Once again, the Japanese case is emblematic. If one tries to understand the enormous increase in the capital / income ratio in the 1980s and the sharp drop in the early 1990s, it is clear that the dominant phenomenon was the formation of a bubble in real estate and stocks, which then collapsed. But if one seeks to understand the evolution observed over the entire period 1970–2010, it is clear that volume effects outweighed price effects: the fact that private wealth in Japan rose from three years of national income in 1970 to six in 2010 is predicted almost perfectly by the flow of savings.10
