However, it is possible that a mild form of such behaviour could develop in some sectors such as homebuilding, where land values may be slow to adjust to new realities. At present, low carrying costs provide powerful incentives for developers to wait out the current softness. Unfortunately, the best contemporary analogue to the Japanese zombie firms is probably the U.S. household sector.
1 See Darracq, M., C. Kok and M. Rottner (2020), “Enhancing macroprudential space when interest rates are low  for long”, Macroprudential Bulletin, ECB. The authors find that a countercyclical capital buffer 125 basis points higher could have reduced the decline in real GDP by around 1 percentage point in 2020. 2 See e.g.