This policy incorporated to the greatest extent possible the unconventional monetary policy experience gained until then both at home and abroad, such as making clear the Bank's stance on the future policy conduct, pushing down long-term interest rates through large-scale purchases of government bonds, and strengthening the impact of lowering risk premiums in stock markets through an increase in purchases of exchange traded funds (ETFs).
This, together with measures by the government, had been effective in pushing up economic activity and prices even under the first challenge -- the lower bound on interest rates -- and Japan's economy achieved a situation where it was no longer in deflation, in the sense of a sustained decline in prices (Chart 6).