Battling Deflation in Japan: The Bank of Japan and Monetary Policy

Japan is the only major industrialized country since World War II to have experienced a prolonged period of deflation, one that has persisted from the late 1990s to the present. Yet the Bank of Japan only embraced bold monetary policies to reflate the economy at the start of 2013 with the launch of “Abenomics,” even later than the Federal Reserve or Bank of England. This presentation argues that slow adaptation of new “unconventional” monetary policies can be explained by the closed nature of monetary policymaking in Japan.

Speaker: Dr. Gene Park is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Loyola Marymount University (LMU). Prior to arriving at LMU, he taught at Baruch College, City University of New York. Professor Park was also a Shorenstein Fellow at Stanford University’s Asia Pacific Research Center. In addition, he spent two years as a researcher at Japan’s Ministry of Finance.

Discussant: Mr. Torbjörn Isaksson, Chief Analyst, Nordea

Moderator: Professor Marie Söderberg, Director, European Institute of Japanese Studies, Stockholm School of Economics

The Japan seminar series is jointly organized by the European Institute of Japanese Studies at Stockholm School of Economics, the East Asia Program at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, the Department of Asian, Middle Eastern and Turkish Studies at Stockholm University and the Swedish Defence University. It features monthly seminars on Japanese economy, politics and society.