Will Japan abandon its ultra-loose monetary policies now that Kazuo Ueda has replaced Haruhiko Kuroda as governor of the Bank of Japan? The answer, it seems, is “no”. The new governor, a well-known and respected academic economist, stressed that the two pillars of Japan’s current monetary policy — negative interest rates and yield curve control — remained appropriate. Was he also right to stick to these policies? On balance, my answer is “yes”. This is not because this is without risk, as Robin Harding argued last week. But because the alternatives are risky, too.
植田和男(Kazuo Ueda)已接替黑田東彥(Haruhiko Kuroda)擔任日本央行(Bank of Japan)行長，那麼日本會放棄超寬鬆貨幣政策嗎？答案似乎是「不會」。這位新行長是一位著名且受人尊敬的學者、經濟學家，他強調日本當前貨幣政策的兩大支柱——負利率和收益率曲線控制——仍然是合適的。他堅持這些政策也是正確的嗎？總的來說，我的回答是「是的」。這並不是因爲像羅賓•哈丁(Robin Harding)上週所說的那樣，這樣做沒有風險。而是因爲替代方案也有很高的風險。