Bank of Japan gubernatorial candidate’s book sales soar

By Kantaro Komiya and Satoshi Sugiyama

TOKYO, Feb 13 (Reuters) – Prices for academic books written by the surprise candidate for the Bank of Japan governorship have soared in recent days, prompting the publisher of one of his volumes on monetary policy to declare that it was studying new circulations to satisfy demand.

Friday night’s news that Kazuo Ueda, 71, is likely to be the new Bank of Japan governor left investors wondering what to expect for the world’s third-largest economy with a man who hasn’t even been considered a a candidate.

Ueda served on the central bank’s board from 1998 to 2005, but since then he has been out of the limelight, working in academia and think tanks, making it difficult to assess his views on the ultra-loose monetary policy experiment that Japan has carried out for a decade.

Some turn to his academic writings for clues, but they prove difficult and expensive to find.

A copy of his 2005 book “Fighting Zero Interest Rates,” which has a recommended retail price of 1,700 yen ($13), sold for 29,800 yen ($225) on e-commerce platform Mercari on Monday. .

Other copies were offered for 35,288 yen ($266).

The book’s publisher, Nikkei BP, told Reuters it was considering reprinting it and making it available to the public as an e-book. According to the publisher, only 8,500 copies of the previous print run were printed, which are sold out.

Another Japanese-language title he wrote in 2017 ranked as the top-selling e-book in the finance section of Amazon’s Japanese version on Monday. Hard copies of some of his other publications were sold out on the website.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is due to confirm his choice to succeed outgoing Governor Haruhiko Kuroda on Tuesday.

Ueda is unknown to many in the markets, according to economists and analysts.

The yen initially rose on Friday on expectations that Ueda could phase out its ultra-loose monetary policy sooner than expected, but quickly pared gains after saying on a TV show that the Bank of Japan’s current monetary policy was “appropriate”.

Ueda is unlikely to rush to revise its accommodative monetary policy and let economic data guide the exit schedule, Tetsuya Inoue, Ueda’s secretary when he was a member of the central bank’s board, said in a statement on Monday. interview with Reuters.

(1 dollar = 132.4500 yen)

(Reporting by Kantaro Komiya and Satoshi Sugiyama; Writing by John Geddie; Editing by Robert Birsel; Editing in Spanish by José Muñoz in the Gdansk Newsroom)