From 1995 onwards the average rate of inflation, measured with UND1X, has been fairly close to the 2 per cent target. This has been accompanied by higher GDP growth than before. A part of the higher growth is of course explained by there being plenty of unutilised resources after the crisis in the early 1990s. BIS Review 24/2002  5  Variations in inflation and GDP growth Thirteen industrialized countries  1995-00  6  6  5  5 St. dev. inflation  St. dev. inflation  1970-90  4 USA 3  Sweden  2 Germany  4 3 2  1  1  0  0 0  1  2  3  St. dev. GDP growth  4  Sweden  USA  Germany 0  1  2  3  4  St. dev.GDP growth Source: The Riksbank  It cannot be argued that inflation targeting countries would have done worse if they had followed the same strategy as Germany and Switzerland, or that those two countries would have done equally well if they had targeted inflation. It is also conceivable that similar results would have been achieved with other monetary strategies, such as the pragmatic procedure at the U.S. Federal Reserve or the fixed exchange rate regimes – amounting in practice to a delegation of monetary policy to the Deutsche Bundesbank – that were used at times in, for example, France, Italy and Denmark.
Actual and estimated repo rate Estimates with a simple forecast-based rule  it = 1.29 + 0.66it - 1 + 0.50(πFt , 1 – 2) + 0.26(πFt , 2 – 2) + et 10  10  9  9  8  8  7  7  6  6  5  5  4  4  3  3  2  2  1  1  0 1993  1994  1995  1996  1997  1998  1999  0 2000 2001 Source: The Riksbank  Diagram 1, published in our latest Inflation Report, shows the actual path of the repo rate and estimations obtained with a simple forecast-based rule. It seems that on the whole, our actions can be explained fairly well by applying an equation based on the Riksbank’s own series of forecasts of inflation one to two years ahead plus a term for the repo rate’s “inertia”. Considering the rule’s simplicity, the deviations from it must be said to be small. The diagram accordingly shows that the Riksbank’s actions have been reasonably systematic and based on the Bank’s inflation forecasts. It is, of course, too early for a more thorough evaluation of explicit inflation targeting regimes compared with other monetary policy strategies. It is also the case that Taylor rules, albeit in a somewhat modified form, likewise give comparatively good explanations for a number of central banks that have not explicitly adopted an inflation target, for example Deutsche Bundesbank and the U.S. Federal Reserve.