This unique volume consists of studies on medium-run macroeconomics that deal with aggregate economic issues that do not easily fit into either short-run business cycles or long-term growth. This research area has emerged over last decade as a new and distinct field, and needs further explorations.The book includes theoretical as well as empirical studies that cover topics related to medium-run phenomena, such as 'growth and fluctuations', 'wages and unemployment', 'financial instabilities', ' firm size distributions and unbalanced growth', 'income inequality', etc.. Every chapter includes new approach or new findings and will be invaluable to developments in this emerging area of research.

This book analyzes education in Japan from the viewpoint of "the stagnant current Japanese economy". Tomoyuki Tamagawa, a long-time mathematics teacher in junior high school, is now a vice principal. He and Tamotsu Nakamura have written Chapter 1 of this book together because they believe that the loss of vitality in the Japanese economy is due to the problem of human capital formation in school education. Shinji Oi has worked for many years at a Japanese broadcasting station and has extensive experience in human resource development. In Chapter 2, he analyzes the relationship between optimal human capital investment and labor market mobility, based on his recognition of the importance of vocational training, or human capital investment at the firm and the necessity for good allocation of human resources. Tokuji Saita is well versed not only in the realities and practices in the financial industry but also in the financial system as a whole. In Chapter 3, based on his long experience in the financial industry, he analyzes and points out the importance of "openness" of innovation from a macroeconomic point of view.

This book provides an interesting review of Japanese monetary policies after the bubble economy. The Bank of Japan was the first central bank in advanced economies to implement the unconventional monetary policies during the period. After the Lehman shock, most advanced economies also carried out similar monetary policies to boost their own economies. The Japanese experience in the 1990s and 2000s no doubt played a key role during the period. Although various aspects of the experiences have been examined, not many books have been published based on intensive discussions between the macro and monetary theorists who have been active in academics and the practitioners who have actually been involved in monetary policy. This small but important book has focused on the Japanese experience. Evaluation of that experience found that three solid pillars are of crucial importance: theory, institution, and experience. Those form the basis of the book, without theory, no policies will be formulated and implemented, and implementation depends crucially on institution. Chapter 1 provides a clear theoretical background for the unconventional monetary policies and inflation targeting. Chapter 2 intensively explores the meaning and desirability of the independence of central banks. Chapter 3 reviews the consequences of the Japanese monetary policies in recent decades in comparison with those in other advanced economies.

This volume develops original methods of analyzing biased technological progress in the theory and empirics of economic growth and income distribution. Motivated by sharp increases in wage and income inequalities in the world since the beginning of the new century, many macroeconomists have begun to realize the importance of biased technological changes. However, the comprehensive explanations have not yet appeared. This volume analyzes the effects of factor-biased technological progress on growth and income distribution and shows that long-run trends of the capital-income ratio and capital share of income consistent with Piketty's 2014 empirical results emerge. Incorporating the modified version of induced innovation theory into the standard neoclassical growth model, it also explains the long-run fluctuations of growth and income distribution consistent with the data shown in Piketty. Introducing a wage-setting function, the neoclassical growth model is modified to account for unemployment as well as to examine the dynamics of unemployment and the labor share of income under biased technological progress. Applying a new econometric method to Japanese industrial data, the authors test the key assumptions employed and important results derived in the theoretical part of this book.