It is a particular pleasure and honour for me to welcome Mr Rodrigo de Rato, the Managing Director of the IMF, who will give the keynote address of this symposium in a few moments. Even though long planned in advance, I find this symposium is particularly timely.
But if other economic policies do not in fact play this role, then we cannot exclude that the real equilibrium rate remains low. As such, we may see short-term rates being pushed to the effective lower bound more frequently in the event of macroeconomic shocks; and the stimulus provided by lowering interest rates to that level would be of course be much weaker.