Skip to main content

A Comparison of Japanese and US New Keynesian Phillips Curves with Bayesian VAR-GMM

日本語

March 22, 2022
Takushi Kurozumi*1
Ryohei Oishi*2

Abstract

We compare Japanese and US inflation dynamics during the post-Global Financial Crisis period by utilizing Bayesian VAR-GMM to estimate several specifications of the New Keynesian Phillips curve. With the estimation method, we derive expectations in the Phillips curve from a VAR and analyze the formation of inflation expectations explicitly. We select the specification with variable elasticity of demand for Japan and that with sticky information for the US, using quasi-marginal likelihood. The selected specifications show that the persistence of inflation expectations formation is higher and trend inflation is lower in Japan than in the US. These findings account for persistently weak inflation developments in Japan: in the presence of firms' cautious price-setting behavior that reflects the purchasing attitude of consumers who are sensitive to price increases, inflation remains low and induces, through the highly persistent formation of inflation expectations, low expected future inflation and hence low trend inflation, which in turn put downward pressure on present inflation through the Phillips curve.

JEL classification
E31, C11, C26, C52

Keywords
New Keynesian Phillips curve; Inflation expectations formation; Variable elasticity of demand; VAR-GMM; Bayesian method

The authors are grateful to Kosuke Aoki, Junko Koeda, Jouchi Nakajima, Mototsugu Shintani, Toshiaki Watanabe, Tsutomu Watanabe, and colleagues at the Bank of Japan for comments and discussions. Views expressed in the paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Bank of Japan.

  1. *1Monetary Affairs Department, Bank of Japan
    E-mail : takushi.kurozumi@boj.or.jp
  2. *2Monetary Affairs Department, Bank of Japan
    E-mail : ryouhei.ooishi@boj.or.jp

Notice

Papers in the Bank of Japan Working Paper Series are circulated to stimulate discussion and comment. Views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Bank.
If you have any comments or questions on a paper in the Working Paper Series, please contact the author(s).
When making a copy or reproduction of the content for commercial purposes, please contact the Public Relations Department (post.prd8@boj.or.jp) at the Bank in advance to request permission. When making a copy or reproduction, the Bank of Japan Working Paper Series should explicitly be credited as the source.