assorted link；ポーゼン、デフレーション

海外のブログを眺めていると「assorted link」と題したエントリーをよく目にする。「assorted link」＝ブログ主の興味を引いた論文や記事・ブログエントリー等のリンクだけを貼った「ミニリンク集」のことだけれど、何かと便利そうなので*1真似してみることにしよう。今後もちょこちょこ同様の使い方をすることがあるかもしれない。

●Adam Davidson, “God Save the British Economy”（New York Times, December 19, 2012）；ポーゼン（Adam Posen）の軌跡。

By 1997, Posen was a young economist when an acquaintance at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo invited him to a conference.

・・・

By the time Posen arrived for the conference, though, Japan had been in a recession for several years. The prevailing wisdom among many of the country’s economists and political figures was that Japan simply grew too much, too fast, and that as long as the central bank and finance ministry protected the core institutions ― like its banks ― the country would soon grow again. There was also a general view that Japan’s economy ― with its rapid growth and unique system of cooperation among large corporations and the government ― was thoroughly unlike any other. It didn’t need counsel from outsiders.

In the month before the conference, Posen read up on data pertaining to national G.D.P., employment and banking-sector activity. G.D.P. growth had slowed. Unemployment was rising. Banks were not lending freely. Posen quickly recognized that the data looked remarkably familiar. “I had this aha moment,” he told me. Japan was not going through a unique and inevitable economic slowdown, Posen realized. The country was experiencing something that looked a lot like the Great Depression. And neither the government nor the central bank realized it. Like the governments and central banks of the United States and Britain 60 years earlier, Japanese bankers and policy makers were doing everything wrong to turn the economy around. He began writing a series of recommendations.

Posen diagnosed the problem as a large output gap. The economy, he argued, was fundamentally capable of producing far more goods and services, employing more people and making more money. Bridging that gap between the depressed economy and its potential required that the central bank create a lot more money and get it out into the economy. At the same time, he wrote, the government needed to spend far more, too. To accomplish both of these goals, the Bank of Japan and the government had to stop rescuing the country’s sickest banks, which continued to lend to the oldest and least productive businesses.

●Kenneth N. Kuttner and Adam S. Posen, “Do Markets Care Who Chairs the Central Bank?”（Peterson Institute for International Economics Working Paper 07-3, July 2008；ジャーナル掲載版）

Abstract
This paper assesses the effects of central bank governor appointments on financial-market expectations of monetary policy. To measure these effects, we assemble a new dataset of appointment announcements from 15 countries and conduct an event-study analysis on exchange rates, bond yields, and stock prices. Our main findings are threefold. First, exchange rates and bond yields display a statistically significant response to the announcement of a new governor, especially when the　appointee’s identity was not anticipated in advance. Second, the reactions are especially pronounced for central banks lacking either independence or a clear nominal anchor. Third, new governors are not generally perceived to lack credibility: there is no tendency for announcements to be associated with jumps in inflation expectations.

●Michael Bordo and Andrew Filardo, “Deflation in a historical perspective”（BIS Working Papers No 186, November 2005）

Introduction
After 20 years during which inflation was viewed as public enemy number one, the spotlight has recently shifted to deflation, defined as a sustained decline in the aggregate price level. Although deflation has been treated as a new and daunting policy challenge, it is far from new and need not be daunting. In the century before World War I, price levels in many countries declined as often as they rose and, moreover, falling prices were not always associated with recessions. Indeed many deflation episodes were “good” in the sense that they were associated with productivity-driven economic growth. The historical record offers important lessons for policymakers about the current policy environment.

Our paper can be seen as a primer on deflation. We briefly survey some theoretical issues and monetary policy dimensions of deflation. This discussion provides a backdrop against which to interpret the evidence of deflation, drawn from the historical records of many countries, with a few having data going back as far as the past two centuries.

Our survey of history suggests that deflations of the past fall into three broad categories: “the good, the bad and the ugly”. To understand the differences, we first use historical narratives to identify and illustrate each of these three types of deflation. We then provide a more formal statistical evaluation of the costs of deflation by focusing on the determinants of different types of deflationary episode. Armed with these results, we turn to lessons to be learned about the efficacy of monetary policy in dealing with inflation/deflation, and offer a holistic approach to describing the challenges facing policy makers. In this regard, several different zones of price level movement, ranging from high inflation to deep deflation, highlight the differential role of monetary policy in each. From this perspective, the contemporary policy trade-offs of dealing with deflation are, arguably, put in a clearer light. In particular, the historical record suggests that all deflations are not alike and therefore may require different approaches.

●Pierre L. Siklos, “Deflation”（EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Whaples, May 11, 2004）

Conclusions
Whereas policy makers today speak of the need to avoid deflation their assessment is colored by the experience of the bad deflation of the 1930s, and its spread internationally, and the ongoing deflation in Japan. Hence, not only do policy makers worry about deflation proper they also worry about its spread on a global scale.

If ideology can blind policymakers to introducing necessary reforms then the second lesson from history is that, once entrenched, expectations of deflation may be difficult to reverse. The occasional fall in aggregate prices is unlikely to significantly affect longer-term expectations of inflation. This is especially true if the monetary authority is independent from political control, and if the central bank is required to meet some kind of inflation objective. Indeed, many analysts have repeatedly suggested the need to introduce an inflation target for Japan. While the Japanese have responded by stating that inflation targeting alone is incapable of helping the economy escape from deflation, the Bank of Japan's stubborn refusal to adopt such a monetary policy strategy signals an unwillingness to commit to a different monetary policy strategy. Hence, expectations are even more unlikely to be influenced by other policies ostensibly meant to reverse the course of Japanese prices. The Federal Reserve, of course, does not have a formal inflation target but has repeatedly stated that its policies are meant to control inflation within a 0-3% band. Whether formal versus informal inflation targets represent substantially different monetary policy strategies continues to be debated, though the growing popularity of this type of monetary policy strategy suggests that it greatly assists in anchoring expectations of inflation.

*1:「あら？　あの話ってどこで読んだっけ？」と参照したいリンク先がなかなか思い出せないことが個人的にここ最近多い。リンク先をすぐに参照できるようにしておけば便利だろうな、というのが一番の動機。