Political Economy Quarterly
Online ISSN : 2189-7719
Print ISSN : 1882-5184
ISSN-L : 1882-5184
Volume 50, Issue 1
Displaying 1-34 of 34 articles from this issue
  • Article type: Cover
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages Cover1-
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (3030K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 3-
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (81K)
  • Ken-ichi MIYAMOTO
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 4-13
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The Great East Japan Earthquake caused the biggest and worst disaster that human being has not experienced in modern history. It caused both natural disaster and social disaster at same time. The overlapped disaster destroyed the regional economy in wide range area. In case of such emergency, a big disaster and war, the behavior and characteristic of the country revealed. The defects of Japanese society were exposed through the disaster and politics after the earthquake. We, Japanese will be forced to change the energy policy and regional policy, and decide what Japan should be in coming future through the process of restoration. The crucial challenge is posed to political economics through the disaster. The status quo and problems of restoration whole picture of disaster is unclear. In the theory of environmental pollution, there is saying "starting from the damage and ending up to the damage. According to the theory of environmental pollution, the measures for relief and prevention cannot to be yet and responsibility would not make clear. Unlike material damage, physical damage, especially human health, is latent unless he/she or his/her family speaks it out and appeal the rescue with the sense of human rights. Such a damage would not be raised to the surface under the circumstances that residents exposed radioactivity would be discriminated as disaster refugees. If compensation measure is not effective, the damage would not come to light. As a result, the matter has not been solved. The number of the dead is 15,869. The number of the missing people is 2,847. The government announced that economic losses from earthquake would be 18 trillion yen, but does not evaluate the disaster caused by nuclear power plants. Kenichi Ohshima estimated that the losses mounted to 8.5 trillion yen without costs for restoration like decontamination. All costs to restore may reach 50 trillion. In terms of the responsibility for natural disaster, companies and individuals take a voluntary self-responsibility to recover in principle. As the result of civic movement, the Japanese government provided 3 million yen for the reconstruction completely destroyed houses. Regarding to the disaster by nuclear power plants, Tokyo Electric Company became to take all responsibility due to the pressure of public opinion. For the TEC's compensation, Nuclear Damage Liability Facilitation Fund paid 2.5 trillion yen and the government also did 1 trillion yen on the condition that TEC is required to nationalized. The theory of disaster noted that both natural disaster and social disaster should be considered comprehensively from experience of complex disaster. The first achievement is The Theory of Disaster (1964, Keisoshobo), written by Takeo Sato, Yuzuru Okuda, Hiroshi Takahashi. This initial theory is an epoch-making achievement that theory of disaster is based on not the doctrine of function but that the Establishment. The environmental science is that the present theory of disaster can be formulated to succeed to the initial theory. Damage should be regarded as environmental destruction comprehensively. The biggest earthquake and the worst contamination by nuclear power plants in modern history thrust a crucial change challenge to environmental science.
    Download PDF (561K)
  • Fumikazu YOSHIDA
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 14-24
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    If we review the accident at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant on 11 March 2011 and examine the nuclear disaster that has followed it from the standpoint of the theories that have been developed to deal with the problems of pollution, and analyze it first from the point of view that focuses on "the causes of pollution" and "the damage that pollution causes", and then, further, to go on to consider the various theories or concepts that relate to issues of "responsibility", "countermeasures", "social cost", "relief", and finally to weigh up proposals for "an alternative policy", it should become possible to determine the extent of the problem, the issues that have to be faced and the courses of action that we need to take, the prospects for finding a solution, and a timeline that may lead to its resolution.
    Download PDF (529K)
  • Yasuo GOTO
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 25-35
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The global uprising of 2011, from the Arab Spring through the Battle of Fukushima after Nuclear Disaster, Indignant Europe to Occupy Wall Street have three common features: beginning with tenant human dignity and indignation of common people, real democracy in action, and using the power of social networks on the Internet. It opens a new world for emancipatory potential. In particular, participants in Cairo, Madrid and New York begin to occupy squares by the way of encampment, and, instead of listing up demands to existing society, form assemblies of decision-making and working groups with no leaders, or no head quarters. It creates not only new subjectivities, but also three new principles for a new society: open for all, sharing and collaboration, decentralization and autonomy. This new type of principle for cooperation is, of course, the product from the power of social networks on the Internet, for example, open source movement Linux community, which means signs from future. It is said that "Socialism failed, capitalism is bankrupt. What comes next? The answer is communism". Now, we could say: the global occupy movement opens a new beginning of great transition stage from capitalism to communism, where the mode of production is based on the two concepts of "social individual" and "general intellect" (in German, Allgemeine Arbeit) being given by Karl Marx as driving force beyond the capitalist mode of production. The post Cold War notion of "The End of History" means, in fact, a beginning of the end of capitalism as the last class society. In conclusion, the existing antagonism lies everywhere between emerging communist mode of production and old capitalist mode of production.
    Download PDF (602K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 36-40
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (358K)
  • Robert Pollin, Keiichi YAMAGUCHI
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 41-54
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The U. S. economy will need to undertake a major transition of its entire energy infrastructure in order to raise the living standard of U. S. residents over the next generation. The U. S. energy transformation will entail three major projects: 1. Investments to raise energy efficiency in buildings, industry and transportation, such that overall energy consumption in the United States falls by about 30 percent from its current level of about 95 quads to about 65 quads. We will need to reach this efficiency standard while also providing for the expansion of good job opportunities and rising average incomes. As we have seen, the proposal described here is able to achieve the necessary cuts in emissions while also expanding job opportunities. 2. Investments in clean renewable energy sources- including wind, solar, geothermal and clean biofuels. Clean renewable sources will need to supply about 15 quads of the total 65 quads needed to power the U. S. economy. 3. Delivering around 50 quads of total energy through operating the U. S. economy's existing capacity of oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear power supplies. The challenge here will be to determine how best to manage the excess capacity with non-renewable energy sources that will result when total U. S. energy consumption falls from 95 to 65 quads, with 15 quads being supplied by clean renewables. As I have discussed above, crucial considerations here include emission levels, other environmental impacts, job creation, public safety, minimizing oil imports, and the social impacts on communities of traditional energy industries facing decline. This transition to a clean energy economy will be greatly bolstered by two basic sets of findings presented in the last two sections of this paper. The first is that the transition to a clean energy economy will be a major new engine of job creation. As we have seen, investments in clean energy generates about 3 times more jobs than spending within the fossil fuel sector. As such, if the U. S. spends about $110 billion a year on investments in efficiency and expanding capacity of clean renewables, and that level of investments is exactly matched by declines in fossil fuel spending, the net effect will be to increase overall U. S. employment by 1.2 million jobs. Finally, we have seen there is no research which shows any significant negative effect on GDP growth of policies that would limit the supply of fossil fuels. Even the opponents of cap-and-trade legislation found through their modeling exercises that the impact of such measures on GDP growth will be negligible. This finding does not suggest that maintaining a high GDP growth rate should be, in itself, the foundation for raising U. S. living standards. But it does suggest that we can achieve two cornerstones of a higher living standard-good jobs and a sustainable environment-without having to also be focused on the consequences for living standards of a declining GDP growth rate. Overall then, what emerges through our examination of these questions undertaking major public and private investments in U. S. economy on clean energy-i. e. energy efficiency and clean renewables-will produce major gains for the living standard of people in the United States. U. S. residents will be able to live in a cleaner and safer environment, and the process of creating that cleaner and safer environment will also bring an expansion of good job opportunities and rising average incomes. This is the agenda for a Green New Deal in the U. S. over the next generation.
    Download PDF (727K)
  • Shohken MAWATARI
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 55-67
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    This paper proposes a set of two theories of wages induced from recent Japanese and American data. The first theory is that the demand and supply of labor will determine money wages, instead of real wages. To explain this money wage determination, this paper uses not only a labor demand curve of a representative firm, but also a labor supply curve of a representative household. The former is, not so differently from usual, reasoned from its profit maximization behavior: a firm will determine quantity of demand for labor so as to equalize the value of marginal product with the wage rate plus unit material cost. The latter is, as the worker's indifference preference between his real wage and leisure doesn't hold, deducted from the household's income earning behavior: a household will increase and determine the quantity of supply of employed labor so that its earned income would cover its cost of living. It replaces its useful and necessary unpaid domestic labor with external paid labor in order to earn money wages, which in turn causes additional living expenses as the domestic labor decreases. The supply curve of labor will be usually J-shaped while the demand curve is down-sloped. In the labor market, the equalization of demand for and supply of labor often involves 'the imperfect employment equilibrium', the equilibrium with involuntary unemployment. The second theory is that real wages are determined by three real-term factors: the labor productivity of consumers' goods industry, the household average propensity to consume, and the proportion of number of employees between producers' and consumers' goods industries. This proportion will vary mainly according to the rate of fixed capital investment. Therefore real wages will depend upon both of the two market equilibrium, those of labor market and consumers' goods. In order to demonstrate validity of these theories, besides briefly analyzing the recent Japanese labor market-its persistent trends of money wage decrease and high rate of unemployment, this paper applies the money wage theories to clarifying causes of wages differences among workers of different industries, among workers' various jobs and between male and female workers. Further it is shown that the real wage theory make it possible to explain endogenously the real wages level the existing doctrines of 'exploitation' presuppose as given. The positivist position adopted methodologically in this paper does not mean mere 'falsificationism' but 'verificationism', or rather 'confirmationism', of a theory.
    Download PDF (1598K)
  • ヤスオ ゴトウ
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 68-70
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (624K)
  • テイノスケ オオタニ
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 71-73
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (634K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 74-76
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (637K)
  • Article type: Appendix
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 77-81
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (777K)
  • Article type: Appendix
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 82-87
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (598K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 88-
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (756K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 89-
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (758K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 90-
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (753K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 91-
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (755K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 92-
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (755K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 93-
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (761K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 94-
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (752K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 95-
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (756K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 96-
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (758K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 97-
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (761K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 98-
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (755K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 99-
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (755K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 100-
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (757K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 101-
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (760K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 102-
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (756K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 103-
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (758K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 104-
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (755K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 105-
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (761K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 106-
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (760K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 107-
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (757K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2013 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 108-109
    Published: April 20, 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (779K)
feedback
Top