After comparing and contrasting smart contracts with computer codes running in a central server, this paper notes that "smart contracts" are not contracts in the legal sense and considers their implications for contract management and dispute prevention. It alerts that the features of smart...

The paper considers the possible impact of the blockchain technology on the ODR rule making. It foresees that the world of online market will gradually flatten. Thus, the domination of big and powerful enterprises in the current hub-and-spoke model may be eroded with the emergence of the sharing...

The macroeconomic effect of term premiums is a controversial issue both theoretically and quantitatively. In this paper, we explore the possibility that term premiums affect inflation and the real economy via exchange rate dynamics. For this purpose, we construct a small open economy model with...

I examine the effect of bank loan supply shocks, using bank lending stance shocks derived from the industry-level Short-term Economic Survey of Enterprises (Tankan) survey data in Japan. The identified bank lending stance shocks enable us to investigate the effect of loan supply shocks on the...

We investigate innovation dynamics in Japanese listed firms by calculating an indicator for the accumulation of innovation based on patent citations, the “citation stock.” The calculated citation stock has decreased since the mid-2000s, which implies that the pace of innovation accumulation...

This study investigates the announcement effects of the Bank of Japan’s (BOJ) ETF purchase program on equity prices, focusing on the policy change made on March 19, 2021 when the BOJ announced that it would no longer purchase Nikkei225-tracking and JPX400-tracking ETFs but would purchase more...

This study investigates the impact of the Bank of Japan’s (BOJ) exchange traded fund (ETF) purchasing program on the stock lending market. In particular, we focus on the fact that stocks held by ETF managers for the BOJ are lendable to other investors in order for them to make a short position...

How are Asian financial markets interlinked and how are they linked to markets in developed countries? What is the main driver of fluctuations in Asian financial markets as well as real economic activities? In order to answer these questions, we estimate the spillover index proposed by Diebold...