Japan's Great Recession was the result of a series of macroeconomic and financial policy mistakes. Thus, it was largely avoidable once the initial shock from the bubble bursting had passed. The aberration in Japan's recession was not the behaviour of growth, which is best seen as a series of...

This paper takes up the issue of the flexibility of inflation targeting regimes, with the specific goal of determining whether the monetary policy of the Bank of England, which has a formal inflation target, has been any less flexible than that of the Federal Reserve, which does not have such a...

This article challenges the validity of the the assumption that monetary policymakers can correctly identify asset price bubbles in time to respond preemptively (or at least usefully). This is something where many policymakers even previously skeptical now feel they can be like Supreme Court...

Given no generally accepted framework for financial stability, policymakers in developing Asia need to manage, not avoid, financial deepening. This paper supports Asian policymakers' judgment through analysis of the recent events in the United States and Europe and of earlier crisis episodes,...

The authors assess the effects of central bank governor appointments on financial market expectations of monetary policy. To measure these effects, they assemble a new dataset of appointment announcements from 15 industrialized countries and conduct an event-study analysis on exchange rates,...

Did monetary easing in the 1980s cause Japan's bubble, as is often suggested? Drawing on both a new cross-national consideration of the monetary policy-asset price linkage and a reexamination of what actually occurred in Japan during 1985-90, I conclude that the bubble was just as likely to...

This paper assesses the effects of central bank governor appointments on financial market expectations of monetary policy. To measure these effects, we assemble a new dataset of appointment announcements from 15 countries, and conduct an event study analysis on exchange rates, bond yields, and...

Economic growth, inflation, and interest rates have declined in Asia, just as they have in the United States and Europe. Sustaining Economic Growth in Asia explores the relevance to several Asian economies of the diagnosis known as “secular stagnation.” Leading experts on the region discuss...

In this paper we examine the impact of rises in inactivity on wages in the US economy and find evidence of a statistically significant negative effect. These nonparticipants exert additional downward pressure on wages over and above the impact of the unemployment rate itself. This pattern holds...