Japan Update 2014

The annual Japan Update is designed to give a comprehensive overview of Japan’s current economic and political landscape, and future directions.

Speakers participating in the Update are at the cutting edge of politics, economics and trade and each session will focus on opportunities and challenges in these fields.

Presenters and discussants include:

Generational change and the Japanese strategic imagination

Since the 1990s, there have been many forceful assertions in both popular and academic commentary that a younger generation of Japanese has abandoned the pacifist national identity embraced by the post-war and baby-boomer generations in Japan, in favour of a more nationalistic and hawkish orientation to international and security affairs. There has, however, been no systematic attempt to look at this question in order to evaluate whether such assertions hold up to scrutiny.

Transplanting corporate culture across international borders

In this seminar Professor Yukiko Abe will discuss her paper, co-authored by Naomi Kodama and Beata Javorcik, on gender outcomes in foreign and domestic firms in Japan using various statistical sources. Three types of firms are compared: greenfield foreign affiliates set up as new establishments; foreign affiliates established through acquisition of an existing Japanese firm; and Japanese firms.

Japan Update economic keynote speech - The most fundamental challenge facing the Japanese economy

This keynote speech of the 2013 Japan Update will focus on the most critical issues currently facing Japan’s economy. Professor Shirakawa will begin with a rundown of the factors which influenced Japan’s low-growth during the so-called ‘lost decades’, including the bursting of the bubble economy, policy failures and deflation. He will also discuss the impact on the economy of Japan’s changing demographics and the necessary responses of lifting productivity and labour participation.

Japan Update 2013

The inaugural Japan Update is designed to give a comprehensive overview of Japan’s current economic and political landscape, and future directions.

Speakers participating in the Update are at the cutting edge of politics, economics and trade and each session will focus on opportunities and challenges in these fields.

Presenters and discussants include:

• Yuriko Koike MP, Democratic Liberal Party and former Minister of Defense and National Security Advisor

• Masaaki Shirakawa, Former Governor of the Bank of Japan

Japan’s chronic deflation and the Bank of Japan’s latest monetary antidote

Japan has suffered from long-lasting but mild deflation since the latter half of the 1990s. In order to stop this chronic deflation, on 4 April, 2013, the Bank of Japan introduced the new operational framework of its quantitative and qualitative monetary easing (QQE). Although it is too early to tell how successful the QQE is, results of the first three months of the QQE will be discussed by Dr Toshitaka Sekine.

The Japanese government debt: A review of the situation and debates

The Japanese government debt is alarmingly high and many studies suggest it is unsustainable. Despite that, yields on Japanese Government Bonds (JGB) remain very low, as if to indicate that JGB buyers are not concerned about default risks in the near future.

Abenomics: Episode II

This lecture describes and interprets economic policies of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, nicknamed as ‘Abenomics’, which consists of three arrows: monetary, fiscal and growth policy. Prime Minister Abe has advocated strong monetary easing since he became President of the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) in mid-November. The market has positively responded to the adoption of inflation targeting and expected monetary easing, with the Japanese yen depreciating by 20% and stock prices rising by 40%. Why has the market responded positively to Mr Abe’s economic policy?

Regional integration and financial stability workshop

The workshop will discuss how we should measure financial integration, whether open financial systems with freer foreign and domestic entry improve economic performance or weaken it and whether closer financial integration creates more instability or less. The wokshop will help define a research project supported by the Centre for International Finance and Regulation(CIFR) to be undertaken during 2013 and will identify the likely areas of concern for regulators that are emerging from research in this area.