This paper takes an overview over the historical paths toward the Economic and Currency Union launched in EU in the post-WWII era. Namely, it covers Snakes, European Monetary System, and establishment of the Economic and Currency Union. Moreover, the paper analyzes the uniform monetary policy...

This paper focuses on the economic foreign policies explored by major organizations and countries at G20 Financial Summit held in London on April 2, 2009. This is the 2nd summit after the first meeting in November 2008. The presence of G20 over G8 has strengthened increasingly as a major...

India’s financial and capital market reforms since the early nineties have positively impacted on the performance of the banking sector and the capital market. Based on the 5,000 firm-level database, this article shows that high-quality firms—defined as those that are profitable,...

The Bank of Japan (BOJ) is attempting to overcome the mild deflation that has lasted in Japan for nearly 15 years and to achieve its 2 % price stability target. In the face of the zero lower bound on short-term interest rates, the BOJ introduced nonstandard monetary easing policy called...

The Bank of Japan (BOJ) is attempting to overcome the mild deflation that has lasted in Japan for nearly 15 years and to achieve its 2 % price stability target. In the face of the zero lower bound on short-term interest rates, the BOJ introduced nonstandard monetary easing policy called...

The subprime mortgage crisis erupted in the United States in mid-2007 and was then transformed into the global financial crisis after the failure of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. The total amount of write-downs of loans and securities by financial institutions for 2007-2010 is estimated to...

This paper analyzes mainly three issues regarding IMF functions: (1) IMF Financilg systems, (2) Changes in IMF conditionality since the East Asian crisis of 1997-98 and in the midst of the recent global financial crisis, and (3) IMF lending ability. In particular, this paper describes how the...

Since the 1990s, a decline in local revenue caused by sluggish economic growth and an increased tendency for local governments to implement expansionary fiscal policies on behalf of Japan's central government have given rise to a growing gap between autonomous revenue and total expenditure. This...

This paper provides a theoretical model to address the issue of how industrialization affects the structure of international trade. Considering both horizontal and vertical product differentiation, the model shows that intra-industry trade increases when product quality improvement emerges in a...

This paper surveys the recent literature on the Japanese distribution system to consider two propositions: first, that the system is inefficient, and second that prices of imported products tend to be higher in Japan than in other markets. Most of the literature demonstrates that the system is...