Macroeconomic models are effective tools for central banks in economic projection, including risk assessment. In recent years, a multiple-model approach called the "Suite of Models" has become popular with central banks. This approach advocates the use of multiple models for several purposes,...

The Bank of Japan (BOJ) estimates the output gap and the potential growth rate, and uses these in judging economic and price conditions. The output gap and potential growth rate have been recently re-estimated in light of the benchmark revision of the GDP statistics at the end of 2005. At the...

Since the 1990s, fund raising behavior of Japanese companies has significantly changed. We conducted empirical studies based on the companies listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Our findings can be summarized as follows. (i) The debt-equity ratio of companies with relatively...

Economists at central banks and in academia have made various efforts to measure potential growth, something that cannot be observed directly. This review introduces some of these estimation techniques and applies them to the Japanese data. The estimates of the potential growth rate can differ...