Haruhiko Kuroda: The role of expectations in monetary policy - evolution of theories and the Bank of Japan's experience

Speech by Mr Haruhiko Kuroda, Governor of the Bank of Japan, at the University of Oxford, Oxford, 8 June 2017.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Introduction

I am very honored to have the opportunity to give a speech at Oxford University today. At the same time, it is also an extremely emotional experience from a personal point of view. I was a graduate student at Oxford University from 1969 to 1971 and was able to enjoy Oxford, the university, and its colleges in my younger days. I was dispatched here by Japan's Ministry of Finance, planning to study public finance. However, since Lady Ursula Kathleen Hicks, a prominent scholar in public finance, had already retired, I decided to study monetary economics under Professor Richard Good Smethurst. In those days, Emeritus Professor John Richard Hicks provided a series of seminars on monetary economics for graduate students, and I participated in it. The lectures and seminars at Oxford gave me the opportunity to study monetary economics and monetary policy in earnest, but I certainly could not have imagined at the time that about half a century later I would give a speech here about monetary policy as Governor of the Bank of Japan.