Abstract
Masahiko Aoki is known in the English-speaking world as a creator and founder of comparative institutional analysis. However, Masahiko Aoki’s interests changed several times. As he himself recalled in his autobiography, Aoki made in his life seven intellectual ventures in five different fields. In this paper, I would like to address a more little-known aspect and period of Aoki’s research agenda. Although Aoki’s interests changed greatly throughout his career, there was under the surface a consistent and coherent stream: the study of organizations. His interest in organizations started from a sizable one, i.e., the centrally planned economy, to a smaller one: firms. Between these interests, there was a period where Aoki was deeply interested in the dynamic process of the market economy. During this period, I had a chance to work as his research assistant at the Kyoto Institute of Economic Research (KIER), an institute at Kyoto University. This paper is a recollection of my days in KIER with Professor Aoki.
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Notes
Chapter 2 of the pamphlet is reproduced in his autobiography Aoki (2008) as an appendix.
Research assistant in Japan at that time was a kind of tenured status. There was no term for demission. They could stay assistants until they find a better job in some of universities. There were no needs to take doctor's degree, because doctor degree was assumed to be taken after assuming several years of research status.
Contemporary Economics (Kikan Gendai Keizai) was a series of quarterly journals published by Nihon Keizai Shimbunsha from 1971 to 1985.
The expression "Sraffa's principle" is used by Sinha (2010, p. 325) and Afriat (2008, p. 48) in a different meaning than mine. In fact, Sinha used this phrase to express the objectivist principle that Sraffa thought it preferable to examine observable variables in principle. Afriat use the same words to indicate the equality of input and output values.
It is reasonable that the concept of "effective demand" disappeared in the textbooks of New Keynesians. The definition and the formulation that Keynes gave in Chapter 3 of his General Theory are disastrous, and New Keynesians are right in judging that the concept of effective demand is indefensible and inoperative. Unfortunately, they did not have the creativity to redefine the concept of effective demand, and consequently, they became a variant of neoclassical economics.
Shiozawa et al. (2018, to be published) Microfounations of Evolutionary Economics, Springer.
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Shiozawa, Y. Professor Aoki when he was interested in dynamic processes in the market economy. Evolut Inst Econ Rev 14, 541–554 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40844-017-0083-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40844-017-0083-4
