Quantitative Easing in Japan from 2001 to 2006 and the World Financial Crisis

The Bank of Japan adopted the Quantitative Easing (QE) Policy from March 2001 to March 2006. This paper investigates whether or not this QE had an effect in stimulating real economy in Japan. The identification of policy effect in the above Japanese case enables us to evaluate indirectly the effectiveness of the non-traditional monetary policy employed by US Federal Reserve Board (FRB) or the Bank of England (BOE) just after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. We extend vector autoregression analysis by Honda, Kuroki, and Tachibana (2007, 2010; HKT), including monthly samples before and after the period of QE, but at the same time fully exploiting prior information on the structural change of operating targets of monetary policy from call rate to bank reserve during the period of QE. There are two main results. First, this paper reconfirms our qualitative findings in HKT. That is, increases in bank reserve balances boost stock prices first, and then industrial production. Secondly, an increase in bank reserve balances by 1 trillion yen led to the rise of stock prices by the range of 0.2% to 0.9%, and to the increase of industrial production by the range of 0.03% to 0.18%. Finally, FRB called their policy after the Lehman shock gcredit easing h policy, but their policy includes both aspects of credit easing and QE. The results of the present paper suggest that even the QE aspect alone of the non-traditional monetary policy by FRB or BOE should have significant stimulating policy effects.