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The article summarizes the experiences of Canada, Japan and Sweden regarding the accumulation of trust fund reserves and the investment of those reserves. Canada has universal pension program Old-Age Security which provides coverage for all residents, and the employment-related pension program Canada Pension Plan. In 1985, the two major social security programs in Japan, the Employees' Pension Insurance and the National Pension Insurance were combined in one system.

Regional financial arrangements and monetary integration in East Asia and Europe have made considerable progress in recent years. This paper discusses whether governments in both regions, Japan and Germany as the most advanced regional economies in particular, can use the new dynamics as levers to raise their status vis-à-vis the United States. It will be argued that activities are defensive rather than offensive, aiming at protecting the respective region from financial risk. Japan, in particular, would find it difficult to raise its status vis-à-vis the United States significantly by promoting regional financial and monetary integration, principal reasons being actor heterogeneity, the role of China, hesitation to bear burden and risk, and the historical legacy of a bank-oriented system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assesses Japan's monetary policy and the effort of the Bank of Japan (BOJ) to end deflation. Nature of a central bank; Approach used in computing the return of money, government bonds and capital; Management of the money stock; Operating procedures of the BOJ; Percentage of changes in real money and the fitted values from the regression; Application of the quantity theory to explain Japanese deflation.