Urban Bäckström: The Swedish economy Speech by Mr Urban Bäckström, Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank and Chairman of the Board of Directors and President of the Bank for International Settlements, to the Swedish Shareholders’ Association, Örebro, 30 October 2001 *  *  *  First a word of thanks for the invitation to come to Örebro and discuss matters to do with the Swedish economy with you. It is now a fortnight since the Riksbank presented this year’s third Inflation Report. Some more statistics have been published in the meanwhile but the information they contain does not point to anything particularly new. So today one can hardly arrive at an assessment of economic developments in Sweden one to two years ahead that differs all that much from the picture outlined in the Report. Those of you who want to know more about our assessment should consult the Riksbank’s website, www.riksbank.se. The whole Report can be downloaded, as can all the figures on which the tables and charts are based. Diagram 1:  The ”new economy” concept in Swedish media. (Number of hits) 250  217  200 150  87  100 50  26  8  0 1998  1999  2000  2001 Jan.Oct. Sources: Mediearkivet and Presstext. There are, however, a couple of questions concerning the Swedish economy and the outlook in the somewhat longer term that I should like to dwell on here today.
Even so, most things suggest that equity will continue to be a good vehicle for saving in the long term even if the trend rate of return is not as high as we saw in the 1980s and 1990s or as some foresaw a couple of years ago. References Bradford DeLong, J. and Summers, L., (2001), The ”New Economy”: Background, Questions, and Speculations, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s Economic Symposium, August, Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Brookes, M. and Zaki, W., (2000), Is the Internet Better than Electricity?, Global Economics Paper, No. 49, Goldman Sachs, July, London. D’Avolio, G., Gildor, E. and Shleifer, A., (2001), Technology, Information, Production and Market Efficiency, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s Economic Symposium, August, Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Frennberg, P. And Hansson, B., (1992), Swedish stocks, bonds, bills and inflation, Applied Financial Economics, Vol 2, pp79-86. Johansson, Ö., (1967), The gross domestic product of Sweden and its composition 1861-1955, Almqvist & Wiksell, Stockholm. Jungenfelt, K. G., (1966), Löneandelen och den ekonomiska utvecklingen, IUI, Almqvist & Wiksell, Uppsala. Schön, L., (2000), En modern svensk ekonomisk historia, SNS förlag, Borås. 6  BIS Review 90/2001  Shiller, R., (2000), Irrational exuberance, Princeton University Press, Chichester, West Sussex. Siegel, J., (1999), Stocks for the Long Run, McGraw Hill, New York. Åberg, Y., (1969), Produktion och produktivitet i Sverige 1861-1965, IUI, Almqvist & Wiksell, Uppsala. BIS Review 90/2001  7