This Tuesday report will provide some insights into life for a westerner (me) who is working for an extended period at Kyoto University in Japan. Stick man Every night around 21:10 I hear the sounds of sticks or wooden blocks being hit together like a percussionist might do. A fairly old man walks the streets…
Japan
This Tuesday report will provide some insights into life for a westerner (me) who is working for an extended period at Kyoto University in Japan. Tourism blight I rarely go down into the tourist areas of Kyoto, that is the most popular areas around Gion and the Yasaka Shrine. I live in North Kyoto and…
The – Japanese National Institute of Population and Social Security Research – is the go-to place for understanding demographic trends in Japan. The latest revisions to the population estimates (as at 2023) show that the current population of 125.5 million will shrink to 96 odd million by 2060 and then 87 million a decade later.…
This Tuesday report will provide some insights into life for a westerner (me) who is working for an extended period at Kyoto University in Japan. Life is settling down here again – it always takes a week or so to put my Japanese shoes on so to speak and get used to the different sounds…
This Tuesday report will provide some insights into life for a westerner (me) who is working for an extended period at Kyoto University in Japan. Well I am back in Kyoto for an extended period and it is unseasonably hot and humid for October. It seems that the warm weather will endure throughout October at…
It’s Wednesday and I am mostly thinking about Japan today. In just over a week’s time, I will once again head to Japan to work at Kyoto University. I will be there for several weeks and will provide regular reports as I have in previous years of what is happening there. The LDP leadership struggle…
It’s Wednesday, so a few topics. Tomorrow, I plan to address the issue that the US economy is heading into recession. The short assessment is that it doesn’t look like it to me despite the relatively poor labour market data that came out at the end of last week. But there is certainly a lot…
I am briefly in the UK (arrived Tuesday and returning to Melbourne early Friday). We are officially launching our new book – Modern Monetary Theory: Bill and Warren’s Excellent Adventure – later this morning at the UK MMT Conference in Leeds, England. I am avoiding many of the sessions to reduce Covid risk, given the…
In our new book – Modern Monetary Theory: Bill and Warren’s Excellent Adventure – which will be launched in the UK next Wednesday, we devote a chapter to what we refer to as the Japanese irony. This relates to the fact that while the conduct of policy in Japan is justified in mainstream terms, the…
Sometimes when I am reading some story or analysis about the economy I sense a sort of glazing over effect – I just read the words as they appear on the paper and it is not until after I have read the entirety that I sort of have to pinch myself and realise that this…