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spencer's avatar

nice piece, very informative. for the uninformed, what is the motivation behind fiscal/monetary policies that encourage zombie lending? is it as "simple" as cultural? or was it meant to allow soft off-ramps to more productive industries and it was overdone?

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Maxwell Tabarrok's avatar

I would say the cultural aspect is sustaining the practice, but the original motivation is to avoid the short term cost of a business going bankrupt and having to shut down.

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Noah's avatar

Fascinating! Thank you!

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gregvp's avatar

In most advanced countries, fertility decline seems to be mainly a problem of marriage, or pair bonding more generally. This is particularly so outside of the Nordic and Anglo countries. In Japan, I believe, births outside of marriage are vanishingly rare.

So, fertility declines as the proportion of never-marrying women rises. Japan might do well to figure out why it is rising and what to do about it.

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Abigail Olvera's avatar

Fantastic post, congrats on the 100th post!

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