The paper analyses the reasons for Japan's persistently low inflation since the bursting of the Japanese bubble economy … (low inflation conundrum). It is shown that Japan experienced a structural break from a high-growth period with relatively … creation in Japan's post-bubble period. With the price level being assumed to be dependent on both goods with free market …

The paper compares the boom-and-bust cycles in Japan and Europe with respect to the reasons for excessive booms, the … characteristics of the crises, and the (potential) effects of the crisis therapies. As in Japan the consequence of expansionary … well as gradual real income losses, the economic policy implication for Japan and Europe is the timely exit from the …

to accumulate massive foreign reserves. If left unsterilized, the liquidity expansion can threaten domestic macroeconomic … stability. To contain domestic inflation these central banks absorb rather then provide liquidity in their regular monetary … surplus liquidity is less efficient, because absorbing liquidity raises the costs of monetary policy operations. By …

thereby increase surplus liquidity. East Asian central banks with more flexible exchange rate regimes also face surplus … liquidity that mainly emanates from past accumulation of foreign reserves. We show based on an augmented Barro …-Gordon-type central bank loss function that in both cases surplus liquidity limits monetary policy autonomy. In case of fixed exchange …