Richard Koo

Richard Koo ( Chinese  辜朝明 , Pinyin Gū Cháomíng , Japanese リ チ ャ ー ド ・ ク ー ; * 1954 in Kobe ) is a Taiwanese economist . He is a consultant at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Chief Economist at the Nomura Research Institute in Tokyo, part of Nomura Holdings . Koo advised several Japanese prime ministers on economic issues, was one of the first non-Japanese to be involved in drafting Japan's five-year economic plan, and was the only non-Japanese member of the Japanese Defense Ministry's military strategy conference from 1999 to 2011.

Koo is an expert on economic research and coined the term " balance sheet recession " ( "balance sheet recession").

Life

Koo studied political science at the University of California at Berkeley (bachelor's degree in 1976) and received his master's degree in economics from Johns Hopkins University in 1979. From 1981 he worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York . In 1984 he moved to the Nomura Research Institute.

Since 1998 he has been visiting professor at Waseda University in Tokyo.

plant

Koo has studied the aftermath of the credit bubble burst in Japan in 1990 . After Koo, it took Japan 15 years for the private sector to contribute to Japanese growth as the Japanese government cut government spending in 1997, following the IMF's recommendations , causing a recession. Japan's recession has shown that in such crisis situations companies do not try to maximize profits, but rather to minimize debt in order to increase their creditworthiness.

Koo takes the position that in the wake of the financial crisis, the state must ensure growth through investments, since the private sector is currently saving. In addition, saving in schools and in research would have serious consequences for future generations. There is a risk for the US economy that if government spending is reduced, years of deflation and recession like the one in Japan could result. Koo believes that various industrialized nations, especially the USA and Europe, are in a similar situation as a result of the financial crisis to Japan in the 1990s and that they are at risk of deflation and years of recession (see also: investment trap ).

The title of his book The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics: Lessons from Japans Great Recession is an allusion to a statement made by Ben Bernanke in 1995: "To understand the Great Depression is the Holy Grail of macroeconomics ."

According to Koo, a balance sheet recession is a downturn in the economy of an economy, after the bursting of a property or stock bubble , and not a cyclical contraction phase .

See also

• The paradox of savings
• Deflationary spiral
• Austerity

Publications

• Balance Sheet Recession: Japan's Struggle with Uncharted Economies and Its Global Implications. John Wiley & Sons, 2003, ISBN 0470821167
• The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics: Lessons from Japans Great Recession. John Wiley & Sons, 2009, ISBN 0470824948
• Act now! The Global Manifesto to Save the Economy. (with Heiner Flassbeck , Paul Davidson , James K. Galbraith & Jayati Ghosh) Westend, 2013, ISBN 978-3-86489-034-5
• The Escape from Balance Sheet Recession and the QE Trap. John Wiley & Sons, 2014

Web links

• Japan with a difference , review by Stefan Bergheim, Die Zeit , No. 41/2003
• New thinkers (48): Richard Koo and the asset recession ( memento from April 1, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), article by Mathias Ohanian in the Financial Times Germany , March 29, 2011
• Richard Koo on the website of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (Engl.)
• Richard Koo on the Nomura Research Institute website , October 2009 (Japanese)

Footnotes

1. ↑ https://www.csis.org/people/richard-koo
2. ^ Richard C. Koo, Center for Strategic and International Studies, March 2009: The Age of Balance Sheet Recessions: What Post-2008 US, Europe and China Can Learn from Japan 1990-2005. (PDF; 304 kB)
3. ↑ Mark Dittli: "Then economic growth implodes" . In: Tages-Anzeiger . December 29, 2009 (interview)
4. ↑ Koo Says US Economy Is Following Japan's Pattern . In: Bloomberg TV . August 26, 2011 (video, 3:24 min)
5. ↑ Felix Lee: National debt: "The euro crisis is fatally reminiscent of Japan" . In: The time . March 26, 2012 (interview)
6. ↑ Thomas Emerson Hall & David Ferguson: The Great Depression: an international disaster of perverse economic policies. University of Michigan, 1998, p. 2.