Japan defaulted on its public debts only once throughout its modern history, after World War II (WWII). How did Japan lose its ability to sustain its public debts? This paper explores the sustainability of public debts in Japan before and during WWII. First, this paper reviews the brief history...

Departing from the gold standard was the necessary condition for early recovery from the Great Depression in 1930s (Eichengreen and Sachs[1985]). Then, was it the sufficient condition for an independent monetary policy? I explore Japan's monetary policy during the interwar period, focusing on...

Temin [1989] and Eichengreen [1992] argue that monetary policy played a key role in each country's economic performance during the Great Depression, and that some European policymakers hesitated to pursue an expansionary monetary policy even after departing from gold. Why did these policymakers...

Why did policymakers adopt the gold standard? Although previous research has identified ex post effects of gold standard adoption on trade and bond yields, few studies have sought to understand whether these were the actual outcomes of interest to policymakers at the time of adoption. We examine...

This paper assesses the effectiveness of unonventional monetary policy on the macro ecnomy. It focuses on the Japanese economy during the Bank of Japan's quantitative easing policy period, and analyzes the effects of monetary policy shocks and systematic monetary policy using the vector...

This study aims at understanding regional growth dynamics in Japan using nonstationary panel data. Since the panel unit root test does not adequately produce a detailed picture of the development of Japanese prefectures, we follow a panel cointegration approach using the PANIC method. We find...

The New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) is a key building block in many modern macroeconomic models. This study assesses the empirical fit of the NKPC in Japan by estimating a variety of its specifications. Some empirical results suggest that introducing nominal interest rates into the pure...

Since the beginning of the 1990s, Japanese inflation has been relatively stable with slight declines, while output has remained volatile with a prolonged stagnation. This paper attempts to explore possible explanations for these macroeconomic facts based on the aggregate demand and supply...

Studies using the dynamic panel regression approach have found the speed of income convergence among the world and regional economies to be high. For example, Lee et al. (1997, 1998) report the income convergence speed to be 30% per annum. This note argues that their estimates may be seriously...

Lee and Chinn (2006) and Chinn and Lee (2009) decomposed current account and real exchange rate into temporary and permanent shocks and argued that a temporary shock creates the combination of a current account surplus (deficit) and real exchange rate depreciation (appreciation). This paper...