The Japanese government declined on Thursday to confirm or comment on off-the-record remarks by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that Nobel-winning U.S. economist Paul Krugman has made public online.
"I think I should refrain from referring to what kind words (Abe and Krugman) exchanged" during a March 22 meeting in Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said at a news conference, when asked to comment on Krugman's action.
"I believe it is a memo by professor Krugman himself, not a document drawn up by the government," the top government spokesman said, referring to the City University of New York professor and a winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.