This book argues that the Japanese social protection system should be understood as a system of "welfare through work," where employment protection has functionally substituted for income maintenance. - Publisher's Web site

This Innocenti Occasional Paper examines the counter-intuitive relationship between Japan’s continuing economic achievement and the good of its child population. Although child physical health and school attainment statistics have never looked better, changes in the structure of the family are...

The paper analyses whether communication and actual interventions in FX markets are successful in moving exchange rates over the medium- to long-run. It compares empirical evidence based on time-series analysis with that obtained from an eventstudy approach. Both the time-series approach based...

Within a two-step GARCH framework we explore the linkages between equity returns of ten sectors in the euro area, the United States and Japan, respectively. Our estimation framework allows a distinction to be made between spillover effects originating from one of the three currency areas and...

There has been much discussion of the differences in macroeconomic performance and prospects between the US, Japan and the euro area. Using Markov-switching techniques, in this paper we identify and compare specifically their major business-cycle features and examine the case for a common...