Name: 美國經濟學家為何對 "日本化 "情有獨鍾？ (Why US economists are obsessed with 'Japanification' | FT)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T08:40:59.000Z
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00:00:02,040 --> 00:00:04,260 Every January, more than 10,000 economists

fly somewhere in America for the conference of the American

This year it was in San Diego, which was fun,

because it was very easy to tell who was a San Diegan

The conference is also a way to figure out what

This year they looked west across the Pacific Ocean,

and they worried about something they call Japanification.

and extremely low interest rates for a long time.

Those three facts don't give you a complete picture of what's

And so Japanification is more often used as a way

to point out that these things could or will

I think "Japanification" is a useful term,

and I think what it really says is that Japan is the preview

So if you think about the percent of population

that's over age 65, what that does to consumption,

what that does to inflation, what that does to labour force

When you have a larger percent of the population over age 65,

you necessarily have a lower percentage of people working.

level of demand in the economy, and that impacts inflation.

And when we have a low, what the Fed would call r-star,

or that neutral interest rate, when that is lower,

and you need to enact other policy frameworks in order

to effectively deploy monetary policy when growth slows

The reason economists in San Diego were worried about Japan

is not because Japan is a terrible place to live.

Life expectancy, for example, is higher in Japan

than in the US, the UK, Canada, and Germany.

But when populations get older, interest rates decline,

we always used to - by raising and lowering interest rates.

So economists worried about Japanification

don't think that Japan, the place, is a catastrophe.

They're worried that their own central banks won't

have any room left to cut interest rates,

This is Ben Bernanke, the former chair of the Federal Reserve.

He basically said that if interest rates get

too low in the US, as they are in Japan, when

are caught in a very difficult position here, because

on the one hand, they can't announce too loudly

to pretend that you have a bazooka behind your back

that you can bring out and to prevent expectations

Maybe "Japanification" is the wrong word,

because actual Japan is actually a nice place to live.

And in one important way, it's a better place

We'd prefer not to call our problem "Japanification."

in the middle of the income distribution,

while people in the top are growing or improving

their situation very rapidly, whereas that's the situation

That makes sense, because he was in charge of monetary policy

the last time there was a devastating recession.

And the irony of using the word "Japanification" is that what's