Unemployment is instead determined in the long run by how well the labour market functions, for instance, with regard to matching unemployed persons and job vacancies. My main message here is that there is no clear-cut and stable relationship between inflation and unemployment, either in the long term or the short term. Simplified relationships between inflation and unemployment, such as the short-term and long-term Phillips Curves, may function as pedagogical tools. However, this type of simplified relationship is not practicable in determining how monetary policy should be conducted. Nor can such simple relationships be used to analyse to what degree monetary policy has contributed to higher or lower unemployment. Monetary policy is based on forecasts Let me go on to the next issue I intend to take up, namely the conditions under which monetary policy is conducted. This is an important aspect of a discussion of how far monetary policy can be considered to have contributed to higher unemployment. As monetary policy has an impact on demand and inflation with a time lag, the Riksbank must base its interest rate decisions on a forecast of future economic developments. All forecasts are uncertain. One therefore cannot expect that the Riksbank will always be able to exactly predict what will happen in the economy. It is also difficult to quickly bring inflation back on target once a deviation has occurred. This may also be unsuitable for real economy reasons.
The analyses made of why inflation has been so low in recent years indicate that it is primarily unexpectedly high and lasting growth in productivity that is the explanation and not contractionary monetary policy. 2 One factor that supports this conclusion is that inflation has been low despite demand and growth in the economy being relatively high. But the higher labour productivity has meant that companies have been able to increase their production without needing to raise their prices so much. It would also appear that it has contributed to companies being able to increase production without needing to recruit new staff to a great extent. This may be an explanation to what is referred to in the debate as “jobless growth”. The high productivity growth has also contributed to the Riksbank being able to cut the interest rate to a historically low level. My conclusion is therefore that we have first and foremost overestimated inflation because we have underestimated the strength of productivity growth. Giavazzi and Mishkin observed in their evaluation of monetary policy that this has also applied to most other forecasters. We have therefore not overestimated inflation because we have failed to take into account developments in the labour market. Nor is it because our monetary policy decisions have been unreasonable. This was also noted by Giavazzi and Mishkin in their evaluation. Nevertheless, there is of course reason for the Riksbank to be self-critical. We must become better at understanding the driving forces behind productivity growth.