Auge y estancamiento de Japón (1955-2008). Una explicación marxista.

Maito, Esteban Ezequiel (2014): Auge y estancamiento de Japón (1955-2008). Una explicación marxista. Published in: Revista Realidad Económica No. 280 (January 2014): pp. 130-159.

Abstract

The present study analyzes the economic Japanese performance according to Marxist political economy. In that sense, an estimation of the valorization process categories is made: profit rate, surplus rate, value capital composition and turnover speed. The Japanese economy is passing through a long period of two decades with low growth related to the world and Japan´s own recent history. There is a deep and constant fall in the profit rate, and its low levels since the nineties keeps Japanese capitalism in the current standstill situation. This work also presents data that refute “profit squeeze” explanations of the profitability fall, reinforcing those related to capital over-accumulation, due to increasing fixed capital to labor force. “Profit squeeze” theories ignore both the basic foundations of the wage income participation and the fixed capital consumption tendency to growth, as a particular income expression of fixed capital relative increase.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• English Title: Rise and standstill of Japan (1955-2008). A Marxist explanation.
• Language: Spanish
• Keywords: Profit rate – Turnover speed - Surplus rate – Income distribution – Capital composition - Japan
• Subjects: G - Financial Economics > G0 - General > G01 - Financial Crises; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development > O11 - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O4 - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity > O40 - General; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O5 - Economywide Country Studies > O53 - Asia including Middle East; P - Economic Systems > P1 - Capitalist Systems > P16 - Political Economy

References

BERLEMANN, Michael & Jan-Erik WESSELHÖFT (2012) Estimating aggregate capital stocks using the perpetual inventory method: new empirical evidence for 103 countries, Dep. of Economics WP N°125,Helmut Schmidt University, Alemania.

DROUCOPOULOS, Vassilis (1981) The non-american challenge: a report on the size and growth of the world´s largest firms, Capital & Class Vol.5 N.36.

DUMÉNIL, Gerard & Dominique LEVY (2005) From prosperity to neoliberalism. Europe before and after the structural crisis of the 1970´s, en http://www.jourdan.ens.fr/levy/.

FICHTENBAUM, Rudy (1988) Business cycles, turnover and the rate of profit: an empirical test of Marxian crisis theory, Eastern Economic Journal Vol.XIII N°3.

FREEMAN, Alan (2009) What makes the US profit rate fall?, MPRA Paper N°14147, http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/14147/ .

GRINBERG, Nicolás (2011) Transformations in the Korean and Brazilian processes of capitalist development between the mid-1950s and the mid-2000s: the political economy of late industrialisation. PhD thesis, The London School of Economics and Political Science.

HORIOKA, Charles Yuji (2006) The causes of Japan´s “Lost Decade”: the role of household consumption, NBER Working Paper N°12142.

HOSHI, Takeo & Anil KASHYAP (2004) Japan´s financial crisis and economic stagnation, Journal of Economic Perspectives Vol.18 N.1.

ITOH, Makoto (1994) Is the Japanese economy in crisis?, Review of International Political Economy Vol.1 N.1.

KATZ, Claudio (2002) Una interpretación contemporánea de la ley de la tendencia decreciente de la tasa de ganancia, Revista Laberinto N°8, España.

KINDLEBERGER, Charles & Robert ALIBER (2005) Manias, panics and crashes. A history of financial crisis, John Wiley & Sons Inc., Estados Unidos.

MAC LEAN, Brian (2006) Avoiding a Great Depression but getting a Great Recession, International Journal of Political Economy Vol.35 N.1.

MAITO, Esteban Ezequiel (2013a) La Argentina y la tendencia descendente de la tasa de ganancia 1910-2011, Revista Realidad Económica N°275, Argentina.

MAITO, Esteban Ezequiel (2013b) Distribución del ingreso, rotación del capital y niveles de rentabilidad en Chile (1964-2009), Japón (1955-2008), Países Bajos (1964-2009) y Estados Unidos (1960-2009), VI Jornadas de Economía Crítica, Argentina.

MARICHAL, Carlos (2009) Nueva historia de las grandes crisis financieras, Editorial Debate, Argentina.

MARQUETTI, Adalmir et al. (2010) The profit rate in Brazil 1953-2003, Review of Radical Political Economics Vol.42 N°4, SAGE Publications.

MARX, Karl (1968a) El Capital. Tomo I, FCE, México.

MARX, Karl (1968b) El Capital. Tomo II, FCE, México.

MARX, Karl (1968c) El Capital. Tomo III, FCE, México.

SHINOZAKI, Takehisa (2006) Wage inequality in Japan 1979-2005, Japan Labor Review Vol.3 N°4.

STATISTICS BUREAU OF JAPAN - http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/index.htm .

SUN, Wenkai et. al. (2011) Understanding China´s high investment rate and FDI levels: a comparative analysis of the return to capital in China, the United States and Japan, USITC Journal of International Commerce and Economics, Estados Unidos.

TIMMER, Marcel & Bart VAN ARK (2002) “Capital formation and foreign direct investment in Korea and Japan: copying with diminishing returns?”, en Lindblad, J. (ed.) Asian growth and foreign capital: case studies for eastern Asia, Aksant, Holanda.

WEISSKOPF, Thomas (1979) Marxian crisis theory and the rate of profit in the postwar US economy, Cambridge Journal of Economics Vol.4 N°3.

YOSHINO, Michael (1974) The multinational spread of Japanese manufacturing investment since World War II, The Business History Review Vol.48 N.3.

ZACHARIAH, Dave (2009) Determinants of the average profit rate and the trajectory of capitalist economies, Bulletin of Political Economy Vol.3 N°1.