3 The Bank of England has stated that it is unlikely that it will reduce the size of its balance sheet until the Bank  Rate has reached a level of around 2 percent; see Bank of England (2015), Inflation Report (PDF) (London: BOE, November), p. 34.
4 In 2006, the Bank of Japan reduced the size of its balance sheet by allowing short-term security holdings to run  off and without relying on asset sales; see Kazuo Ueda (2010), “The Bank of Japan’s Experience with NonTraditional Monetary Policy (PDF) ,” paper presented at “Revisiting Monetary Policy in a Low Inflation Environment,” a conference held at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, October 16.