IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/v52y2020i44p4809-4821.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Unconventional monetary policy and inequality: is Japan unique?

Author

Listed:
  • Ayako Saiki
  • Jon Frost

Abstract

Unconventional monetary policy (UMP) influences inequality through two channels that work in opposite directions – a labour market channel (more employment, higher wages) and a financial market channel (higher asset prices). In an earlier paper, covering UMP through 2014, we found that UMP in Japan had contributed to greater income inequality through its effects on asset prices. With a longer time period, a richer dataset including labour market data, and a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) we confirm that these results continue to hold, and investigate why UMP’s impact on inequality in Japan differs from some other countries. We argue that Japanese structural issues may mute the labour market channel, especially: (i) labour market rigidity; and (ii) the large share of the population that is older than 65 years old or retired. The older cohort’s capital gains and dividends are re-saved in other financial assets, instead of being consumed or used for starting businesses. At the same time, wages have not increased despite the severe labour shortage, due to the frictions in Japan’s labour market. We conclude that these factors may make the inequality created by UMP in Japan unique by international comparison.

Suggested Citation

  • Ayako Saiki & Jon Frost, 2020. "Unconventional monetary policy and inequality: is Japan unique?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 52(44), pages 4809-4821, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:52:y:2020:i:44:p:4809-4821
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2020.1745748
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2020.1745748
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036846.2020.1745748?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Roy, Ripon & Bashar, Omar H.N.M. & Bhattacharya, Prasad Sankar, 2023. "The cross-industry effects of monetary policy: New evidence from Bangladesh," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    2. Sarah Burkinshaw & Yaz Terajima & Carolyn A. Wilkins, 2022. "Income Inequality in Canada," Discussion Papers 2022-16, Bank of Canada.
    3. Thomas Gries & Lukas Wiechers & Sebastian José Luna-Victoria, 2023. "Unconventional monetary policy and wealth inequality: evidence from the US," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 43(4), pages 1865-1874.
    4. Davtyan, Karen, 2023. "Unconventional monetary policy and economic inequality," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).

    More about this item

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Unconventional monetary policy and inequality: is Japan unique? (AE 2020) in ReplicationWiki

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:52:y:2020:i:44:p:4809-4821. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.