Case study

 
1. Take the time to carefully read and analyze The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Yen. You can download this Case Study from the “Files” section: Case Study Analysis #2_Japanese Yen_Ch10-11

2. Once you have completed the case analysis, answer each discussion question individually. The report must be at least 500 words in total. 

Q1: Why did the yen carry trade work during the early 2000s? Why did it stop working after 2008?

Q2: What drove an increase in the value of the yen between 2008 and 2011? 

Q3: Why did the policy of the Abe government to purchase government securities help drive down the value of the yen? What was the mechanism at work here?

Q4: Do you think the Japanese government is engaging in currency manipulation? If so, what should other nations do about this?

Q5: Who in Japan benefits from a devaluation of the yen? Whom does this hurt in Japan?

Q6: What does this case teach you about the way foreign exchange markets work?

MNGT 462
IB Case Study
Prepared by Dr. Cho

The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Yen

During the first half of the 2000s, the Japanese yen was relatively weak against the U.S. dollar. This was a boon for Japan’s export-led economy. On January 1, 2008, it took 122 yen to buy one U.S. dollar. For the next four years, the yen strengthened relentlessly against the dollar, hitting an all-time record high of ¥75.31 to the dollar on October 31, 2011. The reasons for the rise of the yen were complex and had little to do with the strength of the Japanese economy because there has been very little of that in evidence.

The weakness of the yen during the early to mid-2000s was due to the so-called carry trade. This financial strategy involved borrowing in Japanese yen, where interest rates were close to zero, and investing the loans in higher yielding assets, typically U.S. Treasury bills, which carried interest rates 3 to 4 percentage points greater. Investors made profits from the interest rate differential. At its peak, financial institutions had more than a trillion dollars invested in the carry trade. Because the strategy involved selling borrowed yen to purchase dollar-denominated assets, it drove the value of the yen lower. The interest rate differential existed because the Japanese economy was weak, prices were falling, and the Bank of Japan had been lowering interest rates in an attempt to boost growth and get Japan out of a dangerous deflationary cycle.

When the global financial crisis hit in 2008 and 2009, the Federal Reserve in the United States responded by injecting liquidity into battered financial markets, effectively lowering U.S. interest rates on U.S. Treasury bonds. As these fell, the interest rate differential between Japanese and U.S. assets narrowed sharply, and the carry trade became unprofitable. Financial institutions unwound their positions, selling dollar-denominated assets and buying yen to pay back their original loans. The increased demand drove up the value of the yen.

For Japanese exporters, the 40 percent increase in the value of the yen against the dollar (and the euro) between early 2008 and 2012 was a painful experience. A strong yen hurts the price competitiveness of Japanese exports and reduces the value of profits earned overseas when translated back into yen. Take Toyota as an example: In February 2012, the company stated that its profit for the year ending March 31, 2012, would be about ¥200 billion, 51 percent lower than in the prior year. Toyota makes nearly half of the cars it sells globally at its Japanese plants, so it has been particularly hard hit by a rise in the value of the yen.

In late 2012, things started to change when the pro-business Liberal Democratic Party won national elections and Shinzo Abe was appointed prime minister. Abe had campaigned on a platform that included taking actions to weaken the value of the yen in order to help Japan’s exporters. Even before the election, Japan’s central bank had accelerated purchases of government securities, thereby expanding the money supply, and had agreed to a higher inflation target. Under Abe’s leadership, this policy had explicit government support. One consequence of the policy was to reduce the value of the yen against other currencies. Indeed, between October 2012 and December 2013, the yen lost more than 25 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar. The yen was trading at ¥104 to the U.S. dollar in late December 2013. While this helped Japan’s exporters, the policy was criticized by other major industrial nations as unilateral action that came dangerously close to precipitating a currency war.

Sources: C. Dawson and Y. Takahashi, “Toyota Shows Optimism Despite Gloom,” The Wall Street Journal, February 8, 2012; Y. Takahashi, “Nissan’s CEO Says Yen Still Not Weak Enough,” The Wall Street Journal, February 27, 2010; “The Yen’s 40 Year Win Streak May Be Ending,” The Wall Street Journal, January 27, 2012; and “U.S., Europe Seek to Cool Currency Jitters,” The Wall Street Journal, February 11, 2013.

Discussion Questions

QUESTION 1: Why did the yen carry trade work during the early 2000s? Why did it stop working after 2008?

QUESTION 2: What drove an increase in the value of the yen between 2008 and 2011?

QUESTION 3: Why did the policy of the Abe government to purchase government securities help drive down the value of the yen? What was the mechanism at work here?

QUESTION 4: Do you think the Japanese government is engaging in currency manipulation? If so, what should other nations do about this?

QUESTION 5: Who in Japan benefits from a devaluation of the yen? Whom does this hurt in Japan?

QUESTION 6: What does this case teach you about the way foreign exchange markets work?

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