During the two years since the introduction of QQE – more precisely, up to end-2014, for which quarterly data are available – actual changes in economic activity and prices amounted to improvement of 2 percentage points in the output gap, which represents improvement of about 10 trillion yen, and a 1.0 percentage point improvement in the year-onyear rate of increase in the CPI.
Tapering of asset purchases took 11 months, and then the first rate hike did not occur until more than a year after purchases ended. Balance sheet reduction began more than a year and half after that. This gradualism worked well then, and it surely influenced the Committee’s approach this time.