In Japan, the inflation rate declined to near-zero, whereas the monetary policy faced a zero lower bound (ZLB) in the 1990s. We examine whether trend inflation had fallen to near-zero prior to the ZLB. To achieve this, we estimate Japanese pre-2000 trend inflation developing a Markov-switching...

In Japan, the inflation rate declined to near-zero, whereas the monetary policy faced a zero lower bound (ZLB) in the 1990s. We examine whether trend inflation had fallen to near-zero prior to the ZLB. To achieve this, we estimate Japanese pre-2000 trend inflation developing a Markov-switching...