Since the late 1980s, the Japanese economy has experienced tremendous rise and fall of asset prices and large fluctuations of real economic activity, while the general price level has remained relatively stable. Such developments have raised the question of whether monetary policy should target...

Empirical studies of the information content of option prices have focused on exploring whether implied volatility contains useful information regarding the future fluctuation of underlying asset prices. If expectation formation in the option markets reflects all the currently available...

This paper attempts to view financial crises as the failure of arbitrage among financial markets, and takes the "Japan premium" phenomenon observed in offshore money markets as an important example in favor of this view. In addition, we reconsider, from this perspective, the open market...

In this paper, we examine implications of asset price fluctuations and resultant structural adjustments on sustained economic growth, based on Japan's experience since the latter half of the 1980s. In doing so, we offer the view that the protracted economic stagnation in Japan can be seen as a...

This paper quantifies the policy duration effect of the zero interest rate policy implemented in Japan from February 1999 to August 2000. Our empirical analysis shows that the policy duration effect observed in Japanese financial markets emerged via the expectations channel on the future course...

It is widely recognized that financial market globalization has been developing. International financial markets have expanded substantially, and transaction volumes in foreign exchange markets and capital markets have increased markedly. Progress in information and telecommunications...

In this paper, I survey the existing literature and examine three related questions: (1) What inflation rate constitutes the appropriate target for the central bank? (2) What is an operational definition of price stability for the conduct of monetary policy? (3) What is the policy framework for...

Many empirical studies show common empirical findings that the exchange rate pass-through to import prices in advanced countries declined in the 1990s. Some of those studies, however, draw contrasting conclusions regarding the factors behind the decline. Campa and Goldberg (2002) point out that...