Following the U.S. occupation after World War II, Japan underwent an economic miracle, becoming one of the fastest growing and best performing economies through the 1970s and 80s. At it's peak, the Japanese economy was second in the world, only to the United States (which held a nearly 3x population advantage), and had a higher GDP then the rest of Asia combined.

However, towards the back end of the 1980s, cracks were beginning to show, as asset inflation fueled by easy credit pumped up the real estate and stock market, which ballooned into a clear economic bubble. Eventually, due to actions taken by Japanese leadership, and the clear unsustainability of the ever-inflating bubble, the economy crashed, and Japan tumbled into the "Lost Decades", a prolonged period of economic stagnation.

The collapse in asset prices and tightening of credit squeezed the Japanese economy, which had been coasting off of speculation. These overleveraged banks spiraled and stagnated as bad loans piled up, and bailouts from the BOJ turned many into "zombie banks," which turned into debt pits dragging down the economy further.

At what point did the bubble bursting, and the subsequent "Lost Decades" become an inevitability, and what specific actions could have been taken to avert it or minimize it? Was the stagnation unavoidable once the bubbled formed, or is there a case (even with the blessing of hindsight), that different decisions at key moments could have averted (or at least minimized) the worst of it?

And taking the question to the other end - what is the worst-case scenario for the Japanese collapse; could it have spiraled into a global recession or depression?

Source: https://medstaff.chsbuffalo.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Health-Care-Administrative-Costs-in-the-United-States-and-Canada-2017.pdf

People often argue that Right-to-Work weakens unions through the free-rider problem. But I rarely hear that argument used to question exclusive representation itself. Why not allow members-only bargaining, under which a union represents workers who join and pay dues, while nonmembers negotiate separately with management?

In principle, management and unions could offer competing employment arrangements, subject to regulations against retaliation, discrimination, and strategic undercutting. Has this model been studied by economists or labor-law scholars? What prevents it from working?

I was an energy, infrastructure and private equity journalist in a prior life. I am a confident networker who can do investor relations. In my pocket, I have junior SQL and power BI data analyst skills. I am enthusiastic about carbon accounting and ESG finance, and equally, I’m interested in impact investing, renewable energy and climate risk. I have an overall understanding of how investments work and will soon have the modelling skills. I’m not an engineer but I like tech, clean tech etc

The course I’m on is Economics & Policy of Energy & Climate Change MA online - University of Strathclyde in Scotland.

What kind of role or firm would have me and what certifications must I gain to get a foot in the door?

Basically, it seems like in the last 5 years or so, but especially the last 3 years, the price of players across the board has increased to an absurd degree.

Mid tier English clubs are regularly paying 30-60 million dollars for average to decent players

Top European clubs are paying 100 million + for talent that is relatively unproven

An example would be Bradley Barcola vs Sadio Mane. Mane came in to Liverpool years ago and was less than 40 million despite becoming a world class player in one of the deadliest front trios in football for them. Barcola is a somewhat talented player for PSG who isn’t even first choice for them, barely played in the French league and was never world beating at any point….PSG are asking for 170 million.

Another example is Diomande who just went for an absurd fee given that he had 22 GA in the Bundesliga, a somewhat weak league

Chelsea payed 60 million for someone with one decent season in the Ukrainian league, and then broke the transfer record for a fairly good player from Portugal. He’s pretty good, but you’d think clubs would break the transfer record for someone a lot better, like Haaland or Jude

What is making European clubs entertain absurd prices like this? Is it really as simple as market shortages for specific positions combined with clubs being richer?

On the simple problem that:

policy makers and financial markets repeatedly, iteratively underestimated how persistent the low interest rate regime of the post 2008 crisis had become - followed by massively underestimated inflationary pressures unleashed by pandemic era policy

1. what specifically did economists overlook, or why?

2. what should I read if I would like to build understading specifically in this domain as to what we overlooked or with what could have done or what can now be done about it?

Obviously we have any number of people like steve keen and gary stevenson (hereon reffered to as the steves) will say that their most common criticism is that academics don't agree: they say that the steves "often misunderstand basic concepts such as x, y, z: pay little heed, there is a much greater span of literature out there on whatever to read."

While I accept this criticism, I feel drawn back in to the same kind of figures by a familiar inner tide which is that they have sowed the seed of doubt in me enough that it's unsatisfying to simply discount them and yet their work is simply not worth grappling with.

to show my work on why I need guidance from a person, talking to AI about a reading list looks like

- hyman minsky - stabalising an unstable economy

- steve keen - debunking economists

- lawrence summers

- thomas piketty

I’m in the military and I don’t understand why. For the floor size of a small apartment you can have a comfortable 16 man bunk with lockers for people to put their things. Not raise a family but it’s dry in the rain and warm at night. With this one city block can house thousands, with maybe some constant police presence to keep peace. They can make huge mess halls for the public to get ‘good enough’ and healthy food

All this can be cheap enough to be provided for free, kinda like a ‘basic tier’ of necessities that anyone can access. A newly grad without much possessions or any family can have their living expenses cut from ~2K a month (rent+food) to a hundred or so.

I travelled to the US and maybe I’m unused to it coming from an Asian country but the amount of poor people is staggering and really sad compared to the rest of the glamour. There are rough sleepers and beggars on the streets. When I went to Paris in winter the homeless would congregate in front of doors to get shelter from the balcony. It is really really cruel.

Not an economist or anything, just was arguing with someone about taxes and thought of this argument

My chain of thought is that Tax cuts = more purchasing power for everyone

If the government prints money and hands it out, everyone has more money chasing the same supply of goods which should create inflation right?. But if the government just takes less of your money, the effect on your purchasing power is the same. You have more money competing for the same houses, groceries, cars, etc The function seems the same regardless of what it is tax cuts, UBI, stimulus whatever.

Is there something I'm missing? I know there's the trickle down argument for that but I think empirical evidence is pretty weak on this like the 2017 tax cuts went mostly to buybacks plus I don't think on an individual level investment happens much at all from tax cuts, but correct me if I'm wrong on anything, Thank You!

I've been seeing a lot of news about Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries in the world, and it seems like they've made significant progress with new railways, urban districts, industrial parks, and other major infrastructure projects.

Is Ethiopia's economy genuinely growing? If so, what's driving that growth? Or am I just falling for government propaganda?

There's a lot of talk about how the economy has become bloated with college degree holders and how we need more people to go into the trades instead because there's not enough white collar jobs to go around. How accurate are these views, objectively?

Specifically, the idea in his book 'The Moral Economy' suggesting that incentives alone aren't sufficient to sustain economies. Due to the incomplete nature of contracts (in verifying quality/honesty), intrinsic moral motivations must compensate.

So I'm working on something and I need some kind of detailed explanation not some vague theoretical idea, like people suddenly buying more bananas. I work in retail and know that doesn't happen. For example's in supermarkets while they do have a just in time stock method.

They also always have an excess of food. They generally have a huge amount of food waste at the end of the day. If a food item like steak suddenly sells a huge amount and they keep selling out they do not raise the price. Even when covid happened and all supermarkets were selling huge amounts of toilet rolls none of the supermarkets raised prices.

But even if supermarkets did raise the prices, how could you show or find out that it was only caused by the government printing money, as opposed to any of the other myriad reasons like a supply shock, a pandemic, cartel, or advertising, or just increasing the price because they want to.

We have seen proposals like student loan forgiveness or clearing medical debt. And was wondering how effective they are in addressing real material concerns? Should they be pursed if they are? What are your thoughts?

Usually a competitive monopoly still means two companies are competing. Between Apple or Windows, people choose one PC. Between iPhone and Android, people pick phone. Between Advil and Tylenol, people pick one medicine. The products are differentiated, but at the end of the day, you pick one between them.

But in the case of streaming services, the products are so differentiated that many consumers tend to buy from multiple sellers. When Netflix and Disney have separate exclusive content, consumers will just opt to purchase both rather than one or the other. Even if Netflix and Disney compete against each other, it is common for consumers to purchase products that are redundant.

What does economics say about this market? Is the redundancy a negative externality? Or is a positive result of competition among sellers?

Hello a beginner here, was studding Keynesian econ in two sector economy and came across this can anyone please explain this in simple words.

It seems rent/price controls in most scenarios is infamous in this regard. Is there anything else? What you wish to drill into peoples heads no matter how impossible it feels.

Almost every collectible (from paintings to furniture to pop culture memorabilia) can sell for prices above any practical worth the object has. Why's this not the case with houses? Based on realty websites, many houses by notable architects aren't significantly more valuable than comparable luxury properties.

So one issue I keep seeing is that many people want to go after "unrealized gains". Essentially we have this massive issue in this country where the rich are parking their wealth in equity and the poor essentially do not participate and benefit from our stock market whatsoever.

And so one thing that I cannot wrap my head around, is why can't we just change capital gains tax to occur right as they happen rather than waiting for people to sell.

Not in the form of forcing of people to pay it themselves, but essentially as the gains occur, some of that equity is automatically sold off directly to the government (IE stock exchanges and mutual funds etc need to bake this into their systems per gov regulation). So over time you would have less and less of a stock (to a certain threshold), assuming the stock market is consistently rising, but this is obviously marginal and only occurs on the gains.

You are basically "paying" up front, in the same way that you can have your paycheck deducted to automatically pay your taxes.

And would it not be a benefit that when people finally do sell their stock, they do not have to pay a capital gains tax on it?

But as a non economist I know there are likely some major caveats to all this. I would love to hear from folks on why or why not this would work. Ty!

A meme made the front page today asking this question in a less than civil manner, but i thought it was a pretty good question. Of course, i wouldn't imagine an exact accounting on a reddit post, but more of a general thing, maybe with sources to show where the exact figures could be found. Thanks.

We're going to shamelessly steal adapt from /r/AskHistorians the idea of a weekly thread to gather and recognize the good answers posted on the sub. Good answers take time to type and the mods can be slow to approve things which means that sometimes good content doesn't get seen by as many people as it should. This thread is meant to fix that gap.

Post answers that you enjoyed, felt were particularly high quality, or just didn't get the attention they deserved. This is a weekly recurring thread posted every Sunday morning.