I. Introduction
Good morning. I am honored to welcome such distinguished guests from around the globe to the 25th BOJ-IMES Conference. On behalf of the conference organizers, I thank all the guests in this room.
This year's conference is titled "Central Bank Design under a Continued Low Inflation and Interest Rate Environment." The current theoretical framework for monetary policy was developed before the Global Financial Crisis. At that time, inflation and interest rates in most advanced economies - with Japan being the notable exception - were high enough to make conventional monetary policy effective. To stimulate the economy, central banks had sufficient safety margins to reduce short-term nominal interest rates. After the Global Financial Crisis, however, this situation changed significantly. Both inflation and nominal interest rates have remained far below their pre-crisis levels for more than a decade.