We use a VAR with block exogeneity to study the effects of oil price fluctuations on the economies of six ASEAN countries. Our method has an advantage over those used in the literature in that it allows us to focus on the effects of oil shocks while avoiding making unnecessary, and often ad hoc...

As Japanese firms have reduced the proportion of debts in their capital structures, they have also increased their debt maturities. Since the shorter debt maturity is more costly for the firms of poor performance, it is argued that the maturity length plays the role of signal as the theoretical...

This note provides an overview of macroeconomic problems that the Japanese economy faces after the global financial crisis and discusses Japan's policy responses, emphasizing the comparison with the United States and European countries.

I study the relationship between portfolio choice and age for the Japanese households by means of micro data and by paying particular attention to the interaction between decisions to hold stocks and real estate. The major findings are: First, equity shares in financial wealth (S/FW) increase...

This paper provides an overview of the sustainability of Japan’s government debt, emphasizing the viewpoint of market participants in the Japanese government bonds (JGB) market. The Japanese government will be able to finance its debt as long as current surpluses continue, meaning there is...

The decline in Japan's household saving rate accelerated sharply after 1998, but then decelerated again from 2003. Such nonlinear movement in the saving rate cannot be explained by the monotonic trend of population aging alone. According to the life cycle model of consumption and saving,...