5  BIS Review 51/1999  It is difficult to judge how much of our benign overall price behavior during the past half decade is attributable to these significant shifts in the environment in which firms function.
Undoubtedly, other factors have been at work as well, including those temporary oil and import price declines that I mentioned earlier and some more lasting influences that I have not discussed, such as worldwide deregulation and privatization, and the freeing up of resources previously employed to produce military products that was brought about by the end of the cold war.