It is almost an acknowledgement that the stimulus so far has failed to work.
Relative to the 2 per cent inflation target, the actual consumer price index (CPI) inflation rate (excluding energy and foods) is running at 0.4 per cent as of June 2016. This is despite an almost tripling of the monetary base over the past three years. The growth rate of real GDP averaged a meagre 0.7 per cent over the 2013–15 period. Worse still, labour productivity growth remains stagnant.
Demographic trends undoubtedly present the most serious long-term challenge for the country. Given Japan’s reluctance to accept large-scale immigration, the average Japanese person will have to work more efficiently to raise output. But the rigidity of the labour market poses a major obstacle to achieving this end. Without more flexible movement of workers within and across firms, attempts at reforming corporate governance will have limited efficacy.
To be fair, the Japanese labour market has become more flexible over the past two decades with the increase in the number of non-regular workers, who now represent close to 40 per cent of the market. This is one reason why the unemployment rate has not increased significantly despite two decades of stagnation.
The increase in non-regular workers has generated a serious income inequality problem, fattening the lower end of the income distribution. At the same time, unlike in the United States, the rich have not been getting richer. Technological developments have instead seen a small number of talented individuals play pivotal roles in productivity enhancement and earn controversially high incomes. Japan’s income distribution pattern suggests that both the merits and demerits of new economies are largely absent, thanks to labour market rigidity and broader cultural factors
Japan needs specific plans to develop young talent and to effectively use both core and non-core workers. The Abe government must go beyond simply focusing on mitigating the pain of non-core workers and address the inefficiency of the core labour market.
The absence of solid growth prospects and the mountain of existing government debt also produce a fairly gloomy outlook for fiscal sustainability. Japan needs to increase taxes substantially and constrain social security spending in order to reduce the government debt-to-GDP ratio. To this end, the consumption tax rate alone will have to almost triple to at least 20–25 per cent from the current 8 per cent. Currently, neither of these options appears politically feasible.
The absence of a realistic plan to ensure fiscal sustainability has produced huge uncertainties concerning future social security benefits and taxes, which negatively affect consumption. The long period of near-zero inflation has generated significant inertia in inflation expectations.
Long-term structural problems and the legacy of two decades of stagnation have become obstacles for effective monetary easing under Abenomics. Easier monetary policies have stimulated asset prices occasionally, but have had limited effect on output and prices.
Worse still, the BoJ seems to be reaching its limits. It now owns more than one-third of the Japanese government bond (JGB) market, and this is expected to increase to almost half by the end of 2017. The functioning of the market has deteriorated significantly. It is unclear how long the bank can keep buying JGBs at the current pace.
Reflecting these quantitative easing difficulties, the BoJ made a highly unpopular decision to lower the interest rate on bank reserves into negative territory in January. Given the effective zero lower bound on bank deposit rates, declines in bank lending rates as a result of sharp declines in market interest rates have lowered net interest margins to the point where banks’ traditional business — taking deposits and lending them out — is no longer profitable.
The BoJ could ease further by buying more JGBs or by lowering the rate on bank reserves in the near term, but this would likely only bring forward the day of reckoning.
Given the technical limits of quantitative easing and negative interest rates, popular discussions of Japan’s monetary policy have shifted to the possible use of so-called ‘helicopter money’. Proposals vary, but realistically this must mean fiscal expansion for a sustained period.
The recently announced fiscal package is believed to be a stimulus of around 1 per cent of GDP in the near term. More extreme proposals of helicopter money have been raised, such as a large-scale swapping of JGBs held by the BoJ for zero coupon perpetuities. But this would effectively deprive the BoJ of its power to tighten monetary policy when necessary.
The joint stimulus will most likely be insufficient to raise inflation to the target. Yet if inflation does increase significantly, it may aggravate the fiscal situation. Higher inflation rates will allow the BoJ to taper JGB purchases and raise short-term interest rates. JGB yields could increase by more than inflation and the outlook for fiscal sustainability could worsen sharply.
The longer-term economic problems facing Japan are formidable but there is some cause for optimism. In the near term, a more solid expansion in the global economy, especially in the United States and Asia, would relieve pressure on the yen and the BoJ. In the medium term, a 2 per cent inflation rate, if achieved, could animate business spirits and trigger a substantial rise in investment and growth. But for now we will just have to wait and see.
Kazuo Ueda is Professor of Economics at The University of Tokyo.
This article appeared in the most recent edition of the East Asia Forum Quarterly, ‘Reinventing Japan’.
While this analysis is accurate in most respects, it does not go far enough in pointing out the failures of Abenomics. In almost four years Abe has hardly undertaken any significant structural or labor reforms. He has talked about the need to reduce the percentage of so called part time, temporary workers but has left it up to corporations to do this on a voluntary basis. Likewise with his so called Womenomics:leaving it up to corporations to hire and promote more females. He has done nothing about using tax incentives to motivate companies to make these changes. He has not increased the number of women in his Cabinet. Neither has he instructed various ministries in the government to hire and promote more women.
A recent suicide from excessive overtime of a young woman has highlighted, once again, the problem of such large numbers of employees being expected to work 60,80, even 100 hours a of overtime. Civil suits against these companies after someone has died or killed him/herself from overwork have done nothing to change the corporate culture. Abe has yet to pass any laws allowing for prosecution of companies which engage in these practices. So, of course it does not change.
Rather than engage in active leadership to alter the dynamics operating in corporate Japan, Abe has been more interested in passing new security laws or reinterpreting the Constitution. He has allowed Kuroda/the BOJ to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to economic policy. Finally, it is becoming apparent that monetary policy alone will not do the job. Will Abe really take the bull by the horns and institute some systematic and comprehensive economic policy? Will the Japanese consumer actually get enough of a pay raise to begin spending more?
It is incorrect to argue that the Abe government has done nothing to change the labor market. It is now discussing tax incentives to increase female labor participation and has done a lot to encourage ministries and large firms to hire more women. For example, they are under pressure to target at least 30% in terms of the share of females in new employees. The ministry of labor is after Dentsu for making their employees work more than 70, 100 hours in overtime without paying appropriate fees. The problem is, although these efforts are fine, they alone would not raise potential growth rate significantly.
With all due respect, Abe is FINALLY discussing tax incentives after all this time? It is clear that encouraging large companies and ministries to hire more women as new hires has accomplished very little. Has Abe issued a directive ordering his ministries to do this? Does he have more women in his Cabinet now than he did in 2012?
Yes, the Ministry of Labor is ‘after Dentsu’ but other companies continue to provide fraudulent documentation which under reports the extent of overtime work being required or their employees.This practice takes place all over the country. Going after one company will do little, if not nothing, to alter it.
Economics is imprecise, and so are predictions made by economists (Masahiko Takeda,Is fiscal crisis ineviable in Japan? Nov. 7, EastAsiaForum). This is an invitation good enough to elicit a comment from a layman, which I am.
The number of irregular workers has increased, and most of them work in low-pay jobs. The ratios of earnings retained by companies and/or going to shareholders as dividends have grown bigger, too. The gini co-efficient has risen though not so high as in many developed countries.
Economics and economic policy are inseparably linked with culture. Workers, regular or irregular, should be payed more.
I do not think a consumption tax hike is a good policy suggestion. Instead, the government should cut into expenses of old people’s pension and medical care services. Higher taxes should be imposed on inheritance.
Paul Samuelson said that the Japanese Ministry of Treasury recruits officials mainly from the undergraduate course of the Jurisprudence Department of Tokyo University, and that they begin to study economics at study sessions on the job and so they cannot discuss on the same specialised level with first-class Japanese economists. This custom should be abolished; and they should come at least from the graduate courses of economics.
Japanese work for too long hours a day, a week, a month and a year. They are overworked and strained; they have frayed nerves. This is ominous for cultural reproduction or reprodution of wholesome culture of Japanese society.