Monetary Policy And The Term Structure Of Interest Rates In Japan PDF Download

This Ph.D. thesis has the ambition to help better understand the role of interest rates as a monetary policy instrument driving the economy for the central bank. The first chapter of the thesis analyzes the bond term premium transmission channel of the first sovereign bonds purchase programme of the European Central Bank, focusing on the impact on aggregated Euro Area macroeconomic variables. The second chapter investigates the low growth - low inflation environment present in Japan since the 1990s, through the yield curve gap. This chapter extends the concept of (short-term) natural rate of interest to medium and long-term maturities, and shows that the different monetary policy regimes implemented by the Bank of Japan did not have an homogeneous impact on the yield curve gap and on the Japanese economy. Finally, a third chapter demonstrates that the U.S. price Phillips curve - the structural relationship between price inflation and measures of real economic activity - is not dead, as opposed to the current common thinking. This chapter shows that the slope of the price Phillips curve is not flat, once filtered from all supply shocks, and not only cost-push shocks. The chapter also finds evidence that the apparent flattening of the curve is due to the fact that the U.S. Federal Reserve has become a stricter inflation targeter.