##e and it has been having the intended effects, leading to an improvement in financial markets, the real economy, prices, and expectations. with the clear commitment to promptly achieve the price stability target and with large - scale monetary easing, people ’ s inflation expectations have been rising on the bis central bankers ’ speeches whole. on the other hand, the bank ’ s massive purchases of jgbs have kept 10 - year government bond yields at a low level of about 0. 6 percent. as a result, real interest rates have been negative and continue to decline, thereby providing stimulus to the real economy. japan ’ s economy has been growing led by domestic demand. the year - on - year rate of change in the cpi excluding fresh food was minus 0. 5 percent in march last year, but it has reached to plus 1. 5 percent in april this year after eliminating the direct effects of the consumption tax hike. hence, qqe has put into practice the mechanism common to the theories of paul krugman, michael woodford, and gauti eggertsson, which is to encourage a decline in real interest rates through raising inflation expectations and thereby stimulate the real economy. concluding remarks – remaining challenges with regard to theory of unconventional monetary policy let me conclude my speech by adding my own view concerning remaining challenges in the realm of monetary theory concerning unconventional policy. the experience of the global financial crisis has proven in practice that, even if central banks are faced with a large negative shock at the zero lower bound, they can support economic activity and maintain price stability through unconventional monetary policy. however, there remain unresolved issues concerning the effects and transmission mechanisms of unconventional monetary policy. one reason why there remain unresolved issues is that, to date, no central bank has exited from the unconventional policies pursued after the global financial crisis, meaning that there is no practical experience that would allow an assessment of unconventional policy as a whole. another reason is that although expectations play an important role in unconventional monetary policy, the development of a theoretical underpinning concerning this role of expectations has been lagging. the importance of anchoring inflation expectations has been widely recognized and many central banks consider well - anchored inflation expectations as one measure to gauge the effectiveness of monetary policy. however, as yet there are no established theories on how inflation expectations should be brought back to the target once they have drifted downward. in particular, we do not have established theories that explain how inflation expectations can be raised at the zero lower bound and that

luis maximo dos santos : corporate governance - importance and limits address by mr luis maximo dos santos, vice - governor of the bank of portugal, at the conference " corporate governance - creating value for society ", organized by the portuguese institute of corporate governance ( ipcg ), lisbon, 25 october 2018. * * * 1. allow me to begin by thanking you for the invitation to take part in this magnificent conference alongside these distinguished the speakers and participants. i would like to congratulate the chairs of the board and general council, antonio gomes mota and pedro rebelo de sousa respectively, representing the portuguese institute of corporate governance ( ipcg ) on the occasion of its 15th anniversary, for the organisation of this timely event, and warmly greet all the members of its corporate bodies. the creation of this institute 15 years ago was a moment of inspiration, anticipating – at a time when the subject was still relatively unspoken – the importance that corporate governance would assume. portugal needs strong private associations which encourage discussion on subjects of importance to the development of enterprises and the quality of management in its broadest sense, which are able to generate critical mass on complex themes, as is the case of corporate governance. a special mention goes to the fulfilment this year of the objective to see approved a corporate governance code, long pursued by the ipcg, and which is a landmark in private regulation in portugal. 2. the theme of corporate governance has already been reflected upon at length, especially in the united states, where some authors traced the first uses of the term to the 1970s. in the united kingdom, the so - called 1992 cadbury report is considered pioneering. it was produced by a committee set up to assess – even then – the underlying causes behind a number of corporate failures. since then, attention given to the theme of corporate governance – which has a multidisciplinary nature, bringing together knowledge of economics, finance, accounting, law, management and organisational behaviour – has not stopped growing. this growing interest is no stranger to the succession of corporate scandals with wide - reaching public repercussions, even before the financial crisis, as was the case of barings bank ( 1995 ), enron ( 2002 ) and parmalat ( 2003 ) – to name some of the most notorious – which in some way motivated the production of a set of corporate governance best practices by international organisations of note such as the oecd, world bank and basel committee,