Kōzō Ueda

Negative correlations between inflation and aging are observed across developed nations. To understand such correlations from a politico-economic perspective, we embed the fiscal theory of the price level into an overlapping-generations model, with short-lived governments choosing tax rates and bond issues. Aging is deflationary when caused by an increase in longevity but inflationary when caused by a decline in birth rate. Over the past 40 years, aging has generated non-negligible deflationary

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 US scanner data. Second, regular prices are almost as flexible as those in the USA 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 pla

This paper constructs a two-country DSGE model to study the nature of the recent …nancial crisis that spread immediately throughout the world owing to the globalization of banking. In the model, …nancial intermediaries (FIs) sign chained credit contracts at home and abroad, engaging in cross-border lending to entrepreneurs by undertaking cross-border borrowing from investors. The FIs as well as the entrepreneurs in two countries are credit constrained, so four net worths matter. Our model reveal

Sufficiently high net worth of financial intermediaries ( FIs ) is considered a necessary condition for financial and macroeconomic stability. In this paper, we explore why the net worth of FIs is important as compared to that of nonfinancial firms using a dynamic general equilibrium model, in which both FIs and nonfinancial firms rely on costly external debt. We find that an exogenous disruption of the FIs ' net worth has a greater aggregate impact than does the same‐sized disruption of the non

Abstract In this study, we explain the driving forces behind the secular stagnation associated with a persistent decrease in interest rates by employing a model that incorporates a crisis risk triggered by government debt accumulation. The model shows that fear of large‐scale capital taxation and capital misallocation in future debt crises accounts for almost half the economic slowdown in Japan over the past two decades. Over the same period, the government bond yield declines, because a decreas

Abstract We estimate a New Keynesian model incorporating two notable features: bounded rationality and the zero lower bound on the nominal interest rate. Our Bayesian estimation of a nonlinear model shows that the model with bounded rationality better fits the U.S. data than its rational expectations counterpart, and that both households and firms exhibit a substantial degree of bounded rationality. Moreover, we demonstrate that bounded rationality expands a parameter region in which the model c

This paper evaluates the effects of product turnover on a welfare-based cost-of-living index by incorporating the quality effect and the fashion effect. Employing scanner data for Japan for the years 1988–2013, we find that (i) the price and quantity of a new product tend to be higher than those of its predecessor at its exit; (ii) a considerable fashion effect exists for the entire sample period, while the quality effect is declining over time; and (iii) the discrepancy between the cost-of-livi

In this paper, we construct a simple model for communication between a central bank and money-market traders. It is demonstrated that there are multiple equilibria. In one equilibrium, traders truthfully reveal their own information, and by learning this, the central bank can make better forecasts. Another equilibrium is a “dog-chasing-its-tail ” equilibrium described by Blinder (1998). Traders mimic the central bank’s forecast, so the central bank simply observes its own forecast from traders.

To consider the strategic pricing of duopolistic firms and its implications for monetary policy, this study constructs a tractable duopoly model with price stickiness. Dynamic strategic complementarity, in which an increase in a firm’s price increases the optimal price set by the rival firm in the following periods, increases steady-state price and the real effect of monetary policy. However, when temporary sales arise as a mixed strategy, the real effect of monetary policy decreases considerabl