Date: 2021-01-01

Creator: Viv Daniel

Access: Open access

South Korea and Algeria are both formerly colonized nations with a history of dependence on foreign aid. Their former colonizers, Japan and France respectively, collaborated closely throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, despite colonial linkages and similarities in early developmental trajectories, South Korea has grown into a donating member of the OECD and one of the world’s largest economies, while Algeria continues to struggle both economically and politically. This paper engages existing literature on postcolonial development and foreign aid by arguing that the attitudes towards colonization and the motivations for undertaking it on the part of colonial powers can have as large an impact on the success of foreign aid as the endogenous circumstances of the states receiving such aid.

Date: 2025-01-01

Creator: Sujan Garapati

Access: Open access

Since 2001, Japan has experienced two extended quantitative easing (QE) periods that aimed to address its low growth and deflationary environment. This paper investigates the transmission channels of the country’s QE policies during both periods: QE1 and Abenomics. Investigating three primary QE channels, signaling, inflation, and safety, the analysis identifies a signaling channel with different characteristics during both periods, no inflation channel, and a safety channel with different strengths during both periods. During QE1, event dates signaled low yields on short- and medium-term bonds but not on long-term bonds, suggesting a weak signaling channel. In contrast, under Abenomics, the signaling channel was strong for long-term bonds, reflecting a credible commitment to sustained low interest rates. Event dates in both periods were associated with deflation, so the evidence does not support the presence of an inflation channel. Across both periods, a significant safety channel was present. Investors paid a premium for safe assets that decreased yields as the BOJ purchased bonds, especially during Abenomics. The findings suggest that Abenomics was more successful at decreasing interest rates than QE1. Overall, this paper reveals that QE can effectively lower yields through signaling and safety effects but fails to raise inflation expectations in Japan.

Date: 2017-05-01

Creator: Sophia Walker

Access: Open access

Contemporary American viewers are familiar with the vengeful and terrifying ghost women of recent J-Horror films such as Ringu (Nakata Hideo, 1998) and Ju-On (Shimizu Takashi, 2002). Yet in Japanese theater and literature, the threatening ghost woman has a long history, beginning with the neglected Lady Rokujo in Lady Murasaki’s 11th century novel The Tale of Genji, who possesses and kills her rivals. Throughout history, the Japanese ghost mother is hideous and pitiful, worthy of fear as well as sympathy, traits that authors and filmmakers across the centuries have exploited. This project puts together four films that have never before been discussed together -- Kinoshita Keisuke's Shinsaku Yotsuya Kaidan (1949), Nakagawa Nobuo's Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan (1959) Mizoguchi Kenji's Ugetsu (1953), and Shindo Kaneto's Onibaba (1964) -- and discusses them as four different iterations of the demonic mother motif, presented as a projection of the Japanese collective’s postwar uncertainty over both the memory of suffering during World War II and the question of personal culpability.

Date: 2015-05-01

Creator: Alexandra Mathieu

Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community