Through which mechanisms could low interest rates lead to low inflation?
The parallelism between the fall in nominal interest rates and the fall in inflation is striking in the euro zone and in OECD countries. Some therefore wonder (neo-Fisherians for example) whether it is low nominal interest rates that cause low inflation. So what mechanism could be at work? When nominal interest rates are low, economic agents understand that if there is a negative demand shock in the future, the monetary policy response will be weak (due to the zero lower bound of interest rates). Demand will therefore be weakened, and this expectation leads to a permanent fall in expected inflation, which then leads to a fall in inflation.