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 …

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 …