Regime shifts in the effects of Japan’s unconventional monetary policies

Japan is the country with the longest history of implementing unconventional monetary policies, which were first introduced more than fifteen years ago and have been expanded several times since then. This study attempts to assess the overall macroeconomic effects of Japan's unconventional monetary policies based on a stylized block-recursive vector autoregression with a smooth transition. The results suggest that expansionary unconventional monetary policy shocks have clear macroeconomic effects, leading to a persistent rise in real output and inflation. In addition, we demonstrate that these macroeconomic effects have become more persistent for output as well as stronger and more persistent for inflation in recent years, including in the quantitative and qualitative monetary easing period.