Joshua K. Hausman

Abenomics: Preliminary Analysis and Outlook

In early 2013, Japan enacted a monetary regime change. The Bank of Japan set a 2 percent inflation target and specified concrete actions to achieve this goal by 2015. In 2013, Shinzo Abe’s government supported this change with fiscal policy and planned structural reforms. Together with the Bank of Japan’s aggressive monetary easing, this policy package is known as “Abenomics.” We show that Abenomics ended deflation in 2013 and raised long-run inflation expectations. Our estimates suggest that Abenomics also raised 2013 output growth by 0.9 to 1.8 percentage points. Monetary policy alone accounted for up to a percentage point of growth, largely through positive effects on consumption. In both the medium and the long run, Abenomics will likely continue to be stimulative. However, the size of this effect, while highly uncertain, thus far appears likely to fall short of Japan’s large output gap. In part this is because the Bank of Japan’s 2 percent inflation target is not yet fully credible. We conclude by outlining a way to interpret future data releases in light of our results.

Overcoming the Lost Decades?: Abenomics after Three Years

We review the recent performance of the Japanese economy under Abenomics, the set of economic policies begun by Prime Minister Shinzō Abe in 2012. We find that in 2014, Abenomics, and in particular expansionary monetary policy, continued to weaken the yen and raise stock prices. It also continued to generate positive inflation, though neither actual nor expected inflation is yet 2 percent. The real effects of Abenomics have been modest. Performance would have been better if not for two puzzles: The response of net exports to the weak yen was small, and there is little evidence that expansionary monetary policy had large effects on consumption.

What Was Bad for General Motors Was Bad for America: The Automobile Industry and the 1937/38 Recession

This article shows that there were timing, geographic, and sectoral anomalies in the 1937/38 recession, none of which are easily explained by aggregate shocks. I argue that an auto industry supply shock contributed both to the recessions anomalies and to its severity. Labor-strife-induced wage increases and an increase in raw material costs led auto manufacturers to raise prices in fall 1937. Expectations of these price increases brought auto sales forward. When auto prices finally rose, sales plummeted. This shock likely reduced 1938 auto sales by roughly 600,000 units and 1938 GDP growth by 0.5–1 percentage point.