As seen from the many questions we are asked and news reports, market operations by the Bank of Japan are recently the focus of much attention from the public including market participants, analysts, and the press. This paper reflects my personal effort to assist these people and many others to...

Japan's outward foreign direct investment (FDI) stock-to-GDP ratio, which has been relatively low by international comparison, has been rising steadily since the mid-2000s. A notable feature in this context is the rapid increase in FDI in the service sector. The impact of service sector firms'...

In recent years, there has been a heightened interest in cross-border workers' remittance, making this issue a subject of international discussion. Workers' remittances to developing countries exceed the amount of official aid and are comparable in amount to the inflow of foreign direct...

To what extent did the Bank of Japan's liquidity provisions reduce the premium on money market rates over the year-ends in Japan? To answer this question, we propose a simple structural model that illustrates the year-end operations and the year-end interbank money markets. Based on the...

Developments in overall margins of Japanese banks have shown no major change during the last twenty years: a slight contraction in the early 1980s, followed by a discrete expansion during the bubble period, have only served to highlight their extreme stability. Meanwhile, net overall margins...

This paper summarizes the recent discussions on the regulatory framework for operational risk capital charge, incorporating various comments that the Bank of Japan (BOJ) has received since the authors published a discussion paper titled "Internal Risk Based Approach" on the website of BOJ in...

Credit ratings have become an indispensable part of the fundamental information infrastructure of credit markets. Credit ratings cover a wide range of issuers including governments, governmental organizations, municipalities, nonfinancial companies and financial institutions, and also cover...

This paper studies the effects of financial integration on economic growth using an international panel data of 83 countries from 1974-2007. The effects of financial integration on economic growth differ considerably, depending on the type of external assets and liabilities as well as on the...

Japan's non-performing loan (NPL) problem was, previously, regarded as stemming from the formation and bursting of asset price bubbles. In recent years, however, the problem has been increasingly linked with structural adjustment pressure in the economy. This article analyzes the continuing...