Among other factors, new developments in corporate finance are notable as a significant increase in issuance of corporate bonds with a maturity of 20 years or even longer has been observed. As evidenced by the effective implementation of NIRPs at some central banks, the zero lower bound of nominal interest rates is no longer an insurmountable constraint in practice.
Competition among financial institutions and arbitrage in money markets stretch the application of negative interest rates into new financial transactions. Of course, removing the zero bound does not necessarily mean that central banks are able to cut the nominal interest rate to an arbitrarily negative level.