Are We on the Verge of a Greater Recession?
Paper Session
Saturday, Jan. 7, 2017 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Swissotel Chicago, Montreux 3
- Chair: Dominique Plihon, University of Paris 13
From Rising to Stumbling Powers: The Developing World during the Global Financial Crisis
Abstract
The economies of many countries in the developing world were--up until quite recently--the bright spots of the global economy during the financial crisis. Indeed, these economies were the engines of global growth during much of the global crisis; investors flocked to their financial markets in search of returns that were not available in the US, Europe, or Japan. But now the situation appears to be changing. The resilience of the developing world's economies is being tested by a variety of recent challenges, including the pursuit of negative interest rates by some of the world's central banks and the move away from monetary expansion by the US Fed. The real test of the developing world’s new financial resilience may well be tested in the context of growing financial turbulence, which could very well induce the next crisis.Profit, Accumulation, and Crisis: Long-Term Movement of the Profit Rate in China, Japan, and the United States
Abstract
A significant literature has established that the fall of the profit rate played an important in the structural crisis of global capitalism in the 1970s and 1980s and the revival of the profit rate contributed to the relative boom of the advanced capitalist economies from 1995 to 2007. Since then China has emerged as the center of global capital accumulation. However, there have been few studies on the movement of the profit rate in the Chinese economy. This paper measures China’s economy-wide profit rate and its contributing factors from 1980 to 2014. The movement of China’s profit rate is compared with the long-term movement of the profit rate in the United States and Japan. A comparative analysis of the three largest economies in the world helps to illustrate important developments of the global capitalist economy over the late 20th and the early 21st century.China’s Growth Regime, Production Costs and Exchange Rates: Further Relocating of Production in the Industrialized Countries?
Abstract
China faces major imbalances: over-accumulation and a rate of profit crisis, decline of cost competitiveness due to rising unit costs, huge regional imbalances and rising inequality, financial and housing bubbles, a harder-to-manage exchange rate with significant capital flight, ecological issues. A transition period is necessary to transform the growth regime based on investment and exports into a more domestic demand-led regime. Its impact at the world level will be huge, especially for the industrialized countries. This paper examines the cost competitiveness of China compared to the main emerging and industrialized countries, as well as the different exchange rate policy choices the Chinese authorities are facing. It draws conclusions concerning the place of China in today’s world and today’s crisis.Discussant(s)
John Komlos
, University of Munich
Payam Sharifi
, University of Missouri-Kansas City
Terrence McDonough
, National University of Ireland Galway
Xiao Jiang
, Denison University
JEL Classifications
- F3 - International Finance
- G1 - Asset Markets and Pricing