It has been a well-known puzzle why the yen has not been used more in trade invoicing among Japanese exporters. Despite the yen's status as an only fully convertible currency in Asia, two patterns stand out as puzzling features of an excessively small share of yen invoicing: First, a strong...

Using the "firm" quotes obtained from the tick-by-tick EBS (electronic broking system that is a major trading platform for foreign exchanges) data, it is found that risk-free arbitrage opportunities--free lunch--do occur in the foreign exchange markets, but it typically last only a few seconds....

This paper reviews Japanese monetary policy over the last two decades with an emphasis on the experience of deflation from the mid-1990s. The paper is quite critical of the conduct of monetary policy, particularly from 1998 to 2003. The Bank of Japan's rhetoric was not helpful in fighting...

Recent academic papers have shown that the Japanese sovereign debt situation is not sustainable. The puzzle is that the bond rate has remained low and stable. Some suggest that the low yield can be explained by domestic residents' willingness to hold Japanese government bonds (JGBs) despite its...

Market impacts of Japanese macroeconomic announcements within minutes on the dollar/yen foreign exchange are analyzed. High-frequency data collected from the actual trading platform, EBS, are used. First, impacts on returns are analyzed. Macroeconomic statistics releases that consistently had...

The purpose of this paper is to characterize the changes in risk premium in the 1980s. A five-variable vector autoregressive model (VAR) is constructed to calculate a risk premium series in the foreign exchange market. The risk premium series is volatile and time-varying. The hypothesis of no...

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...

This paper examines intra-day patterns of the exchange rate behavior, using the %u201Cfirm%u201D bid-ask quotes and transactions of USD-JPY and Euro-USD recorded in the electronic broking system of the spot foreign exchange markets. The U-shape of intra-day activities (deals and price changes)...

Macroeconomic consequences of a large currency depreciation among the crisis-hit Asian economies had varied from one country to another. Inflation did not soar in most Asian countries, including Thailand and Korea, after the exchange rate depreciated during the crisis. Indonesia, however,...

This paper investigates how financial troubles among Japanese banks in the second half of the 1990s were viewed by the market. Two indicators, the Japan premium and the stock price index of the banking sector in Tokyo, were examined. Econometric tests were employed to see whether different kinds...