What caused Asia's largest economy, once the envy of the world, to lag behind many of the other industrial countries? And why did it take so long for Japan to recover from the bursting of its asset price bubble of the late 1980s? In this volume, a team from the International Monetary Fund...

This paper uses vector autoregressions (VARs) to investigate four explanations of the extended slump in Japanese economic activity during the 1990s: the absence of bold and consistent fiscal stimulus; limited room for expansionary monetary policy because of a liquidity trap; asset price...

This paper analyzes the welfare benefits from falling relative prices of IT (information technology) goods across a wide range of countries. We find, using two separate methodologies and datasets, that welfare benefits mainly accrue to users of IT, not their producers, because of falling...

This paper uses a VAR to investigate four possible explanations of the extended slump in Japanese economic activity over the 1990s: the absence of bold and consistent fiscal stimulus; the limited room for expansionary monetary policy due to a liquidity trap; overinvestment and debt overhang; and...

Robust GDP growth, declining unemployment, low and stable inflation, and a string of fiscal and current account surpluses: these outcomes in Canada owe much to sound macroeconomic policies, as well as to a favorable external environment. This book focuses on these policies and the economy's...