导读
后疫情时代，日本经济正逐步摆脱自20世纪90年代末以来持续的通货紧缩和低通胀。10月3日，日本银行政策委员会委员野口朝日探讨了日本当前的经济政策，对当今日本的经济活动、物价动态以及货币政策的调整进行了解读，并强调了摆脱经济“零常态”的重要性。
在经济活动方面，得益于于国内外经济形势的发展与政策的实施，日本经济在全球通胀环境下逐渐摆脱长期低通胀状态，接近实现2%的物价稳定目标。一方面，全球经济正趋于“软着陆”——即在不显著提高失业率的情况下成功抑制通胀。另一方面，日本国内消费增长也为日本经济复苏发出了积极信号。而在应对通胀方面，日本正向更稳定的通胀过渡，物价上涨从受进口成本推动转向由工资增长推动。随着全球通胀趋稳，日本消费者物价指数（CPI）增幅逐步稳定，工资成为服务价格上涨新动力。该变化表明，日本通胀压力逐渐由外部转向内部。
货币政策方面，日本央行的最新政策显示，日本正从长期的大规模货币宽松转向更加传统的货币政策框架，以适应后疫情时代通胀和国内工资增长的变化。该政策转变的一个关键环节是央行正逐步减少对日本国债（JGB）的购买量，旨在恢复市场深度。这一调整为金融市场提供了更大的运作自由度，长期利率将由市场主导。央行的目标是将通胀稳定在2%左右，促进工资增长，以推动经济可持续增长。值得注意的是，2024年7月，日本央行政策性利率的上调导致日元升值、股市下跌，部分原因是市场对经济状况的看法与央行实际判断之间存在分歧，且就业数据疲软加剧了波动。该事件反映出两大问题：一是央行需充分理解市场的政策预期，二是央行应通过加强与市场的沟通政策调整的分歧，以避免市场动荡。
最后，要实现经济可持续增长，日本央行需要摆脱价格和工资“零常态”，推动社会对价格和工资形成新认知。从上世纪90年代泡沫经济崩溃到2021年疫情后复苏前，日本经济长期处于低名义增长状态，物价、工资和名义GDP几乎没有明显上升，“零常态”让企业和家庭普遍认为价格和工资不会上涨。同时，当工资和物价处于“零常态”，企业就会削减在节省劳动力和提高生产率上的固定投资，导致社会技术创新受限。疫情后全球通胀压力削弱了日本商品和服务的价格刚性，价格变动逐渐从0%区间向2-4%转移，“零常态”正在消退，工资水平也逐见起色。在这种情况下，日本企业管理者的看法开始转变，心理上做好了在必要时涨价涨薪的准备。然而，仍有部分消费者坚信价格不会上涨。消费者观念的彻底转变仍然需要一定的时间，在此之前，继续耐心维持宽松的金融条件至关重要。
以下为英文原文（节选）：
Speech at a Meeting with Local Leaders in Nagasaki
NOGUCHI Asahi
Member of the Policy Board, Bank of Japan
03 October 2024
II. Monetary Policy
A. Shifting Away from Large-Scale Monetary Easing and Its Significance
Next, I will discuss the Bank of Japan’s policy conduct. From the late 1990s, Japan’s economy suffered from what later came to be called the “Japan disease,” in which economic and employment growth remained sluggish while prices and nominal wages continued to decline.To overcome this prolonged deflation and achieve its 2 percent price stability target, the Bank in April 2013 introduced quantitative and qualitative monetary easing (QQE) as a large-scale monetary easing policy. Subsequently, to enhance monetary easing in response to developments in economic activity and prices, the Bank decided to implement QQE with a Negative Interest Rate in January 2016 and QQE with Yield Curve Control in September of the same year. As a result, the positive output gap widened, and the employment situation improved substantially before the COVID-19 pandemic (Chart 8). Moreover, although the year-on-year rate of increase in the CPI was still lower than the 2 percent price stability target, it was at least no longer continuously negative.
At the Monetary Policy Meeting (MPM) held in March 2024, the Bank judged it was now within sight that the price stability target of 2 percent would be achieved in a sustainable and stable manner. It thus decided to discontinue its unconventional monetary easing policies and shift back to a conventional policy framework, in which the degree of monetary accommodation is adjusted by guiding the money market rate (Chart 9). The Bank made this shift for the following reasons. First, due to the impact of global inflation following the pandemic, Japan’s inflation rate continued to exceed 2 percent, which also began to raise the underlying inflation trend. Second, in the process of economic recovery from the pandemic, The tightness in the labor market that had already materialized before the pandemic became even more pronounced, leading to a distinct rise in nominal wages. This means that Japan’s economy has finally started to move away from an economy with a “zero norm,” in which inflation and wage growth rates of virtually zero become the norm. I will elaborate on this point later.
The Bank will gradually adjust its current monetary accommodation, while carefully monitoring price developments to make sure that the year-on-year rate of increase in the CPI stabilizes at around 2 percent, accompanied by wage increases. The primary objective is to reach a potential growth path, in which inflation of around 2 percent is achieved in a stable manner, on as smooth a trajectory as possible. The Bank’s March 2024 decision means that the role of such adjustments to monetary accommodation falls exclusively to the money market rate as the policy interest rate.
The shift away from large-scale monetary easing also has a secondary effect. It restores a degree of freedom to financial markets, which had been under significant constraint due to the monetary easing policy, in a manner that avoids market disruption. The Bank had increased its involvement in the Japanese government bond (JGB) market through policies such as QQE, the negative interest rate policy, and yield curve control. The reason for this was that, with money market rates -- the target for conventional monetary policy -- having almost reached the lower bound, the Bank had sought to employ long-term interest rates as the main channel for influencing financial conditions. The upshot was that the Bank came to hold a large amount of JGBs on the asset side of its balance sheet. Since the policy shift in March 2024, the Bank has left the formation of long-term interest rates and the yield curve entirely to the market. It therefore needs to reduce its JGB purchases, albeit at a gradual pace, to ensure that there is sufficient depth in the market for JGB transactions, involving a large number of market participants.
What I would like to emphasize is that the purpose of reducing JGB purchases is solely to restore market depth, and not to shrink the Bank’s balance sheet or adjust monetary accommodation. This entails two aspects. First, unlike the period of scarce reserve balances prior to the global financial crisis in 2008, when the Bank guided and maintained money market rates exclusively through money market operations, the Bank now controls short-term interest rates through the interest rate it applies to current account balances held by financial institutions at the Bank. Thus, monetary policy conduct is essentially independent of the Bank’s balance sheet. Second, even if the extent of the reduction in the Bank’s JGB purchases leads to some degree of monetary tightening or easing, these effects will ultimately be absorbed by an adjustment in money market rates. In other words, it can be said that, in terms of this policy tool, the exit from large-scale monetary easing has already been completed.