The Bank of Japan raised rates for the first time in 17 years on March 19, ending the negative rate policy it introduced in 2016. The central bank also abolished its yield target for Japanese sovereign bonds and scaled back its asset purchase programmes. In a 7:2 vote, the BoJ’s policy board decided to raise its short-term interest rate to between 0% and 0.1%, from -0.1% previously. The Japanese central bank considered that the yield curve