This study uses the Bank of Japan’s Tankan (Short-Term Economic Survey of Enterprises in Japan) data to estimate the long-run time series of Japanese firms’ inflation expectations since 1990. In Tankan, the series on “consumer price inflation expectations” and “output price inflation expectations” are available only from 2014 onward, while the “output price DI (diffusion index)” is available for a longer period. Using the relationships among these series in the 2014–2022 period, we estimate one-year-ahead consumer price inflation expectations for the 1990–2013 period based on the output price DI. The results indicate that firms’ inflation expectations contain information that enhances the forecast accuracy of consumer price inflation beyond what is captured by the lagged inflation or the output gap, and that these expectations improve forecast accuracy more than economists’ inflation expectations.

The new Bank of Japan Act, which came into effect in April 1998, stipulates that the Bank of Japan shall autonomously implement monetary policy and strive to enhance the transparency of its policy operations. Under this Act, the Bank of Japan expanded its communication efforts, making various documents related to its Monetary Policy Meetings publicly available. Compiling information released by the Bank of Japan over the 25 years since the Act’s enactment, this study creates a comprehensive chronology of the Monetary Policy Meetings.

This essay briefly introduces “Japan’s Monetary Policy Database,” which the author built in 2024 and updates regularly.

This essay explains an econometric model that measures how well inflation targets have been achieved based on inflation trend estimates.

This essay provides a brief introduction to the article, “Effects of Mandatory Residencies on Female Physicians’ Specialty Choices: Evidence from Japan’s New Medical Residency Program,” by Tsunao Okumura, Yuko Ueno, and Emiko Usui, published in the Labour Economics in May 2024.