There is an international discussion, mostly on an academic level, about monetary policy becoming more effective if the central banks’ policy rates were to be made very negative – that is, if the lower bound could in principle be eliminated entirely. 10 But personally I do not regard this as a practically implementable solution. Negative policy rates are already regarded with scepticism and it is easy to imagine how opinion would be if they were cut so far that the general public’s deposit rates also passed beyond the zero mark – or, even worse, if one with various electronic money solutions were to force people to “pay to save”. 11 I definitely believe that there is scope to cut the repo rate somewhat further if necessary. But one cannot ignore the fact that this scope is limited. It is of course also possible to make further purchases of securities, but even there it is reasonable to assume that the positive effects will wane sooner or later and the complications will gradually increase. I would like to emphasise, to avoid any misunderstanding, that I still count on inflation developing in line with the Riksbank's forecast and attaining 2 per cent safely within the current forecast period. But it is nevertheless important and necessary to seriously consider and evaluate alternative scenarios. It may take longer to attain the target...
For instance, the Riksbank is one of few central banks to publish its own forecast for the policy rate and possibly the only central bank where the minutes state which Board member has said what during the monetary policy meetings. 1  Inflation has been low for longer in Sweden than in many other countries In recent years, international interest in Sweden as an object of study has been more due to economic developments here, and to the measures the Riksbank has taken, rather than the changes in the monetary policy framework. Despite the Swedish economy developing relatively well since the global financial crisis 2008-2009 (see Figure 1), inflation began to fall earlier in Sweden than in the rest of the world. This has meant that inflation has undershot the target and been lower than in many other countries for a long time (see Figure 2). This has in turn contributed to the Riksbank considering it necessary to cut its policy rate below zero,  * I would like to thank Mikael Apel for his help in writing this text, Elizabeth Nilsson for translating it into English,  Goran Katinic for help with the slides and Björn Andersson, Gina Bayoumi, Claes Berg, Charlotta Edler, Gabriela Guibourg, Marianne Nessén, Marianne Sterner and Anders Vredin for their valuable comments. 1 Another completely fresh example is the Riksbank’s thoughts on introducing a digital currency (see Skingsley, 2016). 1 [20]  which only a few other central banks have done so far.