This book examines how Japan should cope with fiscal challenges, as demands on the budget from an ageing society have necessitated the reigning in of public debt and the revamp of the pension and healthcare systems. It combines insights from academic research with the views of policymakers to distil key issues that need to inform public debate.
How has the Bank of Japan (BOJ) helped shape Japan's economic growth during the past two decades? This book comprehensively explores the relations between financial market liberalization and BOJ policies and examines the ways in which these policies promoted economic growth in the 1980s. The authors argue that the structure of Japan's financial markets, particularly restrictions on money-market transactions and the key role of commercial banks in financing corporate investments, allowed the BOJ to influence Japan's economic success. The first two chapters provide the most in-depth English-language discussion of the BOJ's operating procedures and policymaker's views about how BOJ actions affect the Japanese business cycle. Chapter three explores the impact of the BOJ's distinctive window guidance policy on corporate investment, while chapter four looks at how monetary policy affects the term structure of interest rates in Japan. The final two chapters examine the overall effect of monetary policy on real aggregate economic activity. This volume will prove invaluable not only to economists interested in the technical operating procedures of the BOJ, but also to those interested in the Japanese economy and in the operation and outcome of monetary reform in general.
A rare insider's account of the inner workings of the Japanese economy, and the Bank of Japan's monetary policy, by a career central banker The Japanese economy, once the envy of the world for its dynamism and growth, lost its shine after a financial bubble burst in early 1990s and slumped further during the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. It suffered even more damage in 2011, when a severe earthquake set off the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. However, the Bank of Japan soldiered on to combat low inflation, low growth, and low interest rates, and in many ways it served as a laboratory for actions taken by central banks in other parts of the world. Masaaki Shirakawa, who led the bank as governor from 2008 to 2013, provides a rare insider's account of the workings of Japanese economic and monetary policy during this period and how it challenged mainstream economic thinking.
3 breakthrough books deliver innovative global investing strategies for today’s radically new market environment Yesterday’s investment strategies won’t cut it any more! This Collection brings together innovative new approaches from three of this generation’s most successful investors: strategies you simply won’t find elsewhere! In Buying at the Point of Maximum Pessimism: Six Value Investing Trends from China to Oil to Agriculture, Lauren Templeton Capital Management’s D. Scott Phillipsreveals today’s secret for earning consistently outsized profits: In times of maximum pessimism, recognize your long-term opportunities, and pounce! Phillips identifies six powerful value investing themes for the 2010s: emerging areas of long-term growth that become even more compelling in volatile or bear markets. In What Would Ben Graham Do Now?: A New Value Investing Playbook for a Global Age, Jeffrey Towson modernizes value investing for high-growth emerging markets, introducing techniques he mastered working for Prince Alwaleed, the “Arabian Warren Buffet.” Building on Ben Graham’s classic focus on price and quality, he integrates crucial values of political access, reputation, and capabilities that are indispensable for modern global investing. Next, he presents practical investment “playbooks” designed to help you profitably navigate tomorrow’s titanic market collisions. Finally, in The Esoteric Investor: Alternative Investments for Global Macro Investors, Vishaal B. Bhuyanreveals immense new investment opportunities hidden in the coming age wave, pension crisis, and today's massive demographic, economic, and regulatory shifts. Discover how to profit from reverse equity transactions, surprising commodities, and longevity risk markets—the $24 trillion market you've never heard of! From world-renowned leaders in alternative global investment, including D. Scott Phillips, Vishaal B. Bhuyan,and Jeffrey Towson
This book investigates the reasons for persistent public deficits and delayed fiscal reform in Japan, placing a special emphasis on political economy aspects. Japan is confronted with the need to pursue fiscal discipline for fiscal consolidation and implement structural reforms for reorganizing fiscal expenditures. Focusing on particular policy fields including social security, female labor supply, public works, and intergovernmental transfer schemes, the book clarifies economic and political elements that have hindered effective steps toward these two goals. Facing population aging and a business downturn, the Japanese government was urged to increase social security expenditures and the budget for Keynesian stimulus policies. As elucidated in the book, the institutional design has worked to over-represent the demands of elderly generations and local interest groups and to expand these expenditures. Rigorous theoretical and numerical analyses reported throughout the book consequently provide readers with insights into incentive designs and institutional reforms necessary for fiscal consolidation, also presenting points of view for public policy and public debate.
This paper investigates the short-term effects of fiscal consolidation on economic activity in OECD economies. We examine the historical record, including Budget Speeches and IMFdocuments, to identify changes in fiscal policy motivated by a desire to reduce the budget deficit and not by responding to prospective economic conditions. Using this new dataset, our estimates suggest fiscal consolidation has contractionary effects on private domestic demand and GDP. By contrast, estimates based on conventional measures of the fiscal policy stance used in the literature support the expansionary fiscal contractions hypothesis but appear to be biased toward overstating expansionary effects.
We develop new economic policy uncertainty (EPU) indices for Japan from January 1987 onwards building on the approach of Baker, Bloom and Davis (2016). Each index reflects the frequency of newspaper articles that contain certain terms pertaining to the economy, policy matters and uncertainty. Our overall EPU index co-varies positively with implied volatilities for Japanese equities, exchange rates and interest rates and with a survey-based measure of political uncertainty. The EPU index rises around contested national elections and major leadership transitions in Japan, during the Asian Financial Crisis and in reaction to the Lehman Brothers failure, U.S. debt downgrade in 2011, Brexit referendum, and Japan’s recent decision to defer a consumption tax hike. Our uncertainty indices for fiscal, monetary, trade and exchange rate policy co-vary positively but also display distinct dynamics. VAR models imply that upward EPU innovations foreshadow deteriorations in Japan’s macroeconomic performance, as reflected by impulse response functions for investment, employment and output. Our study adds to evidence that credible policy plans and strong policy frameworks can favorably influence macroeconomic performance by, in part, reducing policy uncertainty.
A large percentage of workers and firms operate in the informal economy, outside the line of sight of governments in emerging market and developing economies. This may hold back the recovery in these economies from the deep recessions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic--unless governments adopt a broad set of policies to address the challenges of widespread informality. This study is the first comprehensive analysis of the extent of informality and its implications for a durable economic recovery and for long-term development. It finds that pervasive informality is associated with significantly weaker economic outcomes--including lower government resources to combat recessions, lower per capita incomes, greater poverty, less financial development, and weaker investment and productivity.
This paper presents an overview of the book Collapse and Revival: Understanding Global Recessions and Recoveries that tracks the global business cycle through the destruction of a global recession to the renewal of recovery, drawing on four major episodes during the past half century. This book defines the terms of global recessions and recoveries; documents their main features; describes the events that take place around these episodes; puts the latest global recession and ongoing recovery in perspective; and analyzes the interactions between fluctuations in the global growth and national growth over the different phases of the global cycle.