The Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) today launched a review of its monetary policy strategy. The monetary policy strategy was adopted in 1998 and some of its elements were clarified in 2003. Since 2003 the euro area and the world economy have been undergoing profound structural changes. Declining trend growth, on the back of slowing productivity and an ageing population, as well as the legacy of the financial crisis, have driven interest rates down, reducing the scope for the ECB and other central banks to ease monetary policy by conventional instruments in the face of adverse cyclical ... (full story)