The Japanese economy has suffered from persistent deflation since the mid-1990s, when the banking system fell into serious undercapitalization. In Germany and in China, worries about impending deflation have emerged, along with fear of prospective or hidden bank insolvency. In this paper I present a simple model in which bank insolvency causes deflation. During a period of bank insolvency, bank deposits in excess of bank assets continue to exist if the government (implicitly) guarantees them. I assume that bank deposits cannot exceed a certain multiple of the monetary base and that the government is prohibited to expand fiscal expenditures. A government that guarantees unbacked bank deposits without recapitalizing an insolvent banking system is forced to set the nominal interest rate at zero and to let the price level fall.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI) in its series Discussion papers with number
03022.
Length: 14 pages Date of creation: Oct 2003 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:eti:dpaper:03022
Contact details of provider: Postal: 11th floor, Annex, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) 1-3-1, Kasumigaseki Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 100-8901 Phone: +81-3-3501-1363 Fax: +81-3-3501-8577 Email: Web page: http://www.rieti.go.jp/ More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (TAKIZAWA Itsuko).
Related research
Keywords:
Other versions of this item:
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: