Japanfs Deleveraging since the 1990s and the Bank of Japanfs Monetary Policy: Some Comparisons with the U.S. Experience since 2007

This paper discusses the backgrounds for the stagnant behavior of the Japanese economy during the last two decades and the failure of the Bank of Japan (BOJ) to turn the economy around. I argue that the policy authorities did not act quickly enough to mitigate the pain of the deleveraging process in the aftermath of the burst of land and stock price bubble in the early 1990s. Thus, the process became overly severe and protracted. The economy increasingly became vulnerable to negative external shocks and the decline in its population. Use of non-conventional monetary policy measures after deflationary expectations became entrenched substantially weakened their power to stimulate the economy. The U.S. economy since 2007 has exhibited many of the features seen for the Japanese economy during the last two decades; hence, the talk of the Japanization of the U.S. economy. There are, however, many dissimilarities as well as similarities between the two episodes. These are also discussed along with the analysis of Japanfs two lost decades.Popular discussions of Japanfs stagnation often focus on persistent deflation. Figure 1 shows core CPI inflation and a representative property price index for Japan and the U.S. since the peak of property prices, with the peak (T=0) assumed to be 1990 for Japan and 2006 for the U.S. In addition, it also plots investment in structures relative to GDP in Japan. Inflation in Japan has been in negative territory since 1998.1 There has been, however, no tendency for the deflation to accelerate. The cumulative decrease in the index since the late 1990s has been only about 5%. Thus, the classic debt-deflation type dynamic has not been a major cause of economic stagnation. In contrast, declines in property prices in Japan since the peak has been large and protracted-cumulating in a 60% decline at the time of writing. They led to significant deleveraging by financial institutions and non-financial corporations, which put downward pressure on aggregate demand for goods and services, especially, investment in structures, the component of aggregate demand most sensitive to property prices. The figure shows that its movements have been highly correlated with those of property prices.2 As may be seen from the figure, this component of aggregate demand alone subtracted about 0.4% per year from GDP growth during the 1990s. Such a negative feedback loop among asset prices, economic activity and, as we discuss below, financial instability has been the key feature of Japanfs stagnation. It is also interesting to note that both CPI inflation and property prices in the U.S. since the recent financial crisis have followed closely that of Japan in the 1990s, but inflation has so far avoided plunging into negative territory. Adjustment in asset prices and real investment were to some extent inevitable given the extent of the excesses created during the bubble period. The deleveraging process, however, became extremely protracted as a result of a forbearance game played by policymakers and financial institutions. Banks kept lending for a while to zombie companies in order to avoid recognition of losses on their balance sheets, and the authority stayed away for years from making the tough decision to recapitalize the banks. This resulted in a huge buildup of bad loans and eventually in a serious credit crunch in the late 1990s, which aggravated the declines in asset prices and deleveraging by banks and nonfinancial corporations. Banks increasingly became risk averse and stopped lending to risky, but promising projects. The economy slowly, but steadily lost momentum and could not grow out of the negative shocks generated by external financial crises in the late 1990s and 2000s, and the declines in its population that started in the 2000s. Deflation of the general price level did play a part in this process as well. It has hindered the effectiveness of monetary easing. This is ironic because monetary policy normally is a tool for avoiding deflation. Either the deleveraging forces outweighed the capacity of monetary policy to stimulate the economy or the BOJ easing came a bit too late. The BOJ tried to reverse the disinflation trend with fairly aggressive rate cuts - a conventional monetary policy tool-- and brought the policy rate to near zero by late 1995, effectively hitting the zero lower bound (ZLB) constraint on interest rates. Deflation, however, developed in response to economic weakness. The real interest rate has stayed at higher levels than desirable, and undermined the power of a zero interest rate to stimulate the economy, although it did not throw the economy into a deflationary spiral. Since the late 1990s, the BOJ has adopted a variety of non-conventional monetary policy measures. They have supported the financial system and prevented deflation from becoming worse, but have not turned the economy around. As I argue below, non-conventional measures work by reducing risk premiums and long-short interest rate spreads. The long period of economic stagnation had lowered these spreads to minimum levels and limited the effectiveness of such measures as was the case for conventional measures. In the following I will describe in more detail the deleveraging experience in Japan and then turn to discussing the experience of the BOJ to turn the economy around. Comparisons with the U.S. experience since 2007 are offered at each stage of the discussion

"Trying to Make Sense of the Bank of Japan's Monetary Policy since the Exit from Quantitative Easing"

In this short note I review the Bank of Japan's monetary policy since its exit from the so-called quantitative easing regime early in 2006. The major characteristic of the policy stance during the period, called Strategy 2 below, has been to adjust the policy interest rate gradually upward in response to a healthy real economy despite stagnant behavior in consumer prices. Such a policy stance can be contrasted with a hypothetical strategy, Strategy 1, whereby the Bank of Japan would have kept the policy rate at lower levels, possibly at zero percent, until inflation starts to show an upward trend more clearly. The two strategies are compared on many fronts with particular attention to well-known recent empirical regularities about inflation -a smaller response of inflation to output and larger uncertainties about the response. Various comparisons of the two strategies offered here, though far from conclusive, tend to support Strategy 1 over Strategy 2. In my discussion of the two strategies I also comment on some of the major features of the Nishimura article in this issue.

Japan's Deflation and the Bank of Japan's Experience with Non-traditional Monetary Policy

This paper offers a brief summary of non-traditional monetary policy measures adopted by the Bank of Japan (BOJ) during the last two decades, especially the period between 1998-2006, when the so-called Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) and Quantitative Easing (QE) were put in place. The paper begins with a typology of policies usable at low interest and inflation rates. They are: strategy (i), management of expectations about future policy rates; strategy (ii), targeted asset purchases; and strategy (iii), QE. Alternatively, QE may be decomposed into a pure attempt to inflate the central bank balance sheet, QE0, purchases of assets in dysfunctional markets, QE1 and purchases of assets to generate portfolio rebalancing, QE2. Strategy (ii), when non-sterilized, is either QE1 or QE2. Using this typology, I review the measures adopted by the BOJ and discuss evidence on the effectiveness of the measures. The broad conclusion is that strategies (i) and (ii) have affected interest rates, while no clear evidence exists so far of the effectiveness of strategy (iii), or QE0. Strategy (ii) has been effective especially in containing risk/liquidity premiums in dysfunctional money markets; that is, QE1 has been effective. The effectiveness of QE2, however, is unclear. The strategies, however, have failed to bring the economy out of the deflation trap so far. I discuss some possible reasons for this and also implications for the current U.S. situation.

"Japan's Bubble, America's Bubble and China's Bubble"

This paper compares the three recent episodes of boom and bust cycles in asset prices: Japan in the late 1980s to the 1990s; the U.S. since the mid 1990s; and China during the last decade. Although we have not yet seen a collapse of Chinese property prices, the increases so far are comparable to those in the other two episodes and seem to warrant a careful comparative study. I first examine the behavior of asset prices, especially, property prices in the three cases and point out some similarities. I then go on to discuss some backgrounds for the behavior of asset prices. I emphasize the role played by extremely easy monetary policy for generating bubble like asset price behaviors in the three cases. Monetary policy was shown to be easier than standard policy rules like the Taylor rule indicates. The reason for easy monetary policies is investigated. In the U.S. case the monetary authority was concerned over the risk of deflation in the early to mid 2000s. The experiences of Japan and China are quite similar in that the authorities of both countries were seriously concerned with possible deflationary effects of exchange rate appreciation on the economy. Japan let the exchange rate appreciate, while China has resisted a large scale intervention. It is shown, however, that the behavior of real exchange rates has not been that different. Implications of such a finding for the future of the Chinese economy are also discussed.

"The Structure of Japan's Financial Regulation and Supervision and the Role Played by the Bank of Japan"

In this short note, I will explain the structure of Japan's financial regulation and supervision and discuss by way of examples the structure's weaknesses and strengths. In doing so, I pay particular attention to the role played by the Bank of Japan (BOJ). The paper focuses mostly on the period since the late 1980s when Japan saw the formation of land and stock price bubbles, their burst and serious negative effects on the financial system and the economy. I argue that, despite a streamlined structure of financial regulation, monetary authorities' response was not quite optimal and discuss possible reasons for the sub-optimal behaviors. I also point out that there are significant synergies between monetary policy and prudence policy at central banks, but that such synergies are not fully exploited.

Japan's Bubble, America's Bubble and China's Bubble

This paper compares the three recent episodes of boom and bust cycles in asset prices: Japan in the late 1980s to the 1990s; the U.S. since the mid 1990s; and China during the last decade. Although we have not yet seen a collapse of Chinese property prices, the increases so far are comparable to those in the other two episodes and seem to warrant a careful comparative study. I first examine the behavior of asset prices, especially, property prices in the three cases and point out some similarities. I then go on to discuss some backgrounds for the behavior of asset prices. I emphasize the role played by extremely easy monetary policy for generating bubble like asset price behaviors in the three cases. Monetary policy was shown to be easier than standard policy rules like the Taylor rule indicates. The reason for easy monetary policies is investigated. In the U.S. case the monetary authority was concerned over the risk of deflation in the early to mid 2000s. The experiences of Japan and China are quite similar in that the authorities of both countries were seriously concerned with possible deflationary effects of exchange rate appreciation on the economy. Japan let the exchange rate appreciate, while China has resisted a large scale intervention. It is shown, however, that the behavior of real exchange rates has not been that different. Implications of such a finding for the future of the Chinese economy are also discussed.

Non-Traditional Monetary Polices: G7 Central Banks during 2007-2009 and the Bank of Japan during 1998-2006

This paper offers a brief summary of non-traditional monetary policy measures currently adopted by G7 central banks and their provisional evaluation in the light of the Bank of Japan (BOJ)'s experience during the period of 1998-2006. The paper points out that although unprecedented measures seem to have been adopted by major central banks since 2007, many of them have been tried in one way or another in earlier episodes of financial crises, especially by the BOJ during 1998-2006 and are in this sense not new. We summarize the BOJ's and G7 central banks' policies based on a typology of policies that can be used even when interest rates are very low. Non-traditional policy measures can be classified into managing interest rate expectations, targeted asset purchases and quantitative easing, all of which were used by the BOJ. The so-called credit easing can be considered to be a part of targeted asset purchases. In the current episode, targeted asset purchases or credit easing has been employed by most central banks, while expectations management and (strong forms of) quantitative easing have not been widely used. We explore reasons for such a choice of policy strategy in the current period. In addition, some important lessons can be learned about the effectiveness of non-traditional policies from what the BOJ and the Japanese government did and did not do during the early to mid 1990s and its ultimate failure to avoid deflation.

The Structure of Japan's Financial Regulation and Supervision and the Role Played by the Bank of Japan

In this short note, I will explain the structure of Japan's financial regulation and supervision and discuss by way of examples the structure's weaknesses and strengths. In doing so, I pay particular attention to the role played by the Bank of Japan (BOJ). The paper focuses mostly on the period since the late 1980s when Japan saw the formation of land and stock price bubbles, their burst and serious negative effects on the financial system and the economy. I argue that, despite a streamlined structure of financial regulation, monetary authorities' response was not quite optimal and discuss possible reasons for the sub-optimal behaviors. I also point out that there are significant synergies between monetary policy and prudence policy at central banks, but that such synergies are not fully exploited.