Low inflation hit the Japanese economy shortly after the burst of the bubble in stocks and real estate in 1991 and has haunted the domestic economy ever since. The bubbles were partly attributable to prolonged monetary easing in the second half of 1980s, which was conducted to increase domestic...

Using data from more than 100 economies for the period of 1975 to 2005, we conduct an extensive empirical analysis of the determinants of international reserve holdings. Four groups of determinants, namely, traditional macro variables, financial variables, institutional variables, and dummy...