{"product_id":"financial-stabilization-in-meiji-japan-the-impact-of-the-matsukata-reform-9781501746918","title":"Financial Stabilization in Meiji Japan: The Impact of the Matsukata Reform","description":"\u003cp\u003eWith a new look at the 1880s financial reforms in Japan, Steven J. Ericson's \u003ci\u003eFinancial Stabilization in Meiji Japan \u003c\/i\u003eoverturns widely held views of the program carried out by Finance Minister Matsukata Masayoshi. As Ericson shows, rather than constituting an orthodox financial-stabilization program--a sort of precursor of the \"neoliberal\" reforms promoted by the IMF in the 1980s and 1990s--Matsukata's policies differed in significant ways from both classical economic liberalism and neoliberal orthodoxy.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Matsukata financial reform has become famous largely for the wrong reasons, and Ericson sets the record straight. He shows that Matsukata intended to pursue fiscal retrenchment and budget-balancing when he became finance minister in late 1881. Various exigencies, including foreign military crises and a worsening domestic depression, compelled him instead to\u003ci\u003e increase \u003c\/i\u003espending by running deficits and floating public bonds. Though he drastically reduced the money supply, he combined the positive and contractionary policies of his immediate predecessors to pull off a program of \"expansionary austerity\" paralleling state responses to financial crisis elsewhere in the world both then and now.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThrough a new and much-needed recalibration of this pivotal financial reform, \u003ci\u003eFinancial Stabilization in Meiji Japan\u003c\/i\u003e demonstrates that, in several ways, ranging from state-led export promotion to the creation of a government-controlled central bank, Matsukata advanced policies that were more in line with a nationalist, developmentalist approach than with a liberal economic one. Ericson shows that Matsukata Masayoshi was far from a rigid adherent of classical economic liberalism.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eSteven J. Ericson is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Dartmouth College. He is author of \u003ci\u003eThe Sound of the Whistle\u003c\/i\u003e and co-editor of \u003ci\u003eThe Treaty of Portsmouth and Its Legacies\u003c\/i\u003e. Follow him on X @ericson_steven.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Cornell University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50339386425618,"sku":"9781501746918","price":63.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_eccf8609-1780-45a8-a51c-e5d698dd773d.jpg?v=1728003558","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/financial-stabilization-in-meiji-japan-the-impact-of-the-matsukata-reform-9781501746918","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}