This study explores economic aspects of the market for long term care (LTC) with a special focus on Japan. First, we describe the LTC system in Japan as presently implemented, and we highlight some aspects of the program that are novel and potentially of interest to other countries seeking...

Japan's total fertility rate declined to 1.32 in 2002, the lowest in its modern era. Such a drastic decline in fertility rate is an exception in the world. What the decrease in birthrate brings is an unbalanced demographic composition between a productive and dependent population. This...

Exploiting an ideal experiment situation, this paper provides clear evidence of consumption smoothing against an anticipated income change. Until FY2002, Japanese public employees received large and predictable bonus payments three times a year, but the third bonus in March was abolished in...

In March, 1999, the Japanese Government handed out "shopping coupons" worth 20,000 yen (about 200 dollars) to families for every child under the age of 15 and to roughly half of Japan's elderly population. In total, 25 percent of Japan's population received the coupons. The coupons expired after...

The Japanese economy in the 1990s experienced a substantial decrease in the nominal interest rate. The positive effect on the business investment, however, should have been canceled out, since deflationary expectations raised the real cost of capital. In this study, we address this unexplored...

Part I : Consumer Response to the 1998 Tax Cut: Which of Tax Cut or Coupon Program is More Effective? The Japanese Government implemented two tax cut packages in 1998. A unique feature of the 1998 tax cuts is that the tax cut amount for each household is based on the number of family members...

Part I : New Evidence on the Response of Expenditures to Anticipated Income Changes: Panel Data Estimates on Japanese Bonus System This paper exploits a notable institutional feature of the Japanese economy, the bonus system, to test whether households in Japan smooth consumption under large and...

The 1990s crash in Japan's stock and land market should have had adverse effects on household consumption. This paper takes advantage of a panel data from Japanese households to evaluate the impacts of the wealth gains or losses on households' spending. We obtain the following empirical...

Yen depreciation is often proposed to combat the deflation in Japan. However, there has been surprisingly little empirical research on how price expectation is affected by currency depreciation. This paper focuses on an unusual experience in Okinawan history to evaluate the effect of devaluation...

The Japanese economy has suffered from deflation since the mid-1990s. Despite the importance of overcoming deflation for policymakers and academics in Japan, there has been no recent research on what changes deflationary expectations in Japan. This study emphasizes fact-finding from a unique and...