ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: Economic Controversy in Popular Discourse: The Case of Japan’s Great Stagnation
Author: Wakatabe Masazumi
This paper explores the nature and role of popular discourse in economic controversy. Economic crisis breeds controversies. Japan has experienced more than two decades of economic stagnation since the 1990s, and it is still struggling to overcome the stagnation. A series of serious economic controversies have erupted during the period of the long stagnation. They have been fought not only by academic economists, but also by policymakers, business economists, journalists, media commentators, and others. Especially in this age of democratization and media proliferation, the role of popular discourse has becoming increasingly significant: controversies have been carried out in newspapers, magazines, on TV and on the Web. However, there are not many studies in the literature which focused on the role of popular discourse in economic controversy. Thompson 1987 analyzed “popular political economy” during the early 18th century Britain, but it focused on a particular aspect of theories of exploitation and business cycles. Mata and Medema 2013 explored the economists’ public intervention, but its perspective was restricted to the Anglo-American context, and mainly to the contributions by academic economists. Wakatabe forthcoming examined economic controversies during Japan’s Great Stagnation, but it mainly focused on academic discussions. Japan suits as a good example for examining the popular discourse in economic controversies. Japan has a rich tradition of economic media, having one major economic newspaper with the circulation of 3 million copies, and three economic newsmagazines whose history date back to the early 20th century. Also Heizo Takenaka, the most successful politician during the period, is an economist, who became famous in the media discourse. Also Richard Koo’s work (Koo 2009), much mentioned work on Japan’s Great Stagnation, was the outcome of popular controversies during the period and it shows several traits of popular discourse. The paper highlights several major controversies during Japan’s Great Stagnation, and analyzes the main tenets of the popular discourse. It shows that popular discourse reveals emotions and sentiments associated with the controversy more vividly than academic discussions, hence it is potentially more important than academic discussions. References Koo, Richard C. 2009. The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics: Lessons from Japan’s great Recession. Revised and updated edition. Singapore and Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Mata, Tiago, and Steven G. Medema eds. 2013. The Economist as Public Intellectual. Durham: Duke University Press. Thompson, Noel W. 1987. The People’s Science: the Popular Political Economy of Exploitation and Crisis, 1816-34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wakatabe, Masazumi. Forthcoming. Japan’s Great Stagnation and Abenomics: Lessons for the World. New York: Macmillan.
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