BOJ’s Comprehensive Policy Review Has a Lot to Take in: Primer

Haruhiko Kuroda became Bank of Japan governor in 2013 vowing to beat inflation and drag the economy out of its malaise. More than three years later, this hasn’t happened, and last week he ordered his staff to conduct a comprehensive review of the BOJ’s policies to see what is needed to meet its 2 percent price target.

As the chart indicates, Kuroda is the latest in a long list of governors to use "unconventional" monetary policies to try to drag Japan out of its funk since the bursting of an asset-price bubble in the early 1990s. An earlier attempt with quantitative easing (marked in pink) began during Masaru Hayami’s term, followed by other experiments until Kuroda arrived on the scene (marked in yellow).