Major economies have embarked on various innovative means for enhancing retail payment services. These include such measures as real-time settlement of bank transfers and linking remittance information with payment information for financial electronic data interchange (EDI). In Japan, meanwhile,...

From fiscal 2010, Japan's listed companies are obliged to disclose Comprehensive Income (CI). In Japan, CI is disclosed in Statements of Comprehensive Income, which are attracting considerable attention. In the United States, Other Comprehensive Income, including gains/losses on...

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...

This paper examines the relationship between so-called commodity currencies and commodity prices in recent years. Commodity prices have fluctuated significantly during this time period. Commodity currencies -- the currencies of large commodity exporters such as Australia, Canada, Chile, and...

Structural adjustments in the labor market continue, such as reduction of bonuses, no regular increase in basic salary, and the switch from regular workers to part-time workers. The decline in household income, therefore, has still not come to a halt. Macroeconomic statistics, such as GDP...

Funding conditions in global money markets have tightened since August 2007. In various currency-denominated money markets, term funding rates have come under upward pressure because of heightened concerns about counterparty credit and liquidity risks. Although the magnitude of upward pressure...

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,...

Since the summer of 2011, foreign exchange (FX) swap-implied U.S. dollar rates have attracted attention amid a growing concern over European banks' dollar funding. In this paper, we analyze the dollar rate based on interest arbitrage and clarify the factors affecting its fluctuation. The main...

Japan's Flow of Funds Accounts Statistics (J-FFA) is a comprehensive record of developments in financial assets and liabilities in major economic sectors. The main features of the J-FFA can be summarized as follows. First, the J-FFA shows both financial transactions and the corresponding...

As international ties have been strengthened on the real economic front, global correlation has been higher in the government bond and other financial markets. Under the circumstances, Japanese banks' market risk associated with holdings of Japanese government bonds (JGBs) has been more...