An Investigation on the Monetary Policy and Short-term Interest Rates in Japan

Abstract

We explore the intertemporal linkage between call rate changes, consumer price index (CPI) changes, and real gross domestic product (GDP) changes in Japan based on the Taylor rule of monetary policy. In our analysis, we consider two sample periods, namely, the former is before zero-interest rate policy and the latter is after it. According to our empirical results, first, we find that the relations between call rate changes and GDP changes and those between call rate changes and CPI changes are weak before zero-interest rate policy. Second, we also find that after zero-interest rate policy, mutual intertemporal relations between call rate changes and GDP changes are seen as the US Taylor rule suggests, although the linkage between call rate changes and CPI changes is not seen. Hence after zero-interest rate policy, regarding call rates and GDP, the relations suggested by US Taylor rule are found in Japan.