Erik Thedéen: On the Sveriges Riksbank's high threshold for asset purchases

Slides accompanying the speech

Thank you for the invitation to come here! These meetings are usually a good opportunity to take a break from the day-to-day business and discuss more academic issues and matters of principle relating to the Riksbank and monetary policy. And this is what I intend to do today as well.

Inevitably, sometimes one is surprised by the way the economy is developing. This is also true of central banks, who nevertheless put a lot of effort into trying to predict what will happen. Perhaps the clearest example in recent years was when inflation rose very sharply across the world. But even the period before that – which may be starting to fade into oblivion after all that has happened – was somewhat surprising. Instead, it was then difficult for a long period of time to bring up inflation to the target. As a result, policy rates were cut to very low levels, and many central banks had to start conducting monetary policy using other, more unconventional methods.