Financial Policy and Central Banking in Japan

Front Cover
This book analyzes how the bank-dominated financial system—a key element of the oft-heralded "Japanese economic model"—broke down in the 1990s and spawned sweeping reforms.

Japan's financial institutions and policy underwent remarkable change in the past decade. The country began the 1990s with a heavily regulated financial system managed by an unchallenged Ministry of Finance and ended the decade with a Big Bang financial market reform, a complete restructuring of its regulatory financial institutions, and an independent central bank. These reforms have taken place amid recession and rising unemployment, collapsing asset prices, a looming banking crisis, and the lowest interest rates in the industrial world. This book analyzes how the bank-dominated financial system—a key element of the oft-heralded "Japanese economic model"—broke down in the 1990s and spawned sweeping reforms. It documents the sources of the Japanese economic stagnation of the 1990s, the causes of the financial crisis, the slow and initially limited policy response to banking problems, and the reform program that followed. It also evaluates the new financial structure and reforms at the Bank of Japan in light of the challenges facing the Japanese economy. These challenges range from conducting monetary policy in a zero-interest rate environment characterized by a "liquidity trap" to managing consolidation in the Japanese banking sector against the backdrop of increasing international competition.

 

Contents

1 Introduction
1
Unprecedented Economic and Financial Distress
9
3 The New Financial Supervision and Regulatory Framework
39
4 The New Bank of Japan
83
5 Inflation Targeting Liquidity Traps and the New Bank of Japan
113
6 Challenges Facing Financial Policy and Central Banking in Japan
145
References
183
Index
191
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About the author (2001)

Michael M. Hutchison is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is coauthor of The Political Economy of Japanese Monetary Policy (MIT Press, 1997) and Financial Policy and Central Banking in Japan (MIT Press, 2000).

Takatoshi Ito is Professor in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and Senior Professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. He has served as Deputy Vice Minister for International Affairs in Japan's Ministry of Finance and as Senior Advisor in the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund.

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