Japan is facing a reality in which the peaceful safeguards of Article 9 of the constitution has become an obstacle for the Government of Japan to ensure the safety and security of its people. Under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, major security policies have been implemented that have come to redefine the role of Japan within the international community. The aim of this thesis is to outline what policies were implemented by the Government of Japan, how these differed from the previous policies, and how they were received by the Japanese voters, to create an understanding of how Japan came closer to constitutional amendment through the two national elections in 2014 and 2016. The thesis presents the developments leading up to the two elections, as well as security and economic measures taken by the Japanese government. This is then followed with the use of the Copenhagen School´s Securitization theory, to analyze the events, measures taken, and the response from the Japanese voters. The Analysis concludes that the Japanese public have remained divided on the topic of constitutional amendment, but been in favor of the continuation of the Abenomics, the economic policies pursued by the Government of Japan, which has also been a major topic in the two elections.

The thesis takes a look at the reforms of the current Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe and his Cabinet, specifically it evaluates the impact of the second arrow of Abenomics on the sustainability of the critical state of public debt of Japan.

Trade relations between Japan and the European Union have undergone dynamic development since the end of World War II, which has not provided the desired results for many decades. Most of the negotiations that took place during the 60 years after the war failed on the demands and conditions of both parties, from which they did not want to withdraw. It was in the case of Japan that there was always a problem in the protection policy of the domestic market, the reduced competitiveness of foreign companies and the protection of domestic products through high tariffs, which always prevented the realization of mutual trade. In 2012, after the new LDP government took office, Japan's position changed, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe began negotiations with the European Union on new trade cooperation. These negotiations were part of Abe's plan to rebuild the Japanese economy, which was in recession after a poor economic strategy in the 1980s and global financial crises followed by the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. In response, Abe introduced the so-called three arrows - a set of domestic and foreign economic measures to kick-start the Japanese economy. Negotiations with the EU then took place together with other countries, however, these trade meetings were among the most important in terms of world...

In January 2013, the Japanese Government under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the Bank of Japan launched a package of monetary and fiscal stimulus along with promises of structural economic reform called Abenomics. This paper examines the preliminary effects of the Bank of Japan’s Quantitative and Qualitative Monetary Easing (QQE), which forms the monetary component of Abenomics. Given the weak economic response to QQE so far, the study predicts that QQE has failed to make a significant impact on its target macroeconomic variables of inflation and output. The results confirm this hypothesis as increases in the monetary base have an insignificant effect on the Consumer Price Index and have little effect in changing the trajectory of output. The results of QQE so far mirror those of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing programs, during which expansion of the monetary base in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis failed to significantly raise output given the size of the stimulus. Abenomics, however, continues to be implemented, making the results presented in this paper inconclusive.

This paper investigates the influence of various macroeconomic variables on Japan’s merger and acquisition (M&A) activity, both in terms of total deal value and total number of deals. Looking at monthly data from June 1997 to December 2013, I use econometric time-series analysis to find that: First, total deal value per month is not well explained by our macroeconomic variables, but about half of the variation in number of deals per month can be explained by our dataset. Second, the most important determinant in the total number of deals per month during our period is the level of national debt, and interest rates had the opposite effect from what was originally expected. Third, adding lag variables to our analysis proved to be relatively fruitless. Finally, when taking a look at only the past couple of years to determine the effects of “Abenomics” on M&A activity in Japan, I conclude that there is not enough data, and better results would be obtained in the future.

This thesis investigates the impact of Abenomics policies, named after the new Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, on the economy. His so-called "three arrows" agenda includes fiscal expansion, quantitative and qualitative monetary easing, and regulatory reforms. This work focuses on the assessment of the fulfillment of set goals and compares Abenomics to previous policies. Abe's cabinet succeeded in raising inflation and depreciating yen. The debt growth has almost halted and the GDP has mildly recovered. However, the economy is still far from stable. This thesis also explores further issues encountered by the Japanese economy such as the shut-down of nuclear power plants and effects of the zero lower bound constraint. This work introduces a synthetic counterfactual to assess the real results of Abenomics. This method builds a model of an alternate Japan, in which Abe had not assumed the office. The results suggest that the impact of Abenomics on the GDP per capita is slightly positive or negligible.