Asset Price Fluctuations in Japan:
What Role for Monetary Policy?

Michael M. Hutchison

This paper examines the nature of fundamental disturbances that have accounted for fluctuations in Japanese nominal and real land prices during the post-war period. A distinction is made between macroeconomic supply and demand shocks, as well as land-market specific shocks, in the context of a dynamic structural VAR model. The results indicate that shocks to aggregate demand-a category encompassing most monetary policy shifts-explain only a small part of the movement in land prices around the longer-term rising trend. Aggregate supply shocks are an important explanatory factor. Much of the variance in land prices also is attributable to factors originating in the land market itself, potentially including speculative bubbles.

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