This paper argues that estimation of the Phillips curve for Japan should take account of the geographic dispersion of labor-market conditions. We find evidence that the relationship between wage inflation and the unemployment rate is convex. With such convexity, wage inflation can occur when...

We examine the trends in cash usage in Japan and its substitution with noncash payment methods, such as credit cards and electronic money, using both aggregate and individual household survey data. We find that cash hoarding accounts for as much as 42% of total cash circulation in Japan. Behind...

We show that the optimal inflation target imposed on a discretionary central bank varies with the extent of fiscal decentralization. Our analysis compares two fiscal regimes for local government bond management: the partially decentralized (PD) regime where the central government determines the...

Fujiki (2003, 2006) extends the Freeman (1996) model to a two-country model, and demonstrates that elastic money supplies in foreign exchange markets yield efficiency gains in monetary equilibrium, and that several institutional designs achieve the desired elastic money supplies equally. This...

We estimate currency demand functions conditional on electronic money adoption with household-level survey data from Japan under an Instrumental Quantile Regression framework. Contrary to theoretical predictions, our results suggest that users of electronic money hold more currency than non-users.

We propose a panel data approach to disentangle the impact of “one treatment” from the “other treatment” when the observed outcomes are subject to both treatments. We use the Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake that took place on January 17, 1995 to illustrate our methodology. We find that...

This paper examines the degree of integration into world financial markets and the impacts on several key macroeconomic variables of selected East Asian economies, and draws policy implications. According to our analysis, the degrees of integration into world financial markets in those economies...

We investigate the issue of whether there was a stable money demand function for Japan in 1990's using both aggregate and disaggregate time series data. The aggregate data appears to support the contention that there was no stable money demand function. The disaggregate data shows that there was...

The paper, by means of panel data analysis, reexamines the empirical regularities strongly advocated by Alesina and Summers (1993), i.e., that (1) central bank independence and inflation are negatively correlated in industrialized countries; and that (2) central bank independence and real growth...