Global Economics Focus How to gauge recession risk in DMs Getting an early steer on whether an economy has entered recession requires a holistic assessment of a variety of indicators to see if multiple variables are flagging recession at the same time. In... 9th September 2024 · 16 mins read
Japan Economics Focus BoJ would only cut rates if economy tanks While we expect inflation to fall below the Bank of Japan’s 2% next year, the Bank’s still very accommodative stance means that this alone won’t trigger interest rate cuts. We think it would require a... 19th August 2024 · 15 mins read
Japan Economics Focus Rental growth will continue to lag income growth While faster wage growth should eventually result in a significant pick-up in rental inflation, it seems likely that rental growth will trail income growth for the foreseeable future. That means that... 5th August 2024 · 9 mins read
Japan Economics Focus Higher interest rates won’t trigger housing meltdown While higher interest rates will make owner-occupied housing less affordable, the Bank of Japan will only tighten policy gradually so detached house prices will probably hold up well. By contrast... 15th July 2024 · 15 mins read
Japan Economics Focus Will rising JGB yields cause capital repatriation? In view of the wider interest, we are resending this publication to include clients of our Global Markets Service. We apologise to readers of our Japan Economics Service who are receiving it twice... 1st July 2024 · 15 mins read
Japan Economics Focus Shrinking BoJ balance sheet won’t have big impact While the Bank of Japan’s JGB holdings have started to shrink and will continue to do so now that Yield Curve Control is over, we think that the normalisation of the Bank’s balance sheet could take up... 26th March 2024 · 12 mins read
Japan Economics Focus Services inflation will moderate again While most of the recent pick-up in services inflation has been driven by just a handful of components, there’s been an upward shift in the distribution of price changes across the CPI basket. However... 15th January 2024 · 9 mins read
Japan Economics Focus Long-term debt sustainability still under threat The recent sharp fall in Japan’s ratio of public debt to GDP reflects one-off factors that won’t be sustained. While the influence of rising bond yields on the trajectory of the public finances will... 8th January 2024 · 18 mins read
Japan Economics Focus BoJ policy rate will reach 2% by 2030 The recent period of high inflation in Japan has kick-started a virtuous cycle between wages and prices. If inflation expectations remain elevated and structural forces push up the neutral rate of... 27th November 2023 · 15 mins read
Global Economics Focus The shape of the fractured world economy in 2024 Our expanded Global Fracturing database allows clients to analyse how geopolitical pressures are reshaping global economic and financial activity. Here, we highlight some of the key findings. 16th November 2023 · 10 mins read
Japan Economics Focus Faster wage growth should give BoJ confidence to tighten With wage growth set to strengthen further over the coming year, we think the Bank of Japan will soon have sufficient confidence in the sustainability of higher inflation to end negative interest... 1st November 2023 · 13 mins read
Japan Economics Focus Japan is not on the cusp of a lasting turnaround Japan bulls have proposed a range of explanations to justify the outperformance of the TOPIX relative to other equity indices over recent months. While there are some signs that firms are enjoying... 24th July 2023 · 18 mins read
Japan Economics Focus The electric vehicle threat to Japan’s car industry Japan’s carmakers face an existential threat from the emergence of cheap EV exports from China. Even in a benign scenario where carmakers eventually jump on the EV bandwagon, we suspect that they... 8th June 2023 · 18 mins read
Japan Economics Focus What to do about Japan’s large corporate surplus? Japan’s large corporate sector surpluses are a key source of deflationary pressure. Corporate savings surged in the 1990s, primarily because net interest payments slumped, and have since remained... 2nd May 2023 · 16 mins read
Global Economics Focus Introducing our new financial conditions indices (FCIs) We have revamped our financial conditions indices (FCIs) for DM economies. This document sets out a framework for analysing financial conditions, explains our methodology, presents and interprets our... 18th April 2023 · 20 mins read
Japan Economics Focus What does a weak yen mean for Japan? The yen may have bottomed out against the dollar, but it is likely to remain weak for some time. That should boost Japan’s economy as higher revenues from exports and from overseas subsidiaries... 2nd August 2022 · 15 mins read
