Hiroshi Miyazaki: Output Gap and Lehman Shock

hiroshi miyazaki: The latest reading of the nation's output gap, released Wednesday, is another milestone on the journey to that escape, economists say, according to The Japan Times. The positive output gap shows Japan is making progress toward becoming a normal economy, said Hiroshi Miyazaki, senior economist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley in Tokyo. More than four years after the Bank of Japan launched its radical monetary easing, key conditions are aligning in its long battle to truly escape from deflation. We are now in a similar situation as before the Lehman shock in 2008, when Japan enjoyed a prolonged recovery thanks to a global economic expansion. That means demand now clearly exceeds supply in an economy undergoing its longest expansion since before the crisis. The BOJ's output gap, a measure of the balance between supply and demand in the whole economy, rose for a third straight quarter in the first three months of this year, reaching the highest since 2008, the central bank said Wednesday. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.