This paper reviews and evaluates the Bank of Japan (BOJ)'s monetary policy during the period 1998-2005. In doing so, it pays particular attention to the development of academic thinking on what central banks can do at or near zero interest rates and its relationship with the actual policy...

Intergovernmental fiscal relations in Japan have been strained in recent years. This paper seeks to assess the Japanese equalization transfer in the light of the theory of fiscal federalism. This paper argues that the case for equalization lies in offsetting net fiscal benefit (NFB)...

This paper extends Diamond's OG model by allowing the agents to make the retirement decision. Earning a higher wage income when young not only enables the agents to save more. It also induces more agents to retire early and gives an additional incentive to save more for retirement. This leads to...

In this paper we propose a generalized version of the RESET test for linearity in regressions with I(1) processes against various nonlinear alternatives and no cointegration. The proposed test statistic for linearity is given by the Wald statistic and its limiting distribution under the null...

This paper explores the relationship between patterns of productivity growth and the development stage of an industry, using firm-level data on the cotton spinning industry in Japan in the late nineteenth century. It is found that patterns of productivity growth depend on the development stage...

In a series of pathbreaking articles, Sylla argues that successful economies experience "financial revolutions" before they undergo their periods of rapid growth. In turn, governments generate these revolutions by putting public finance in order, and thereby giving private investors the...

Interactions between monetary and fiscal policy depend on the specification of policy variables that fiscal policy uses. However, a general rule is that when monetary policy is capable of dealing with sticky price adjustment, a primary concern of fiscal authority should be to remedy the resource...

In the fast developing digital technological revolution connectedness has emerged as a major characteristic of both firms and markets. For multinational firms in high technology area in general this raises some interesting and fundamental theoretical questions. How is connectedness to be...

We formulate nonparametric and semiparametric hypothesis testing of multivariate stationary time series in a unified fashion and propose new test statistics based on estimators of the spectral density matrix. The limiting distributions of these test statistics under null hypotheses are always...

The present situations and future prospects of the Japanese automobile industry are discussed. Selected topics in this paper include the following: analyses of the basic product-industry characteristics of the automobile (e.g., product architecture); the mature of the dynamic competition in the...