Japan has experienced prolonged economic stagnation throughout the 1990s and beyond. The government's monetary policies do not to seem to have been effective in eradicating deflation and increasing the money supply. A decrease in the money multiplier is said to be one reason for this. This paper...

Deflation continues in Japan. The domestic corporate goods price index, excluding the effect of the consumption tax, has continuously declined since 1992. Moreover, the consumer price index (excluding fresh food) has declined since 1998. Why, then, does deflation continue? What do economists...

This paper surveys the growing empirical literature on the production effects of public capital in Japan. Our survey is rather methodological, and focuses on the issue of simultaneity of public capital, or 'reverse causation' from output to public capital. Our purpose is to highlight how the...

Japan's social security expenditure has been increasing rapidly. Its ratio against the national income reached to as high as 19.6% in fiscal year 1999. The interdependency between Japan's macro-economy and her social security system is now obvious and cannot be neglected when we discuss possible...

Modern banking theories assume that banks have a specific part to play in managing some problems resulting from imperfect information on borrowers. To make their monitoring and information processing activities more efficient, banks and borrowing firms often develop long-term relationships, and...

The existing discussions about origins of the Asian crisis can be summarized into two broad views: "economic fundamentals" view and "financial panic" view. This paper attempts to distinguish these two views empirically by testing external solvency of the country using intertemporal borrowing...

This paper presents a model of economic takeoff and capital flight with free international capital flows. In the early stage of development, investments are complementary and production exhibits increasing returns to capital. The increasing returns give rise to strategic complementarity between...

1. Perspective The number of personal bankruptcy has been increasing recently in Japan. The burden of defaulted credits to Consumer Finance Companies (so called "sala-kin" in Japan) has been increasing accordingly. On the background of this trend, we can detect the following three peculiarities...

In 1820, many people thought that the development of Argentina and Chile would be as smooth as that of the United States. What went wrong? If we compare Argentina and Chile to some European countries, we can see examples of rich countries gradually receding. In 1910, the per capita GDP of...

Using industry-level data of the Japan Industrial Productivity Database (JIP Database) and firm-level data of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's Basic Survey of Enterprises, we investigate the causes of the recent slowdown in Japan's total factor productivity (TFP) growth. We show...