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Working Paper
Aging and deflation from a fiscal perspective
Negative correlations between inflation and demographic aging were observed across developed nations recently. To understand the phenomenon from a politico-economic perspective, we embed the fiscal theory of the price level into an overlapping-generations model. In the model, successive short-lived governments choose income tax rates and bond issues considering the political influence of existing generations and the policy response of future governments. The model sheds new light on the traditional debate about the burden of national debt. Because of price adjustments, the accumulation of ...
Working Paper
Policy regime change against chronic deflation? Policy option under a long-term liquidity trap
This paper evaluates the role of the first arrow of Abenomics in guiding public perceptions on monetary policy stance through the management of expectations. In order to end chronic deflation, a policy regime change must be perceived by economic agents. Analysis using the QUICK survey system (QSS) monthly survey data shows that the reaction of monetary policy to inflation has been declining since the mid 2000s, implying intensified forward guidance well before Abenomics. However, Japan seems to have moved closer to a long-term liquidity trap, where even long-term bond yields are constrained ...
Working Paper
Japan’s financial crises and lost decades
In this paper we explore the role of financial intermediation malfunction in macroeconomic fluctuations in Japan. To this end we estimate, using Japanese data, a financial accelerator model in which the balance sheet conditions of entrepreneurs in a goods-producing sector and those of a financial intermediary affect macroeconomic activity. We find that shocks to the balance sheets of the two sectors have been quantitatively playing important role in macroeconomic fluctuations by affecting lending rates and aggregate investments. Their impacts are prominent in particular during financial ...
Working Paper
Heterogeneous bank loan responses to monetary policy and bank capital shocks: a VAR analysis based on Japanese disaggregated data
In this paper, we study bank loan responses to monetary policy and bank capital shocks using Japan?s disaggregated data sorted by borrower firms? size and industry. Employing a block recursive VAR, we demonstrate that bank loan responses exhibit large sectoral heterogeneity. Among a broad range of indicators about borrower firms? characteristics, the heterogeneity is tightly linked to borrower firms? liability conditions. Firms with a lower capital ratio tend to experience larger drops in bank loans following a contractionary monetary policy shock and/or a negative bank capital shock. In ...
Working Paper
Is the net worth of financial intermediaries more important than that of non-financial firms?
To explore the relative macroeconomic importance of financial intermediaries' (FIs?) net worth to that of non-financial firms (entrepreneurs), we extend the financial accelerator model of Bernanke, et al. (1999), such that both FIs? and entrepreneurs rely on costly external debt. Our model, which is calibrated to the U.S. economy, highlights two features of the FIs? net worth. First, the relative size of FIs' net worth as compared to entrepreneurial net worth, namely, the net- worth distribution in the economy, is important for the financial accelerator effect. Second, a shock to the FIs' net ...
Working Paper
Do banking shocks matter for the U.S. economy?
The quantitative significance of shocks to the financial intermediary (FI) has not received much attention up to now. We estimate a DSGE model with what we describe as chained credit contracts, using Bayesian technique. In the model, credit-constrained FIs intermediate funds from investors to credit-constrained entrepreneurs through two types of credit contract. We find that the shocks to the FIs' net worth play an important role in the investment dynamics, accounting for 17 percent of its variations. In particular, in the Great Recession, they are the key determinants of the investment ...
Working Paper
The boy who cried bubble: public warnings against riding bubbles
Attempts by governments to stop bubbles by issuing warnings seem unsuccessful. This paper examines the effects of public warnings using a simple model of riding bubbles. We show that public warnings against a bubble can stop it if investors believe that a warning is issued in a definite range of periods commencing around the starting period of the bubble. If a warning involves the possibility of being issued too early, regardless of the starting period of the bubble, it cannot stop the bubble immediately. Bubble duration can be shortened by a premature public warning, but lengthened if it is ...
Working Paper
Micro price dynamics during Japan's lost decades
We study micro price dynamics and their macroeconomic implications using daily scanner data from 1988 to 2013. We provide five facts. First, posted prices in Japan are ten times as flexible as those in the U.S. scanner data. Second, regular prices are almost as flexible as those in the U.S. and Euro area. Third, the heterogeneity of frequency and size of price change across products is sizable and maintained throughout the sample period. Fourth, during Japan's lost decades, temporary sales have played an increasingly important role in households' consumption expenditure. Fifth, the frequency ...
Working Paper
Working less and bargain hunting more: macro implications of sales during Japan's lost decades
Standard New Keynesian models have often neglected temporary sales. In this paper, we ask whether this treatment is appropriate. In the empirical part of the paper, we provide evidence using Japanese scanner data covering the last two decades that the frequency of sales was closely related with macroeconomic developments. Specifically, we find that the frequency of sales and hours worked move in opposite directions in response to technology shocks, producing a negative correlation between the two. We then construct a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model that takes households' ...
Working Paper
Banking globalization and international business cycles
This paper constructs a two-country DSGE model to study the nature of the recent financial crisis and its effects that spread immediately throughout the world owing to the globalization of banking. In the model, financial intermediaries (FIs) enter into chained credit contracts at home and abroad, engaging in cross-border lending to entrepreneurs by undertaking crossborder borrowing from investors. The FIs as well as the entrepreneurs in two countries are credit constrained, so all of their net worths matter. Our model reveals that under FIs' globalization, adverse shocks that hit one country ...