This study focuses on the Bank of Japan’s (BOJ) purchases of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which began in December 2010, and uses high-frequency data to estimate its policy reaction function. In addition, it examines the impact of the central bank’s large-scale and continuous purchases on the stock market. The results of the discrete choice model show that the BOJ purchases ETFs is affected by the return of the Tokyo Stock Exchange Stock Price Index (TOPIX) from the previous day’s close to the morning close of the day, the deviation of the TOPIX morning close from the 5-day moving average, and the morning realized volatility measured by the high-frequency data were confirmed to have been affected by the ETF purchases. Moreover, the estimated effects of ETF purchases on stock returns and volatility were statistically significant, indicating that afternoon stock returns on days when the BOJ purchased ETFs tended to be higher than those on days when there were no purchases, and that realized volatility tended to be lower. Conversely, it is difficult to conclude that the BOJ’s ETF purchases fulfilled their intended purpose of “lowering risk premium in the market” in this respect. The effects of the ETF purchase policy must be discussed on a broader scale and over a broader time horizon.

This study compares the impacts of operator type-non-profit and for-profit-on worker wages. Focusing on the Japanese home care labor market, we compare wage distributions according to whether the operator is a for-profit or non-profit. In addition to the average wage gap, on which previous studies have focused, this study also estimates the distribution of the wage gap, conditional on workers’ background attributes. The results show that the wage gap between for-profit and non-profit firms differs significantly depending on the background attributes of workers.

Based on a panel survey of employees from 2020 to 2022, this study analyzes the dynamics of working from home in Japan since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results are summarized as follows: First, the percentage of those who engage in working from home is still much higher at the end of 2022 than before the pandemic, but it continues to decline. Second, the mean frequency of working from home continues to be two to three days per week. Third, subjective productivity at home continues to improve but is still, on average, approximately 20% lower than in the workplace at the end of 2022. Fourth, the productivity at home of those who continue this work style has peaked in the mid-80% range, and the recent increase in average productivity is the result of the selection effect of employees who are less productive at home returning to the workplace. Fifth, the percentage of employees willing to work from home at a high frequency has been steadily increasing, even after the end of the pandemic. These results indicate that natural selection based on productivity is functioning and that the amenity value of this work style is increasing.

In this study, we use a large firm-level dataset to explore the structure of the corporate boards of listed and unlisted companies in China and Eastern European countries. It is found that, with the exception of East European listed firms, these economies have problems with corporate governance systems, with the majority of directors appointed internally and the resulting weak presence of outside directors on the board when compared to advanced economies. Furthermore, our empirical analysis of the determinants of board structure reveals that Chinese and Eastern European firms are likely to organize their boards of directors according to the economic logic that has been repeatedly verified in advanced economies. Simultaneously, however, we also find striking differences in the combination of factors that strongly affect board structure between China and Europe and between listed and unlisted firms.

Russia’s urban structure does not follow the rank-and-size rule, which Hill and Gaddy attributed to the legacy of the Soviet Union’s administrative and directive planned economy. However, this study constructed a dataset of all cities in the former Soviet Republic from all population censuses and tested the validity of the rank and size rule in each census year to obtain more comprehensive conclusions. First, the Soviet Union’s urban hierarchical structure generally conformed to rank and size rules. Second, although the Soviet urban structure deviated from the rank-size rule between 1939 and 1959, the Soviet hierarchical urban structure tended to converge with the traditional rank-size rule in the last 30 years of the Soviet regime, up to 1989. The evolution of the hierarchical urban structure in the Soviet Union cannot be considered as a product of development policies based on administrative and directive planning and economic systems.

From 2013 to 2022, the Bank of Japan tried and failed to achieve a two percent inflation target by influencing people’s inflation expectations. This study examines the difficulty in manipulating inflation expectations from a game theory perspective. When the expected rate of inflation is stable over a long period, it becomes common knowledge, and thus, a convention in David Lewis’s sense. Manipulating inflation expectations requires the manipulation of common knowledge, for which certain devices are necessary. As an example of successful common knowledge manipulation, we consider the Real Plan implemented in Brazil in 1994 and discuss its connection to narrative economics because one way to manipulate common knowledge is to create a narrative.

This essay provides a brief introduction to journal article “Bubbles, Crashes, and Economic Growth: Theory and Evidence” written by Pablo A. Guerron-Quintana, Tomohiro Hirano, and Ryo Jinnai. It was published in the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics (Vol.15, No.2, pp. 333–371) in April 2023.

This essay briefly explains the findings of the upcoming journal article “Managing Long Working Hours: Evidence from a Management Survey.” It is written by Tanaka, Mari, Taisuke Kameda, Takuma Kawamoto, Shigeru Sugihara and Ryo Kambayashi, which will be published in the Journal of Human Resources.

This essay provides a brief introduction to the journal article “North-South Displacement Effects of Environmental Regulation: The Case of Battery Recycling” written by Tanaka, Shinsuke, Kensuke Teshima, and Eric Verhoogen. It was published in the American Economic Review (Insights, 4(3): 271–88) in 2022.