In recent years, however, this sort of consideration has not played such a prominent role. There are several interrelated explanations for this. Monetary policy thus far has been aimed to a great extent at establishing a regime of low inflation and engendering understanding for it. In practice, the scope is also limited for monetary policy decisions of a fine-tuning character by the uncertainty that prevails, inter alia, about future developments and by the degree of credibility for the low inflation policy. 2. Uncertainty and Credibility There are various kinds of uncertainty that in practice play an important part in monetary policy and are also important for the speed and scale with which changes in interest rates are made: - One type of uncertainty has to do with the economy’s basic mechanisms.. Which model of the economy shall we use for our analysis? A major problem here in recent years has been that the shift to low inflation and a flexible exchange rate by itself can change the relationships in the model. - A second type of uncertainty concerns the interpretation of new information that is constantly coming in. It is important in this connection to assess what effects an interference or a shock have, which, inter alia, is linked with whether it is permanent or temporary. - Finally there is uncertainty about the effect of the measures that the Riksbank can take--in practice, changes in the instrumental interest rates.
The Riksbank has emphasized that one should see the price stability objective in an annual perspective—nothing more precise than that. As to the width of the band, we have started from an interval of +1 per cent, which is fairly normal among countries with an inflation target. Summary The policy with an inflation target has functioned well in Sweden and in other countries that have chosen to work with an inflation target. Inflation has become low. In addition an increased understanding of a policy directed at price stability has been created in Sweden as well as in other countries with an inflation target. This is especially notew orthy because many of the countries which now work with an inflation target are the very same countries that earlier had problems with inflation. When monetary policy is conducted with an inflation target, production and employment are normally stabilised too. For example, increased demand usually implies an increased rate of inflation. When inflation forecasts indicate that a risk for inflation will exceed the target, raising the instrumental rate is warranted, thereby also slowing down demand growth. In practice the room for an active stabilisation policy is circumscribed by the uncertainty about future inflation. Another important complication relates to how credible the policy is. Increased credibility of monetary policy creates more room for both rapidly shifting BIS Review 56/1997  - 10 -  policy in a more expansionary direction in situations of weakening demand and deferring interest rate hikes.