Under these circumstances it will be exceedingly important to make a thorough scrutiny of the social security system’s design; this is a question that has been on something of a back burner, what with the crisis for stabilisation policy in the 1990s and the achievement of a more lasting solution to the issue of pensions. In such a discussion about social security systems that are effective and sustainable in the long term there is a place for the issue of cyclical stabilisation. Systems that are fully or partly funded, publicly or privately, can function well as stabilisers. Thus, it is mainly in this context that I would like to place the discussion that has taken place about various types of buffer fund. But the need to reform the social security system is primarily connected, not with stabilisation policy but with being able to guarantee a high quality of publicly financed services without raising the tax take. Measures for influencing the business cycle Finally there are the questions of whether a more active, discretionary fiscal policy would be advisable and whether, to function better in the future, it may need to be supported by new institutional arrangements. First, let me stress that, for reasons I mentioned earlier, I do not have much faith in fine tuning. Of course that does not rule out trying not to accentuate fluctuations as far as possible when measures are taken primarily for other reasons.
The main thing to do to prevent new crises for stabilisation policy is to develop and possibly reinforce the framework for budget policy that has applied in recent years. Government debt can then be run  BIS Review 6/2002  5  down more quickly and reserves can be built up so that the automatic stabilisers can be left to do their work. An important issue in this context is the construction of the social security system. Changes will be needed and there may well be reasons for increasing the element of funding. It may be asked whether some institutional changes are also needed to facilitate a discretionary fiscal policy. This is certainly not a minor question but it has taken up too much of the discussion about economic policy. The possibility of implementing a discretionary fiscal policy in a meaningful way is limited. The discussion should therefore concentrate on what can be done to manage situations when more serious shocks are likely to occur. The problem here has been a lack of knowledge, plus the difficulties in mobilising sufficient support for a restrictive policy when the economy is overheating. There are presumably some things that can be done to improve our knowledge, though it is mostly a matter of trimming an existing structure. But that must be done in the light of the limited competence for empirical economic analysis in Sweden and the numerous challenges that lie ahead in other respects than stabilisation policy.