Instead, I will offer observations on what I believe are some of the key issues that make such assessments so challenging. Long-run trends Let me start with the question of future productivity growth, since it is the most fundamental determinant of economic prosperity. Recently, Robert Gordon has advanced the notion that we are in for a bout of long-term secular stagnation.
These included targeted measures to overcome transmission blockages, such as altering our collateral policy or launching our Targeted Long-Term Refinancing Operations. And they included, as policy interest rates approached lower bound, deploying large-scale asset purchases to expand the monetary policy stance through our Asset Purchase Programme. Those measures were no doubt unprecedented for the ECB.