Both global and regional economic linkages have strengthened substantially over the past quarter century. We employ a dynamic factor model to analyze the implications of these linkages for the evolution of global and regional business cycles. Our model allows us to assess the roles played by the...

We examine the properties of house price fluctuations across eighteen advanced economies over the past forty years. We ask two specific questions: First, how synchronized are housing cycles across these countries? Second, what are the main shocks driving movements in global house prices? To...

This paper examines the ex-post performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that obtained small business credit scoring (SBCS) loans, using a unique Japanese firm?bank matched dataset. The ex-post probability of default after the SBCS loan was provided significantly increased for SMEs...

The BOJ recently announced its intention to purchase asset backed securities (ABS) whose underlying assets are closely related to SME economic activities. One important motivation for this policy arises from the idea that utilizing modern financial tools, i.e., securitization, can be a possible...

Replicating the degree of cross-country comovements of macroeconomic aggregates, dynamics of prices and quantities of international trade, and the behavior of consumption and labor remains an important challenge in international business cycle literature. This paper incorporates preference...

Liquidity in the Japanese government bond (JGB) market has improved significantly as a result of a series of market reforms implemented since 2000. Market liquidity is a measure of "the level of ease with which trading can be conducted in the market." In order to facilitate trading in the JGB...

AbstractReplicating the degree of cross-country comovements of macroeconomic aggregates, dynamics of prices and quantities of international trade, and the behavior of consumption and labor remains an important challenge in international business cycle literature. This paper incorporates...