The Foreign Exchange Origins of Japan's Economic Slump and Low Interest Liquidity Trap

Japan's macroeconomic problem has yet to be properly diagnosed. Throughout the 1990s, policy makers could not decide on the proper macro economic measures to combat the country's severe economic slump. We propose a unified explanation, with deep historical roots, of why aggregate private demand failed to recover after Japan's stock and real estate bubbles burst in 1991 and deflationary pressure continues. The problem is not purely ‘made in Japan’. It arises from Japan's unbalanced mercantile relationship with the United States. Starting in the early 1970s, numerous trade disputes between the two countries created tensions that were (temporarily) resolved by the yen going ever higher against the dollar up to 1995. In the last two decades, this persistent pressure for the yen to rise was further aggravated by Japan's large current‐account (saving) surpluses as the counterpart of America's large current account (saving) deficits. The legacy is the expectation that trade and financial tensions will recur so that the yen will be higher 10, 20, or 30 years from now –with Japan's (wholesale) price level forced correspondingly lower and nominal interest rates on yen assets remaining more than four percentage points less than those on dollar assets. This fear of yen appreciation, whose timing is erratic and unpredictable, now inhibits private domestic investment by both Japanese firms and households. Our theory also explains why, in the late 1990s, nominal interest rates on short‐term yen assets were compressed toward zero so as to destroy the normal profit margins of the banking system. In this liquidity trap, the Bank of Japan –whose monetary policy has been quite ‘expansionary’–is powerless to stimulate the flagging economy. To spring the liquidity trap, eliminate deflationary pressure, and restore macro economic balance in Japan, the American and Japanese governments must act jointly to quash the expectation that the yen will be higher in the future than it is today.     

Synchronised Business Cycles in East Asia and Fluctuations in the Yen/Dollar Exchange Rate

Because many authors have proposed stimulating the ailing Japanese economy by monetary expansion and yen depreciation, we explore the repercussions of depreciating the yen against the dollar on the other East Asian economies – which largely peg to the dollar. Since 1980, economic integration among Japan's neighbours – China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand – has intensified and (except for China and Singapore) their business cycles have been highly synchronised. These cycles have been closely linked to fluctuations in the yen/dollar exchange rate – through changes in the export competitiveness, inflows of foreign direct investment and intra‐Asian income effects. We show that a major yen devaluation would have a negative impact on incomes in other East Asian economies and that it is not a sensible policy option for Japan.     

Is the Yen/Dollar Exchange Rate Really Responsible for East Asia's Export and Business Cycles? A Commentary on McKinnon and Schnabl (2003)

In a paper published in The World Economy, Ronald McKinnon and Gunther Schnabl claim that fluctuations in the nominal yen/dollar exchange rate are the principal causal factor behind the export and business cycles in East Asian countries ( McKinnon and Schnabl, 2003 ). Their econometric work, however, suffers from at least two important difficulties. First, while McKinnon and Schnabl preclude industry shocks as an explanation for the East Asian countries’ macroeconomic fluctuations, cyclical fluctuations in the global electronics industry have a significant impact on their short‐run export and output dynamics. Second, although McKinnon and Schnabl assume that the relative industrial competitiveness of Japan and other East Asian countries moves in tandem with fluctuations in the nominal yen/dollar exchange rate, the empirical validity of this assumption is not indisputable. Once these two issues are taken into account properly, it becomes very difficult to make a convincing case for the yen/dollar exchange rate being the main driver of East Asia's macroeconomic instability. A brief critique will also be made of another paper that has appeared recently in The World Economy ( Doraisami, 2004 ), which models Malaysia's pre‐crisis export dynamics using the nominal yen/dollar exchange rate as a proxy for the country's export competitiveness.     

ASEAN's role in Japan's economic policy in East Asia

Although Japan's economic and trade policy with the United States and Europe has been widely researched in such works as Tyson (1992), relatively less research has been done on Japan's recent trade and economic policies towards other East Asian countries such as Korea and Taiwan. Since the mid-1980s, because of rising labor costs and appreciation of the Japanese yen, Japan has increased manufacturing production in ASEAN countries such as Thailand and Malaysia. The purpose of this short article is to discuss Japan's increased economic focus in Asia, and implications for East Asian countries such as Korea and Taiwan. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

On Determinants of Japan's Foreign Direct Investment in Eastern Europe

Summary

The paper takes issue with some untested but often repeated assertions that Japanese FDI positions in Eastern Europe are weak. Japan's economic relations with Eastern Europe, including FDI, should be understood in the context of Japan's global economic relations. Therefore, it might not be appropriate to approach the question armed with absolute FDI numbers only. So, the author proceeds to empirically test some of these assertions by calculating directional trade ratios and directional FDI ratios! As a result of his approach, he claims that Japan's FDI position in Poland is not significantly weaker compared to its trade position or to other advanced countries' positions. The paper also suggests that, although Japan's FDI in Poland has been undoubtedly stagnant, the larger problem is that the Polish FDI environment is still problematic due mainly to repayment risks and rather low levels of real per capita income.     

Just How Undervalued is the Chinese Renminbi?

Given that the value of China's currency has been a hot topic recently, this paper explores the equilibrium levels of China's real and nominal exchange rates. Employing a Johansen cointegration framework, we focus on the behavioural equilibrium exchange rate (BEER) and permanent equilibrium exchange rate (PEER) models. Our results suggest that, while the renminbi is somewhat undervalued against the dollar, the misalignment is not nearly as exaggerated as many popular claims.     

Misalignment of the Baht and its Trade Balance Consequences for Thailand in the 1980s and 1990s

This paper examines Thailand's pre‐crisis exchange rate policy, focusing on the degree of the country's real exchange rate misalignment pre‐crisis and its consequent effects on Thailand's trade balance with its two large trading partners, the US and Japan, in the 1980s and 1990s. Defining misalignment as the difference between actual and ‘equilibrium’ exchange rates, we estimate three key ‘equilibrium’ exchange rates of the Thai baht: (a) the real effective equilibrium exchange rate of the Thai baht against its twenty‐two major trading partners; (b) the bilateral real equilibrium exchange rates of the baht against the US dollar; and (c) the bilateral real equilibrium exchange rate of the baht against the Japanese yen.     

Japan's Growing Outward Direct Investment in East Asia

Japan's outward direct investment (ODI) began to show an obvious expansion since 2005, accompanied by a greater importance in East Asia and in the manufacturing sector. By analyzing the new wave of Japanese ODI, three points are elaborated in this article. First, the recent Japanese ODI did not result in the same industry to be passed from one country to another as elucidated in the flying geese model. Instead, Japan's ODI only promoted the regional divisional of labor in the transport equipment and electrical machinery industries. Second, this study advances the theory of vertical production network by exploring two regional production networks constructed by Japanese ODI, including one between China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong and the other between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Finally, since Japan's economy has been tightly connected with foreign demand via overseas production, this article argues that any sign of Japan's declining ODI will have serious impact to its domestic economic prosperity. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The Export Trading Company Act:

The Export Trading Company Act (ETCA) was signed into law in 1982 by then President Ronald Reagan. The goal of this legislation was to promote U.S. exports by allowing U.S. banks to hold an equity U.S. exports by allowing U.S. banks to hold an equity position in Export Trading Companies (ETCs) and by exempting the overseas activities of these organiziations from U.S. antitrust laws. The writers of this legislation hoped that the American ETCs would eventually grow to rival the Japanese General Export Trading Cmopanies known as sogo shosha's. This paper focuses on the history of the ETCA, its problems, and the current state of Export Trading Companies (ETCs) in the U.S. When the ETCA was established, the dollar was on an upward trend and was relatively high compared to other major currencies, such as the Deutsche mark, Japanese yen, and pound sterling. The legislation had a somewhat minor effect of exports, as few companies came together to form ETCs. With the fall of the dollar, an important question to ask is: Has the drop of the dollar contributed to a rise in interest in forming ETCs?     

The road from Nissan to Samsung: a historical overview of East Asian investment in a UK region

Japan's relationship with the North East of England is often charted from the 1984 investment by the car manufacturer, Nissan, in its Sunderland plant. The aftermath of that investment decision saw not only a wave of Japanese manufacturing investment descending upon the North East but also other investments from Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong following in its wake. This article attempts to situate the experience of Japanese investment in the North East in the wider context of the region's more long-term associations with Japan. It looks to the legacy of the past in the building of Japanese battleships on Tyneside and other episodes of technology transfer in the late nineteenth century. It juxtaposes the subsequent changes in the region's industrial base with the post-war history of Japanese investment in the UK. With the arrival of NSK, the Japanese ball-bearings manufacturer, in County Durham in 1974, a new relationship can be seen to have emerged along with a regional infrastructure which supported further East Asian investment at the height of the bubble economy. The spreading out of that investment, its social and cultural impact and the consequences of the bubble bursting are explored at a time when claims for the dawning of ‘the Pacific century’ have been seriously called into question.     

An Equitable Trust in The Building Industry in 1794

Japanese manufacturing in the developed regions of Europe and North America has been strongly associated with the more competitive sectors of Japan's high growth economy, such as consumer electronics, semi-conductors and transport equipment. During the earliest years of Japanese productive investment in Europe, however, a significant number of projects from Japan's less competitive chemicals sector were being established. These projects, together with those from other chemicals-related sectors of Japan's domestic industry, will be shown to have emerged in response to the widespread concern over environmental and pollution issues which dominated public affairs in Japan during the decade after 1965.     

Small traders in currency futures markets

This study examines the interrelation between small traders' open interest and large hedging and speculation in the Canadian dollar, Swiss franc, British pound, and Japanese yen futures markets. The results, based on Granger‐causality tests and vector autoregressive models, suggest that small traders' open interest is closely related to large speculators' open interest. Small traders and speculators tend to herd, which means that small traders are long [short] when speculators are long [short] as well. Moreover, small traders and speculators are positive feedback traders whereas hedgers are contrarians. Regarding information flows, speculators lead small traders in three of the four currency futures markets. The results therefore suggest that small traders are small speculators who follow the large speculators, indicating that they are less well informed than the large speculators. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 31:898–913, 2011     

Measuring the effect of the zero lower bound on yields and exchange rates in the U.K. and Germany

The zero lower bound on nominal interest rates began to constrain many central banks' setting of short-term interest rates in late 2008 or early 2009. According to standard macroeconomic models, this should have greatly reduced the effectiveness of monetary policy and increased the efficacy of fiscal policy. However, these models also imply that asset prices and private-sector decisions depend on the entire path of expected future short-term interest rates, not just the current level of the monetary policy rate. Thus, interest rates with a year or more to maturity are arguably more relevant for asset prices and the economy, and it is unclear to what extent those yields have been affected by the zero lower bound. In this paper, we apply the methods of Swanson and Williams (2013) to medium- and longer-term yields and exchange rates in the U.K. and Germany. In particular, we compare the sensitivity of these rates to macroeconomic news during periods when short-term interest rates were very low to that during normal times. We find that: 1) USD/GBP and USD/EUR exchange rates have been essentially unaffected by the zero lower bound, 2) yields on German bunds were essentially unconstrained by the zero bound until late 2012, and 3) yields on U.K. gilts were substantially constrained by the zero lower bound in 2009 and 2012, but were surprisingly responsive to news in 2010–11. We compare these findings to the U.S. and discuss their broader implications.     

Minding our Ps and Qs: Exchange rates and foreign trade

Since early 1985, the dollar has been declining in the foreign exchange markets. An examination of interest rate patterns internationally suggests that the dollar's decline is not inflation induced. Taking the analysis one step further it is clear that Europe and Japan have had supply-side revolutions of their own. Therefore, the fall in the U.S. dollar appears to be the consequence of improved foreign economies. As such, the lower valued dollar will lead to improvements in the U.S. economy, especially in the tradable goods area. These improvements will not be made at the expense of the less tradable goods, however. The rich will get richer and so will the poor.     

Collective Myopia and Defective Higher Educations Behind the Scenes of Ethically Bankrupted Economic Systems: A Reflexive Note from a Japanese University and Taking a Step Toward Transcultural Dialogues

This study focused on the indirect influences of defective higher education, especially management education, on the corruption of Japanese business communities since 1997. Most arrested or penalized Japanese executives and bureaucrats since 1997 were the alumni of prestigious Japanese universities. Their levels of academic achievements are, consequently, conceived to be the highest of Japanese standards. They were, however, found guilty. Why did these highly intelligent Japanese adults make such fatal mistakes? In this article, the author argued that the event of the continuous exposure of scandals and corruptions in Japan since 1997 was an unintended consequence of Japan's educational systems through Habermasian and Foucaultian positions.     

次贷危机后中国持有的美元资产风险与对策研究

我国的外汇储备大量集中于美元和美元资产,特别是美国国债。美国次贷危机爆发后,中国外汇储备中的美元资产管理面临着更加严峻的考验。根据我国目前的外汇储备资产现状,应制定有效的应对策略,加大对外直接投资与储备资产多元化管理;加快增加黄金储备;以债权换技术、以债权换战略资源,且藏汇于民,以加速缓解人民币升值的压力,遏止资产风险的产生。     

The real dollar-yen exchange rate,asymmetries in trade flows and the current account in a perfect-foresight model for developing East Asia

This paper explores permanent, unanticipated shocks in the yen-dollar exchange rate in a perfect-foresight, infinite-horizon, representative-agent model for an open, semismall economy that produces a single good, imports intermediate inputs and investment goods from Japan and competes with Japan in external markets. Therefore, the model captures some of the features of the developing countries of East Asia. External debt is constrained by a country-risk premium that depends on the level of external debt. The capital stock is maintained and incremented by an endogenous mixture of Japanese and home goods. An appreciation of the dollar against the yen is neutral for external indebtedness and the trade account in the long run, but raises the capital stock, consumption and hence welfare in the long run; the home currency depreciates against the dollar but appreciates against the yen. Whether a cycle of current account surpluses followed by current account deficits or vice versa is generated depends on the initial response of the shadow value of external debt.     

Trends in the growth of Japanese international banking in Western Europe

Changes in Japan's domestic economy and the emergence of stronger trade and investment links between Japan and the world economy have created substantial pressures for her banks and other financial institutions to expand overseas. The following article examines trends in Japanese international banking since the beginning of the 1970s and, in particular, the growing presence of Japanese banks in Western Europe.     

Monetary Policy,Vagabonding Liquidity and Bursting Bubbles in New and Emerging Markets: An Overinvestment View

‘Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin’. Charles Kindleberger's book Manias, Panics and Crashes points out that speculation and crises have always been present: the world economic crisis of the 20th century, the South Sea bubble in the 18th century, and the tulip mania in the first part of the 17th century. Starting with the Japanese bubble in the 1980s we take the reader on a tour through 20 years of bubbles in emerging markets and industrial countries which have recently culminated in the 2007/08 US subprime market crisis. We explain the global stock market and real estate booms based on the real and monetary overinvestment theories of Hayek, Wicksell and Schumpeter, arguing that ample liquidity supply originating in the large industrialised countries has contributed – independent from the exchange rate regime – to overinvestment cycles in new and emerging markets around the globe. The policy implication is to keep interest rates not too low for too long in response to bursting bubbles.