The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics
Lessons from Japan's Great Recession, Revised Edition
Juli 2009
368 Seiten, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
The revised edition of this highly acclaimed work presents crucial
lessons from Japan's recession that could aid the US and other
economies as they struggle to recover from the current financial
crisis.
This book is about Japan's 15-year long recession and how it
affected current theoretical thinking about its causes and cures.
It has a detailed explanation on what happened to Japan, but the
discoveries made are so far-reaching that a large portion of
economics literature will have to be modified to accommodate
another half to the macroeconomic spectrum of possibilities that
conventional theorists have overlooked.
The author developed the idea of yin and yang business cycles
where the conventional world of profit maximization is the yang and
the world of balance sheet recession, where companies are
minimizing debt, is the yin. Once so divided, many varied theories
developed in macro economics since the 1930s can be nicely
categorized into a single comprehensive theory- The Holy Grail
of Macro Economics
Preface xi
Chapter 1 Japan's Recession 1
Chapter 2 Characteristics of Balance Sheet Recessions 39
Chapter 3 The Great Depression was a Balance Sheet Recession 85
Chapter 4 Monetary, Foreign Exchange, and Fiscal Policy During a Balance Sheet Recession 125
Chapter 5 Yin and Yang Economic Cycles and the Holy Grail of Macroeconomics 157
Chapter 6 Pressure of Globalization 185
Chapter 7 Ongoing Bubbles and Balance Sheet Recessions 221
Chapter 8 World in Balance Sheet Recession 253
Appendix: Thoughts on Walras and Macroeconomics 295
References and Bibliography 309
Index 321
"...provide fascinating insights into the problems of
Japan...interesting thesis" (Wilmott.com/blogs, August
2009)
"...the Japanese policymakers who told everyone the US was
in danger of falling into a prolonged period of economic weakness
were right. To understand why this is true, you need to read a
brilliant book by Richard Koo of the Nomura Research Institute."
(Financial Times, January 2009)
"...the definitive book on Japan's decade-long recession in
the 1990s." (USA Today, March 2009)
"Books about the current global economic crisis are being
written and published by the truckload. But few - perhaps
none - are worth reading... Richard Koo, chief economist
at the Nomura Research Institute in Tokyo, a think tank attached to
Japan's biggest investment bank, watched Japan's 'lost decade' from
an excellent vantage point: he was close enough to understand the
detail, data and ways in which both corporate and political
decisions were made, and independent enough to be able to analyse
what happened in a reasonably detached and cool way."
(Survival, May 2009)
"A must-read to an understanding of what Japan went through and
what the United States and Europe may experience is Koo's latest
book The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics: Lessons from Japan's
Great Recession." (The Edge Financial Daily, December
2008)
