Don't declare victory for Abenomics yet

With the yen's falling to below ¥100/$1 for the first time since 2009 and the Nikkei’s posting five-year highs, analysts have begun declaring victory for the Abe administration’s campaign against deflation and slow growth. Paul Krugman, the intellectual godfather of Abenomics, has not quite begun his victory dance yet, but he is optimistic that under President Kuroda Haruhiko the Bank of Japan has credibly signaled that it will continue monetary expansion until it reaches its 2% inflation target.

But it is far too early to draw conclusions about the success of Abenomics — given that deflation continues — and there remain a number of unanswered questions surrounding the Abe government’s economic program.

Ultimately, the success of an economic program must be measured not just in terms of corporate balance sheets, but also in the economic wellbeing of average citizens. If wages remain stagnant or if Japan experiences a jobless recovery, can Abenomics be declared a success? What will Abenomics mean for the Japanese worker? As a New York Times article by Hiroko Tabuchi and Graham Bowley suggests, it remains to be seen whether monetary stimulus will translate into wage hikes or higher employment — though the government is trying to encourage corporations to hire more workers and raise wages. It may also depend on whether the government is able to reverse the rise of Japan’s non-regular workforce, the short-term contract workers who enjoy few benefits, little to no job security, and virtually no opportunities for advancement. Non-regular workers comprise between a third and a half of the labor force, and as the government acknowledges, the non-regular sector constitutes a tremendous waste of human capital.

However, without a plan to overhaul the Japanese labor market, the danger exists that exhortations to raise wages will result in corporations’ raising wages for regular workers but maintaining or cutting low wages for non-regular workers, thereby deepening the inequality that exists between regular and non-regular workers. The Abe government and the LDP are not blind to this problem — last month, for example, LDP Vice President Komura Masahiko said (jp) that more had to be done to improve the status of non-regular workers and provide equal pay for equal work — but thus far it is not clear how the government plans to resolve it. (For more discussion of the problems in Japan's labor market, see here.)

The same goes for gender balance in the labor force. Noah Smith (a onetime guest blogger here) has identified how underutilized women are in the Japanese labor force, and expressed his hopes that the Abe government will act to increase female participation in the workforce. Abe has, to his credit, said the right things about gender equality.In his 19 April speech at the Japanese National Press Club (jp), Abe spoke of gender equality as not a social policy issue, but as a central piece of his growth strategy. The reality is, however, that we just don’t know what he will be able to do to change the role of women in the economy. Pretty much the only specific proposal Abe mentioned in his speech was the proposal to increase the number of women in corporate management positions, but that proposal affects a fairly small number of women. Abe is not the first politician to pledge to do something about gender inequality — for the past decade Japan has had a cabinet-level minister of state for gender equality — but we still don’t know what Abe will do to succeed where previous governments have failed.

Reforming the labor market is part of the so-called “third arrow” of the Abe program, the Abe government’s growth strategy. Once again, Abe’s rhetoric is at least encouraging — talk about public-private partnerships to move Japan from inefficient to high-value-added sectors — but until the government’s detailed plans are released in June, it is difficult to say anything conclusive about whether the Abe government will succeed at transforming Japan’s economy. It is worth noting that the Abe government is not the Koizumi government redux: whereas Koizumi talked of moving from the public sector to the private sector, in his speech last month Abe stressed the role of government in promoting growth in new sectors, industrial policy for the new century, with all the risks that come with efforts by government to pick winners. 

Abenomics (and the latest round of quantitative easing in the US) has raised fears of currency wars breaking out between Japan and its competitors. The effects of the BOJ’s stimulus program are already being felt outside of Japan. South Korea’s central bank has already moved to cut rates in light of the ongoing decline of the yen against the won, as did Australia’s central bank earlier this week. European exporters — especially Germany’s — are feeling the pain from the yen’s decline against the euro. Of course, no government will admit that a currency war is afoot, but if other governments engage in competitive devaluation with Japan the benefits to Japanese exporters from a weaker yen will be muted (if they aren’t already muted). Though the G7 finance ministers' meeting in the UK this weekend did not necessarily single out Japan for criticism, the fact that the meeting was held does suggest that Japan's policies are under close scrutiny abroad. 

There are also lingering questions about Japan’s fiscal situation. With the BOJ stepping in to buy government bonds, the Japanese government will continue to be able to borrow without having to worry about rising interest rates. But the risks of Japan’s ever-growing debt remain — and if the BOJ has in fact succeeded at convincing market actors that it is committed to raise inflation, there is the risk that it will be unable to control inflation once it has met its target, hastening the day when interest payments will rise and break the government’s budget. The government is in a race against time. It needs to trigger sustainable long-term growth that can raise tax revenue before interest rates rise. The Abe government has indicated if economic conditions are still sluggish, it will delay the consumption tax increase passed under the Noda government, thereby postponing a useful means of closing the government’s annual deficit of 10% of GDP.

Finally, the question of Japan’s demographics looms over the debate about Abenomics. Edward Hugh offers a sobering account of how demographics may forestall the Abe government’s program. Hugh basically asks whether Japan has experienced a prolonged balance-sheet recession and is in a liquidity trap, as argued by Krugman, Richard Koo, and others, or whether Japan’s persistent demand shortfall is the result of a “shrinking population trap.” Hugh is skeptical that either fiscal or monetary policy will fix Japan’s economy and that the government’s monetary policy experiment risks triggering capital flight as elderly Japanese investors seek higher returns elsewhere. Hugh’s post is lengthy and I cannot do it justice with a short summary, but it should be taken into account when deciding whether Abenomics has succeeded.

The point is that it is impossible to know whether Abenomics has succeeded until we actually see the whole program put into action. Generating inflation is, as the Abe government says, just one arrow in a comprehensive plan to rejuvenate Japan’s economy. Stock market gains and a weaker yen may be helpful indicators but they should not be mistaken for signs for change in the real economy. Similarly, promising rhetoric about reform is encouraging, but after decades during which many Japanese politicians have talked a lot about reform but failed to follow through, it seems that a “wait-and-see” attitude is still appropriate. 

Abe probably has about as favorable a political environment as a Japanese prime minister could ask for — dysfunctional opposition parties, few challengers within the LDP, and high public approval ratings — suggesting that he may well be able to follow through on his ambitious agenda. That being said, if Abe cannot reverse Japan's economic woes even with all of these factors working in his favor, I have to wonder if anyone can.