Chronic Deflation in Japan

This short paper is an abbreviated version of Nishizaki et al (2012). Japan has suffered from long-lasting but mild deflation since the latter half of the 1990s. Estimates of a standard Phillips curve indicate that a decline in inflation expectations, the negative output gap, and other factors such as a decline in import prices and a higher exchange rate, all account for some of this development. These factors, in turn, reflect various underlying structural features of the economy. This paper examines a long list of these structural features that may explain Japan's chronic deflation.Full publication: "http://ssrn.com/abstract=2248714" Globalisation and Inflation Dynamics in Asia and the Pacific