welfare recipients to return to work to become independent of welfare. According to previous studies, for the welfare recipients the return to work did not imply job security. Most jobs found by welfare recipients were lower-wage, short-term, and low-skilled ones. Finally, the financial incentive schemes contributed to reduce income inequalities in limited ways. Some studies have pointed out that these incentive schemes may result in expanding the labor market for lower-wage workers and an increase in the working poor.
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  • Masanori FURUKAWA
    Article type: Article
    2009 Volume 46 Issue 2 Pages 81-82
    Published: July 20, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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  • Masahiro KUDO
    Article type: Article
    2009 Volume 46 Issue 2 Pages 83-85
    Published: July 20, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
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  • Tomiichi HOSHINO
    Article type: Article
    2009 Volume 46 Issue 2 Pages 86-88
    Published: July 20, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
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  • Tomiichi HOSHINO
    Article type: Article
    2009 Volume 46 Issue 2 Pages 89-90
    Published: July 20, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
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