Visiting Fellow, Professor Shigenori Shiratsuka, will deliver a seminar on Monetary Policy in a Significantly Positive Interest Rate Environment in Japan, hosted by the Australia-Japan Researc
The Bank of Japan (BOJ) was forced to keep its policy interest rate at 0.5% or below for over 30 years, from September 1995 until December 2025, after lowering it to that level. Furthermore, during this period, the BOJ's balance sheet expanded from 10% to over 100% of nominal GDP. The BOJ has begun unwinding its large-scale unconventional monetary policy and normalizing its monetary policy. Still, in doing so, it faces significant challenges on both the interest rate and quantity sides. Under these circumstances, the immediate monetary policy management (new conventional monetary policy) will return to conventional management, reverting to interest rate control. At the same time, however, it requires a significantly different framework from before, as it must be managed under a large balance sheet.
Shigenori Shiratsuka is Professor in the Faculty of Economics at Keio University. His research has focussed on monetary economics, macroeconomics, central banking, the Japanese economy and the consumer price measurement.