This paper investigates the optimal choice of monetary policy instrument when the feedback rule on past disturbances is optimally chosen. In the analysis, monetary feedback rule is based not only on current interest rate but also on past disturbances. In the neoclassical model where expectations are rational, the choice of monetary instrument can be redundant in stabilizing output. However, in the sticky price model and the model with adaptive expectations, the choice of monetary instrument in stabilizing output is the Pool's rule whether the feedback rule on past disturbances is optimally chosen or not. A crucial point in the analysis is that the price equation is forward-looking in the neoclassical model with rational expectations but is backward-looking in the sticky price model or the model with adaptive expectations.

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This paper analyzes the structures of end-of-period and beginning-of-period specifications of asset equilibrium under portfolio adjustment costs and intertemporal optimization motives, by distinguishing effective from notional asset demands and planning horizon from market period length. We show: (1) The expectations functions in discrete time converge to continuously differentiable functions of time in the continuous time limit. (2) Quasi end-of-period equilibrium is a relevant notion to deal with effective asset demands. (3) The two specifications are equivalent in continuous time only if the perfect foresight condition is satisfied. (4) The balance sheet identity and the flow budget constraint are equivalent.

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If policyholders surrender their level-premium permanent life insurance contracts in favor of a “buy term and invest the cash value by themselves” proposal, would they be better off? In response to such a standing question in life insurance literature, so-called “separatists” recommend that saving and protection elements of life contracts should be separated. Their argument is based on the observation that: (a) level-premium life insurance overcharges the policyholders and (b) an individual can invest his life insurance savings more wisely than can the life insurance company. Against such a recommendation, however, most of life insurance specialists stoutly maintain the view: People can effectively preserve their life protection only when the saving feature is combined with the protection feature. The purpose of this paper is to offer a through economic analysis on these conflicting doctrines.

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Deregulation of Japan's foreign exchange markets has remarkably progressed in 1980s. This paper studies how the deregulation affects the pattern of economic fluctuations and the optimal monetary policy. The monetary authority is assumed to control money supply in response to various exogenous shocks, in order to minimize the weighted average of variances of GNP and the price index. Interestingly, in the economy with deregulated foreign exchange markets, the monetary authority should response more sensitive to shocks which are occurred at foreign countries such as unexpected changes of foreign government expenditure and monetary policy than to domestic shocks. It is shown that the optimal monetary policy derived in this paper is free from Lucas Critic in that the policy which is optimal under the assumption of static expectation on government policy is not necessarily optimal under rational expectation.

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Brander and Spencer (1984a) showed the new aspect of the tariff policy in the imperfectly competitive market (rent shifting). This paper examines how welfare is affected and the policy fails when the direct investment is induced by that tariff policy. It is shown, among other things, that (a) welfare of the host country is lowered even compared to the free trade regime when entry is restricted, that (b) with free entry of firms, welfare of the host country is enhanced compared to the free trade regime, and that (c) if the traiff war occurs, welfare of the both countries are always lowered compared to any regimes.

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In this paper we consider the pure exchange overlapping-generations model with money. This model assumes the double infinity of consumers and commodities. Hence it is not so easy to show the existence of a competitive equilibrium in this model as to show a competitive equilibrium in the finite horizon economy. This paper claims to prove the existence theorem: Under a set of assumptions about consumer's utility functions and initial endowments, we show the existence of a monetary competitive equilibrium where money has a finite positive exchange value over the infinite horizon.

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