Since the financial instability during 1997-98 subsided, the Japanese corporate bond market has seen a substantial narrowing of credit spreads under the strong monetary easing by the Bank of Japan. With the narrowing of credit spreads, bond investors seem to have become cautious of a large...

This paper aims to reconsider the mechanism of the negative yen funding costs for foreign banks in the foreign exchange (FX) swap market, almost constantly observed since the adoption of the quantitative monetary easing policy in March 2001. Our main findings are as follows. First, if the...

This paper aims to analyze risk premium of corporate bonds considering skewness as an additional risk factor under a portfolio selection framework. With skewness, risk premium can be expressed as a weighted average of beta-risk under the orthodox beta-CAPM and gamma-risk arising from skewness....

On 18-19 June 2004, the BIS held a conference on "Understanding Low Inflation and Deflation". This event brought together central bankers, academics and market practitioners to exchange views on this issue (see the conference programme in this document). This paper was presented at the workshop....

This paper offers three analyses of Japan's macroeconomic experience during the post-1990 period. First, we analyze various facets of deflation during the period, arguing that the deflation of general prices has by no means been a major factor for the stagnating economy. In contrast, the...