Princes of the Yen
 Book cover (2003 ed.) | |
| Author | Richard Werner |
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| Publication date | 25 April 2003 |
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| Pages | 362[3] |
| ISBN | 978-0765610492 |
The Princes of the Yen: Japan's Central Bankers and the Transformation of the Economy (Japanese: 円の支配者) is a book by Richard Werner, a German monetary and development economist,[4][5] published in 2003, about the macroeconomic policies widely associated with the Japanese economic miracle.[3]
History
Werner spent much of the 1990s and early 2000s in Japan, where he was a visiting researcher at the Bank of Japan and the Ministry of Finance and lecturing professor at Sophia University. In 2001, Werner published Princes of the Yen published in Japanese by Soshisha, Tokyo. In 2003, the English translation was published by the academic publisher M.E. Sharpe in Armonk, New York/Routledge. In 2016, the English translation, including the "long lost last chapter", was published by Quantum Publishers in Winchester/London.
Contents
The book is an investigation of the macroeconomic driving forces behind the so-called Lost Decade, when the Japanese economy performed very poorly despite having witnessed many decades of hyper-growth. The book aimed to reveal the backroom dealings and secret plannings of the central bankers of Japan and the world in general.[5][4] The author argues that Japan's elite policymakers ("princes") deliberately engineered and later burst the 1980s asset bubble to dismantle the country's wartime-style controlled economy.[3] Central to this system was the Bank of Japan's "window guidance," which gave it real control over bank lending and, therefore, economic activity, despite widespread belief that the Ministry of Finance controlled monetary policy through interest rates.[3] The argument rests on the idea that credit supply, not interest rates, ultimately drives the economy because imperfections in credit markets make lending supply-determined.[3]
Adaptations
The book was the basis for a documentary of the same name written and directed by Michael Oswald and released by Spider's Web Films.[6][7]
See also
References
- ↑ Singer, Jason (3 December 2002). "Japan Nears Momentous Hire For Central-Bank Governor". Wall Street Journal.
"Hayami's job was to just keep the seat warm for Fukui," says Richard Werner, chief economist at Profit Research Center Ltd. in Tokyo and author of "Princes of the Yen," a book about the Bank of Japan.
- ↑ "Japan's central bank chooses continuity over tradition". The Economist. 22 February 2018.
As Richard Werner, the author of "Princes of the Yen", a history of the central bank's failures, points out, by tradition the job alternates every five years between a candidate backed by the finance ministry and a "true-born" BoJ insider.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Cha, Myung Soo (2004). "Book Reviews | Princes of the Yen". Pacific Affairs. 77 (2): 333–334.
- 1 2 "Princes of the Yen: How Japan's Central Bankers Engineered their Country's Boom and Bust". Occupy.com. 19 February 2015. Archived from the original on 25 March 2021. Retrieved 7 March 2021.
- 1 2 Totten, Bill (10 August 2003). "Pulling away the curtains from the 'Princes of the Yen'". The Japan Times. Archived from the original on 20 December 2020. Retrieved 7 March 2021.
- ↑ "Princes of the Yen (Documentary Film)". Archived from the original on 12 February 2021. Retrieved 7 March 2021 – via www.youtube.com.
- ↑ "Princes of the Yen". IMDb. 5 November 2014. Archived from the original on 26 January 2021. Retrieved 7 March 2021.