福田 慎一

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to examine how inflation expectations evolved on a sustained basis in Japan. In the analysis, we define the “anchor of inflation expectations” as inflation expectations excluding the expected effects of the GDP gap and supply shocks. We examine the extent to which the “anchor of inflation expectations” has changed using Japanese forecaster‐level data. The estimated anchors increased significantly after the Bank of Japan launched unprecedented monetary easing in 2013. However, the increases were not only modest but also temporary. In contrast, the estimated anchors continued to rise after the global supply shocks became noticeable in 2022. However, the increased anchors of medium‐term inflation expectations are still about the same as in 2014–2015. The Japanese economy may not be able to achieve the 2% target on a sustainable basis without additional changes, such as an improvement in consumer sentiment through real wage increases.

This paper explores financial spillovers between emerging Asia and advanced economies using principal component analysis to extract common shocks in Asia. We first investigate stock market spillovers across the regions and find that spillovers from emerging Asia became significant after the global financial crisis. However, our industry-level analysis shows that the increased spillovers can be attributed to the first principal component (PC) in the manufacturing sector rather than to the first PC in the financial sector. This implies that the rise of the Asian manufacturing sector in the global market played a key role in enhancing the stock market spillovers. We next examine bilateral spillovers in short-term and long-term rates. In the tapering period, we find significant spillovers in long-term rates from the first PC in emerging Asia to Europe and the United States. However, these spillovers were much smaller than the stock market spillovers in magnitude.

ABSTRACT This study explores the spillover effects of Japan’s negative interest rate policy (NIRP) on Asian financial markets. Unlike quantitative and qualitative monetary easing (QQE) without a negative interest rate, the NIRP not only had limited impacts on the Japanese economy but also raised serious concern about the profitability of local financial institutions. It is, thus, likely that its spillover effects were different from those of QQE without a negative interest rate. In the analysis, we examine the spillover effects on Asian stock markets. We find that Japan’s long‐term interest rate decline had significantly positive effects on Asian stock prices in the NIRP period. The results imply that the NIRP, which lowered the long‐term rate below zero, might have benefitted Asian economies. We discuss that this might have happened because local financial institutions that lost their profit opportunities in domestic markets explored a new profit opportunity in emerging Asia after the NIRP was announced.

After Prime Minister Abe advocated a new policy regime, the Japanese yen depreciated substantially, yet Japan's exports did not show significant improvement. To explain this, the paper focuses on external demand and overseas production. Our model shows that a small change in the exchange rate has no effect on exports because of the fixed costs associated with shifting the plant location to other countries. It also implies that a change in the exchange rate has a significant effect on exports either when depreciation coincides with strong external demand or when appreciation coincides with weak external demand. We examine the validity of these theoretical implications through estimating a simple export function in Japan and calibrating our export function. Both of the experiments confirm that the model can track Japan's exports reasonably well, especially after the new policy regime started.

Abstract The Japanese economy experienced prolonged recessions during the 1990s. Previous studies suggest that evergreen lending to troubled firms known as ‘zombie firms’ distorted market discipline in terms of stabilising the economy and caused significant delays in its recovery. However, the eventual bankruptcy of zombies was rare. The purpose of this study is to investigate why zombie firms recovered in Japan. We first extend the method of Caballero et al. (2008) and identify zombies from among the listed firms. Subsequently, we investigate the nature of corporate restructuring that was effective in reviving zombie firms. Our multinomial logistic regressions suggest that reducing the employee strength of zombie firms and selling its fixed assets were beneficial in facilitating their recovery. However, corporate restructuring without accounting transparency or by discouraging incentives for managers was ineffective. In addition, corporate restructuring lacked effectiveness in the absence of favourable macroeconomic environment as well as substantial external financial support.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate what affected the post-crisis exchange rates of three ASEAN countries: Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. Our critical departure from previous studies is the use of intra-daily exchange rates. The use of the intra-daily data is useful in removing possible estimation biases which the choice of numéraire may cause. It also contrasts exchange rates when official intervention is active with those when it is not active. We find significant structural breaks in the correlations when the East Asian market is open, which suggest strong monetary and real linkages among the ASEAN countries.

The purpose of this paper is to present a new economic explanation for why a multiple‐party system can endogenously arise as a result of the electoral process. The traditional view on the electoral process (i.e., the median voter theorem) is that political parties that pursue policies in the interest of the median voter are led to a convergence of policies. However, this view cannot explain why either conservative or liberal parties win election in many democratic countries. In order to explain this paradox, the following model considers an economy with three types of parties: conservative, middle, and liberal parties. In the model, the policy of each party is assumed to be time‐consistent, so that the policy of the middle party generally leads to suboptimal outcomes for the majority voters. Thus, the “rational” majority voters try to elect the political party whose objective is biased. As a result, the electoral process may lead to a two‐party system where both conservative and liberal parties have a chance to win election.