The new Chief Economist at the IMF, Maurice Obstfeld, posed a challenging question at the end of his first major policy conference in charge last week: “Is China the new Japan?” This question has been asked before, usually in the context of the massive credit bubbles in the two economies. The deflationary lessons from Japan’s imploding bubble in the 1990s are often thought to be relevant to China’s credit bubble in the 2010s, and this story is far from over.
上周,國際貨幣基金組織(IMF)新任首席經濟學家莫里斯?奧布斯菲爾德(Maurice Obstfeld)在他負責的首個重要政策會議結束時,提出了一個挑戰性的問題:“中國會成為又一個日本么?”這個問題之前已經有人問過,而提出這個問題的背景,通常是考慮到兩個經濟體的大規模信貸泡沫。人們往往認為,1990年代日本泡沫破裂導致通縮的教訓,與中國2010年代的信貸泡沫很相關,而且事情還遠遠未到結束的時候。