Tsutomu Watanabe
Professor of Economics
Graduate School of Economics, University of Tokyo
Founder and Technical Advisor, Nowcast Inc.
E-mail: watanabe@e.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Phone: 81-3-5841-5524 Fax: 81-3-5841-5521
Office: 1407 Economics Research Building map
Daily Inflation Data and Daily Sales Data from the UTokyo Price Project
JSPS Project on Central Bank Communication Design
My recent papers
Japan's Chronic Deflation: Causes and Consequences. CJEB Working Papers No. 393, Columbia University, April 25, 2025.
Comment on “The Evolution of Inflation Expectations in Japan” Asian Economic Policy Review, 20:2, 2025. Published online: 22 March 2025.
On the Source of Seasonality in Price Changes: The Role of Seasonality in Menu Costs (with K. Munakata, T. Shinohara, S. Shiratsuka, N. Sudo) CARF Working Paper Series, CARF-F-591, October 2024.
Exogenous and endogenous factors affecting stock market transactions: a Hawkes process analysis of the Tokyo Stock Exchange during the COVID-19 pandemic (with Y. Honma, M. Ito, T. Ohnishi, K. Aihara) PLOS ONE, 19(4), e0301462. Published: April 17, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301462
On the Source of Seasonality in Price Changes: The Role of Seasonality in Menu Costs (with K. Munakata, T. Shinohara, S. Shiratsuka, N. Sudo) IMES Discussion Paper Series 2023-E-7, Bank of Japan, November 2023.
Household Inventory, Temporary Sales, and Price Indices (with K. Ueda, K. Watanabe) International Economic Review. Volume 65, Issue 1, February 2024, Pages 217-251. Published online: 04 July 2023
The Demand for Money at the Zero Interest Rate Bound (with T. Yabu) Journal of Applied Econometrics, Volume 38, Issue 6, September/October 2023, pages 968-976. Published online: 01 May 2023.
Online Appendix to the Demand for Money at the Zero Interest Rate Bound (with T. Yabu) December 2022.
Price Setting in Online and Offline Markets: Evidence from Korea (with K. Ueda, K. Watanabe) Paper presented at 17th Ottawa Group Meeting, June 7-10, 2022, Bank of Italy.
Going Cashless: Government’s Point Reward Program vs. COVID-19 (with T. Shoji, T. Sekine) CARF Working Paper Series, CARF-F-538, June 2022.
Comment on "Big Data in Asian Central Banks" Asian Economic Policy Review, 17(2), 2022. First published: 29 January 2022.
Online Consumption During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Japan (with Y. Omori) CARF Working Paper Series, CARF-F-524, November 2021.
Visualizing Social and Behavior Change due to the Outbreak of COVID-19 using Mobile Phone Location Data (with T. Mizuno, T. Ohnishi) New Generation Computing, 39, 453–468, November 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00354-021-00139-x
Household Inventory, Temporary Sales, and Price Indices (with K. Ueda, K. Watanabe) CARF Working Paper Series, CARF-F-520, September 2021.
Japan's Voluntary Lockdown: Further Evidence Based on Age-Specific Mobile Location Data (with T. Yabu) Japanese Economic Review, 72(3), 333-370, July 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42973-021-00077-9
Online Consumption During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Japan (with Y. Omori) In E. Mazaheri (Ed.), The Impact of COVID19 On E-Commerce (pp.43-66). Proud Pen. Published: 20 May 2021. https://doi.org/10.51432/978-1-8381524-8-2_4
The Welfare Implications of Massive Money Injection: The Japanese Experience from 2013 to 2020, Asian Economic Policy Review, Vol. 16, No. 2, 224-242, July 2021. First published: 12 March 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/aepr.12342
Trade Clustering and Power Laws in Financial Markets (with M. Nirei, J. Stachurski) Theoretical Economics, Volume 15, Number 4, November 2020, 1365-1398.
Japan's Voluntary Lockdown (with T. Yabu) PLoS ONE 16(6): e0252468. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252468. Published: 10 June 2021.
Multilayer Network Approach to Dynamics of Japanese Interfirm Transaction Relations (with H. Sato, Y. Kichikawa, H. Iyetomi). In: Ikeda Y., Iyetomi H., Mizuno T. (eds) Big Data Analysis on Global Community Formation and Isolation. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4944-1_3. First Online: 13 June 2021.
Online Consumption During the COVID-19 Crisis: Evidence from Japan (with Y. Omori) Covid Economics: Vetted and Real-Time Papers, Issue 32, 208-241, 26 June 2020, CEPR Press.
Consumer Inventory and the Cost of Living Index: Theory and Some Evidence from Japan (with K. Ueda, K. Watanabe) CARF Working Paper Series, CARF-F-491, August 2020.
How Much Did People Refrain from Service Consumption due to the Outbreak of COVID-19? (with Y. Omori) CARF Working Paper Series, CARF-F-477, April 2020.
The Responses of Consumption and Prices in Japan to the COVID-19 Crisis and the Tohoku Earthquake CJEB Working Papers No. 373, Columbia Business School, March 2020. VoxEU
The Formation of Consumer Inflation Expectations: New Evidence from Japan's Deflation Experience (with J. Diamond, K. Watanabe) International Economic Review, Volume 61, Issue 1, 241-281, February 2020. https://doi.org/10.1111/iere.12423
How Large is the Demand for Money at the ZLB? Evidence from Japan (with T. Yabu) CARF Working Paper Series, CARF-F-465, September 2019.
Property Price Index: Theory and Practice (with E. Diewert, K. G. Nishimura, C. Shimizu) Advances in Japanese Business and Economics, Vol. 11, Springer, January 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-55942-9
House Price Dispersion in Boom-Bust Cycles: Evidence from Tokyo (with T. Ohnishi, T. Mizuno) Japanese Economic Review, 71(4), 511-539, October 2020. First Online: 10 December 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42973-019-00019-6
Detecting stock market bubbles based on the cross-sectional dispersion of stock prices (with T. Mizuno, T. Ohnishi) In: Sato H., Iwanaga S., Ishii A. (eds) Proceedings of the 23rd Asia Pacific Symposium on Intelligent and Evolutionary Systems. IES 2019. Proceedings in Adaptation, Learning and Optimization, vol 12. Springer, Cham. First Online: 05 December 2019.
Stockpiling and Price Index for Storable Goods (with K. Ueda, K. Watanabe) Presentation at the 16th Meeting of the Ottawa Group, 8-10 May 2019, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Product Turnover and the Cost of Living Index: Quality vs. Fashion Effects (with K. Ueda, K. Watanabe) American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 11(2), 310-347, April 2019.
Working Less and Bargain Hunting More: Macro Implications of Sales during Japan's Lost Decades (with K. Watanabe, K. Ueda, N. Sudo) Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Volume 50, Issue 2-3, 449-478, March-April 2018. First published: 25 March 2018 https://doi.org/10.1111/jmcb.12467
Storable Goods, Chain Drifts, and the Cost of Living Index (with K. Ueda, K. Watanabe) Presented at the Meeting of the Group of Experts on Consumer Price Indices, 7-9 May 2018, Palais des Nations, Geneva.
Why Has Japan Failed to Escape from Deflation? (with K. Watanabe) Asian Economic Policy Review, Vol. 13, No, 1, Jan 2018, 23-41.
Novel and Topical Business News and Their Impacts on Stock Market Activity (with T. Mizuno, T. Ohnishi) EPJ Data Science (2017) 6: 26. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-017-0123-7
Price Rigidity at Near-Zero Inflation Rates: Evidence from Japan (with K. Watanabe) CARF Working Paper Series, CARF-F-408, March 2017.
The Gradual Evolution of Buyer-Seller Networks and Their Role in Aggregate Fluctuations (with R. Hisano, T. Mizuno, T. Ohnishi, D. Sornette) Applied Network Science, 2017 2:9 Published on: 25 May 2017.
Dependence of the Decay Rate of Firm Activity on Firm Age (with A. Ishikawa, S. Fujimoto, T. Mizuno) Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, Volume 14, Issue 2, 351–362, December 2017.
Relationship between Population Density and Migration (with S. Fujimoto, T. Mizuno, T. Ohnishi, C. Shimizu) Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, Volume 14, Issue 1, 117-130, June 2017.
Who Buys What and Where: Reconstruction of International Trade Flows by Commodity and Industry (with Y. Ikeda) In: Cherifi H., Gaito S., Quattrociocchi W., Sala A. (eds) Complex Networks & Their Applications V: Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Complex Networks and their Applications. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 693, Springer, 657-670, 2016.
"Daily Living Area Detection Using Mobility Network Map Equation" (with T. Mizuno, T. Ohnishi) Presented at COMPLEX NETWORKS 2016, The 5th International Workshop on Complex Networks and their Applications, November 30 - December 02, 2016, Milan, Italy.
Power Laws in Market Capitalization During the Dot-com and Shanghai Bubble Periods (with T. Mizuno, T. Ohnishi) Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, Volume 13, Issue 2, 445-454, December 2016.
Long-term Firm Growth Properties Derived From Short-term Laws of Sales and the Number of Employees (with A. Ishikawa, S. Fujimoto, T. Mizuno) Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, Volume 13, Issue 2, 409-422, December 2016.
"Measuring Inflation By Company Using Scanner Data," (with T. Shoji, K. Watanabe) Paper presented at the Meeting of the Group of Experts on Consumer Price Indices, 2-4 May 2016, Palais des Nations, Geneva.
"Estimating Consumer Price Inflation By Household," (with J. Diamond, K. Watanabe) Paper presented at the Meeting of the Group of Experts on Consumer Price Indices, 2-4 May 2016, Palais des Nations, Geneva.
Community structure and dynamics of the industry sector-specific international-trade-network (with Y. Ikeda, H. Iyetomi, T. Mizuno, T. Ohnishi) in Signal-Image Technology and Internet-Based Systems (SITIS), 2014, 456-461.
Econophysics Point of View of Trade Liberalization: Community dynamics, synchronization, and controllability as example of collective motions (with Y. Ikeda, H. Iyetomi, T. Ohnishi, H. Aoyama, T. Mizuno, Y. Sakamoto), RIETI Discussion Paper Series 16-E-026, 2016.
How Much Do Official Price Indexes Tell Us about Inflation? (with J. Handbury, D. E. Weinstein) NBER Working Paper No.19504, October 2013. Revised December 2015.
House Prices at Different Stages of the Buying/Selling Process (with C. Shimizu, K. G. Nishimura) Regional Science and Urban Economics, Volume 59, July 2016, Pages 37-53.
Structure of Global Buyer-Supplier Networks and Its Implications for Conflict Minerals Regulations (with T. Mizuno, T. Ohnishi) EPJ Data Science, 5 1 (2016) 2 Published online: 16 January 2016 DOI: 10.1140/epjds/s13688-016-0063-7
Firm Growth and Extended Gibrat's Law (with A. Ishikawa, S. Fujimoto, T. Mizuno) Advances in Mathematical Physics, vol. 2016, Article ID 9303480, 6 pages, 2016. doi:10.1155/2016/9303480..
Firm Age Distributions and the Decay Rate of Firm Activities (with A. Ishikawa, S. Fujimoto, T. Mizuno) Proceedings of the International Conference on Social Modeling and Simulation, 2015, Springer, 187-194.
The Structure of Global Inter-firm Networks (with T. Mizuno, T. Ohnishi) In: Aiello L., McFarland D. (eds) Social Informatics. SocInfo 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8852. Springer, Cham, 28 February 2015, 334-338.
Geographic Dependency of Population Distributions (with S. Fujimoto, T. Mizuno, T. Ohnishi, C. Shimizu) Proceedings of the International Conference on Social Modeling and Simulation, 2015, Springer, 151-162.
Relationship between Job Opportunities and Economic Environments: Evidence from Online Job Search Data (with A. Sato, C. Shimizu, T. Mizuno, T. Ohnishi) Procedia Computer Science, Volume 60, 2015, 1255-1262.
Relationship between Firm Age Distributions and the Decay Rate of Firm Activities in the United States and Japan (with A Ishikawa, S. Fujimoto, T Mizuno) Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Big Data, Santa Clara, CA, 2015, pp. 2726-2731. doi: 10.1109/BigData.2015.7364073
Are Firms that Are Awarded More Patents More Productive? (with S. Fujimoto, A. Ishikawa, T. Mizuno) In Abergel, F., Aoyama, H., Chakrabarti, B. K., Chakraborti, A., & Ghosh, A. (eds.) Econophysics and Data Driven Modelling of Market Dynamics, Springer, February 2015, 129-142.
Replicating Japan's CPI Using Scanner Data (with S. Imai) Paper presented at the Ottawa Group Meeting on May 20-22, 2015, Tokyo. CARF Working Paper Series, CARF-F-364, June 2015.
"Estimating Consumer Price Inflation by Household," (with J. Diamond, K. Watanabe) Paper presented at the Ottawa Group Meeting on May 20-22, 2015, Tokyo.
Estimating Quality Adjusted Commercial Property Price Indexes Using Japanese REIT Data (with C. Shimizu, W. E. Diewert, K. G. Nishimura) Journal of Property Research, Volume 32, Issue 3, 2015. Published online: 20 Jul 2015.
The Economics of Interfirm Networks (edited with I. Uesugi, A. Ono) Advances in Japanese Business and Economics, Vol. 4, Springer, June 2015.
Buyer-Supplier Networks and Aggregate Volatility (with T. Mizuno, W. Souma) in T. Watanabe, I. Uesugi, A. Ono, eds., The Economics of Interfirm Networks, Springer, June 2015.
Aging and Real Estate Prices: Evidence from Japanese and US Regional Data (with Y. Saita, C. Shimizu) International Journal of Housing Markets and Analysis, Vol. 9 Issue 1, 2016, 66-87.
The Structure and Evolution of Buyer-Supplier Networks (with T. Mizuno, W. Souma) PLoS ONE 9(7): e100712. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0100712. Published: July 07, 2014.
Beauty Contests and Fat Tails in Financial Markets (with M. Nirei) CARF Working Paper Series, CARF-F-346, June 2014.
"Private Label Brands versus National Brands: Some Implications for the Construction of the CPI" (with S. Imai). Paper presented at the Meeting of the Group of Experts on Consumer Price Indices, 26–28 May 2014, Palais des Nations, Geneva.
"Residential Property Price Indexes for Japan" (with C. Shimizu, W. E. Diewert, K. G. Nishimura) Paper presented at the OECD Workshop on House Price Statistics, March 24-25, 2014. UBC Discussion Paper Series 14-05, March 2014.
Estimating Daily Inflation Using Scanner Data: A Progress Report (with K. Watanabe) Paper presented at Japan Economic Seminar held on February 28, 2014 at CJEB, Columbia University. CARF Working Paper Series, CARF-F-342, February 2014.
Analytical Derivation of Power Laws in Firm Size Variables from Gibrat's Law and Quasi-Inversion Symmetry: A Geomorphological Approach (with A. Ishikawa, S. Fujimoto, T. Mizuno) Journal of the Physical Society of Japan, Vol. 83, No. 3, 034802. Published online February 18, 2014.
Japan's Persistent Deflation and Monetary Policy: Editors' Overview. (with T. Ito, K. Iwata, C. McKenzie, S. Urata) Asian Economic Policy Review, Volume 9, Issue 1, 2014, 1–19.
Product Downsizing and Hidden Price Increases: Evidence from Japan's Deflationary Period (with S. Imai), Asian Economic Policy Review, Volume 9, Issue 1, 2014, 69-89.
A Stochastic Model for Order Book Dynamics in Online Product Markets (with T. Mizuno, M. Nirei) Evolutionary and Institutional Economic Review, VOL.10, NO.1, 2013, 93-105. Published 4 September 2013.
Why Are Product Prices in Online Markets Not Converging? (with T. Mizuno) PLoS ONE 8(8): e72211. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0072211. Published 28 August 2013.
Sticky Housing Rents and Monetary Policy: The Japanese Experience (with C. Shimizu) Presented at KDI Workshop on "Real Estate Driven Systemic Risk: Country Cases & Their Policy Implications," December 13-14, 2012, Seoul. Revised August 2013.
How Fast are Prices in Japan Falling? (with S. Imai, C. Shimizu) CARF Working Paper Series, CARF-F-298, October 2012. Revised 05 July 2013.
What's Required to Stop Deflation? Japan Spotlight, May/June 2013, Japan Economic Foundation, 30-35.
High Quality Topic Extraction from Business News Explains Abnormal Financial Market Volatility (with R. Hisano, D. Sornette, T. Mizuno, T. Ohnishi) PLoS ONE 8(6): e64846. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0064846. Published 6 June 2013.
The Emergence of Different Tail Exponents in the Distributions of Firm Size Variables (with A. Ishikawa, S. Fujimoto, T. Mizuno) Physica A, Volume 392, Issue 9, 1 May 2013, 2104–2113.
Detecting Real Estate Bubbles: A New Approach Based on the Cross Sectional Dispersion of Property Prices (with T. Ohnishi, T. Mizuno, C. Shimizu) Paper presented at PKU-Fordham-JBF Conference on "Risk Management and Reform of Bank Regulation," April 22-23, 2013, Beijing. CARF Working Paper Series, CARF-F-313, April 2013.
The Great Intervention and Massive Money Injection: The Japanese Experience 2003-2004 (with T. Yabu) Journal of International Money and Finance, Volume 32, February 2013, 428-443.
A New Method for Identifying the Effects of Foreign Exchange Interventions (with C. Chen, T. Yabu) Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Volume 44, Issue 8, December 2012, 1507-1533.
"Buyer-Supplier Networks and Aggregate Volatility: Evidence from Firm Level Data" (with T. Mizuno, W. Souma) Presented at International Workshop on Economics of Interfirm Networks, November 29-30, 2012, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry.
Power Laws in Real Estate Prices during Bubble Periods (with T. Ohnishi, T. Mizuno, C. Shimizu) International Journal of Modern Physics: Conference Series, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2012, 61-81.
"Some Implications of Product Creation and Destruction for Japan's Deflation" (with K. Watanabe, K. Ueda) Paper presented at the Meeting of the Group of Experts on Consumer Price Indices, May 30 - June 1, 2012, Geneva.
Random Walk or A Run: Market Microstructure Analysis of Foreign Exchange Rate Movements Based on Conditional Probability (with Y. Hashimoto, T. Ito, T. Ohnishi, M. Takayasu, H. Takayasu) Quantitative Finance, Vol. 12, No. 6, June 2012, 893-905.
The Estimation of Owner Occupied Housing Indexes using the RPPI: The Case of Tokyo (with W. E. Diewert, C. Shimizu, K. G. Nishimura). Paper presented at the Meeting of the Group of Experts on Consumer Price Indices, May 30 - June 1, 2012, Geneva.
"Biases in Appraisal Based Commercial Property Prices in Tokyo" (with C. Shimizu, K. G. Nishimura) Paper presented at the European Central Bank conference on "Commercial Property Price Indicators" May 10-11, 2012.
Optimal Monetary Policy at the Zero Interest Rate Bound: The Case of Endogenous Capital Formation (with T. Takamura, T. Kudo) Revised April 2012.
Temporal and Cross Correlations in Business News (with T. Mizuno, T. Ohnishi, K. Takei) Progress of Theoretical Physics Supplement, No. 194, June 2012, 181-192.
House Prices from Magazines, Realtors, and the Land Registry (with C. Shimizu, K. G. Nishimura) in Property Markets and Financial Stability, BIS Papers No.64, Bank for International Settlements, March 2012, 29-38.
Power Laws in Firm Productivity (with T. Mizuno, A. Ishikawa, S. Fujimoto) Progress of Theoretical Physics Supplement, No. 194, June 2012, 122-134.
On the Nonstationarity of the Exchange Rate Process (with T. Ohnishi, H. Takayasu, T. Ito, Y. Hashimoto, M. Takayasu) International Review of Financial Analysis, Volume 23, June 2012, 30-34.
Fiscal Policy Switching in Japan, the US, and the UK (with A. Ito, T. Yabu) Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Volume 25, Issue 4, December 2011, 380-413.
A New Method for Measuring Tail Exponents of Firm Size Distributions (with S. Fujimoto, A. Ishikawa, T. Mizuno) Economics E-Journal, Vol. 5, 2011-20, December 7, 2011.
Closely Competing Firms and Price Adjustment: Some Findings from an Online Marketplace (with T. Mizuno, M. Nirei) Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Volume 112, Issue 4, December 2010, 673-696.
On the Evolution of the House Price Distribution (with T. Ohnishi, T. Mizuno, C. Shimizu) Research Center for Price Dynamics Working Paper Series No. 61, August 2010. Revised May 2011.