For Ms Lagarde it is the damaging impact on demand and output; a prolonged period of low inflation can "suppress growth and jobs", she said on Wednesday.
For the better part of the past decade, the Japanese economy has been caught up in the vicious circle of price declines that discourage investment and make consumers put off spending, which in turn weighs on demand and output.
As an example, Mok cited Samsung's smartphone plants in South Korea, China and Vietnam as giving it the flexibility to adjust output of its Galaxy S, depending on demand or production problems at one factory.
Founded in 1997, it is now the world's biggest on-demand printer with an output of 20m books in 2009.
WLQ is a tool with four scales: time management, physical demands, mental-interpersonal demands, output demands and a percentage index.
Most economists also believed that changes in discretionary fiscal policy would have small effects on aggregate demand and output — that the multipliers for such changes were small — and this belief was supported by empirical research based on "normal economic conditions".
At this early stage, however, the specifics of future fiscal legislation remain unclear, as do the degree of net increase in government spending and the resulting impacts on aggregate demand, potential output, the Federal deficit, and the dollar.
This questionnaire consists of four different subscales: work scheduling, physical demands, mental demands/social demands, and output demands.
The WLQ includes four dimensions; physical demands, time management, mental-interpersonal demands, and output demands [ 18].
BBC1 will continue to be the nation's favourite channel, but an increasing proportion of the corporation's TV output will be watched on-demand and on the move.
