The Japan Society of Political Economy celebrated its 60th anniversary four years ago. Over the six decades, the JSPE has endeavored to expand the scope of explorations, from the basic theory of capitalism to the analysis of contemporary capitalism. The JSPE has committed to a critical standpoint against capitalism and mainstream economics and directed its theoretical investigations toward elucidating various issues of capitalism. Nowadays, Marxian economics and the other schools in the heterodox political economy attempt to exert ever more influence in building analytical frameworks to address real-world issues of contemporary capitalism, such as the financial crisis, globalization, and the analysis of class and inequality. 

     After the outbreaking of the pandemic COVID-19 and in particular, since 2021, a general increase in prices has been observed around the world: the revival of a high inflation problem after a long period of progressed economic globalization and the low inflation prevailed in the advanced countries since the 1990s. Even Japan cannot be exceptional, though it has been recognized as being suffered from long stagnation and deflation during the recent 30 years. Indeed, the consumer price index grew by 4.0% in December 2022, which is the highest growth since the 2nd oil crisis. As these trends in prices are significant and had never been observed before in nearly half a century, they have attracted great attention from both mainstream and heterodox economists.

     It was also over the half-century that the great transformation of the capitalist economy has been observed, such as the regime shift from Keynesianism to neoliberalism; globalization; and informatization and financialization of capitalism. Nowadays, the worldwide supply chain conducted and operated by multinational corporations becomes dominant in major sectors of production, which has been supported by the significant development of information and communication technologies, including the Internet. Moreover, the economic transactions in financial sectors are much more significant and expand faster than those in the real economy, which leads to economic crises frequently occurring due to financial shocks. Correspondingly, new idiosyncratic policy schemes, such as Quantitative Easing and expansionary physical policy, have been regularly applied to rescue such crises and even the recent shocks of the global pandemic of COVID-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

     Given this recent transformation of the capitalist economy, one of our goals in the 71st Annual Conference of JSPE is to promote the analysis of the present worldwide high inflation from the perspective of political economy, which would encourage a comprehensive understanding of the present regime of the capitalist economy. We aim to deepen discussions about the price fluctuations in the contemporary capitalist economy, in particular, regarding the real features as well as the structural mechanism of these price movements, and their impacts on citizens' lives, from both theoretical and empirical perspectives.

JSPE invites proposals for its international sessions -- topics relating to the general theme for the plenary session and reflecting the tradition and analytical perspective of JSPE which includes:

(a) Critical accounts of the current situations of “deadlocks” of capitalism:  neoliberal globalization, the global financial crisis, economic development, inequality, socialism, gender, environment, and global climate change;

(b) The future of the capitalist system and alternatives to the capitalism: major conceptual challenges for critical political economy

(c) Critical analysis of current political-economic problems and policy challenges, 

(d) Basic theories of political economy

*Proposals of other topics are also welcome

※Please note : The international session(s) will be held in a hybrid of face-to-face and online.

Language 

International sessions will be held mainly in English. 

* If you hope other languages, please let us know for advice.

Submission Procedures and the Deadline

Proposals should reach the JSPE International Committee at the latest by May 8, 2023, by e-mail to: jspeintl(at)googlegroups.com

When submitting your proposal, please include:

(a) The title of the proposed paper;

(b) Your name and academic affiliation;

(c) Your e-mail and postal address;

(d) An abstract (up to 500 words).

(e) Desired language other than English, if any. 

(f) Desired style of participation: online or face-to-face.

* Notification of acceptance will be sent by 30 June.