7  Interestingly, Chairman Bernanke continued to comment on this matter by stating that the issue of an appropriate level for the inflation target was being debated in academic circles and that trying to quantify this target was an interesting question.
He also acknowledged that hitting the zero lower bound has become more common, although it was a very rare event a few years ago (he appears to have referred to the aforementioned research results). These remarks give the impression that he does not exclude the idea of raising the inflation target if more research results point in this direction in the near future.