Economic Crises and Economics: Historical Investigations of Macroeconomic Though and Economic Policy in Japan during the 1970s

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I have conducted a research on the relationship between macroeconomic thought and policy in Japan during the 1970s from a historical perspective. This study emphasizes the history of economics or economic thought as well as economic history. This study has produced three sets of tentative conclusions. First, the Great Inflation during the 1970 was fostered in the intellectual atmosphere among the policymakers and economists in which inflation was allowed. Especially, they were fearful about the detrimental effects of the appreciation of the yen in exchange rate policy, and were supportive of expansionary fiscal policy with a view to building a “welfare state”. Secondly, there were several strands of economic thought in the Bank of Japan, but after the Great Inflation, the idea of price stabilization would be strengthend. Thirdly, the policymakers and the economists alike, with the exeption of minority group, took it for granted the Bretton Woods system, and did not take the possibility of moving to a flexible exchange rate system seriously.