Secular changes, such as globalization, emergence of a saving glut, a slowdown in the growth rate of technology, and demographic changes, were considered to have depressed the r-star. With policy rates approaching the effective lower bound, monetary policy toolkits have become highly diversified. The past fifty years have brought not only new challenges but also new opportunities. Society has become increasingly and widely digitalized.
In addition to the advances in the use of alternative data and improvements in computing power, large-scale language models are rapidly developing. There has also been a rapid expansion in the type and amount of information and in the information technology and communication channels available to central bankers. They are all new opportunities for monetary policy.