The objective of this paper is two-fold. First, we describe and compare the gift and bequest (estate) tax systems in the United States and Japan. Second, we use tax data to estimate the magnitude of intergenerational transfers. The magnitude of intergenerational transfers provides aid in...

This paper characterizes the capital flows in Asia before and after the Asian currency crisis of 1997. Differences in foreign direct investment, portfolio investment, and bank lending are emphasized. There are common factors and idiosyncratic factors to the role of capital flows in the currency...

The survey data on the yen/dollar exchange rate, collected twice a month for eight years from 1985 to 1993, shows the following features. First, the expected exchange rate changes in the short horizon (one month) are of the band-wagon type while the expected changes in the long horizon (three to...

The objective of this paper is twofold. First, this paper emphasizes that in a parliamentary system, such as in Japan, election timings become endogenous, in that good economic performances tend to trigger elections. Second, impacts of international factors, such as foreign exchange reserves and...

This paper constructs a theoretical model of political business cycles in a Parliamentary system and tests predictions and hypotheses of a theoretical model against the post-war Japanese data. Unlike in a presidential system, the timing of a general election is an endogenous policy variable in a...

This paper investigates whether the Bank of Japan has practiced a monetarist rule since 1975. The Bank of Japan (BOJ) published a report in 1975, stating that it would pay close attention to money supply (M2), and in 1978 started announcing quarterly the "forecast" (targets) of monetary (M2)...

This paper analyzes the panel data of bi-weekly surveys, conducted by the Japan Center for International Finance, on the yen/dollar exchange rate expectations of forty-four institutions for two years. There are three major findings in this paper. First, market participants are found to be...

This paper investigates determinants of yen appreciation from the G5 agreement of September 1985 to the end of May, 1986. During that period, four waves of appreciation separated by calm periods are identified. For each wave and calm period, the changes in the yen/dollar exchange rate are...

In this paper, a vector autoregression model (VAR) is proposed in order to test uncovered interest parity (UIP) in the foreign exchange market. Consider a VAR system of the spot exchange rate (yen/dollar), the domestic (US) interest rate and the foreign (Japanese) interest rate, describing the...

This paper examines covered interest parity between Yen-denominated and dollar-denominated assets: Euro-yen and Euro-dollar three month deposit rates,and the representative and comparable three-month interest rates in Japan andin the U.S. An objective of this paper is to single out the portion...