Implementing the reforms needed to create a better balance on the housing market and to build more housing will, however, take some time. Measures to restrain the accumulation of debt by households and to strengthen the banking system will therefore be necessary during this period. Over the long term, mortgage borrowers will benefit from lower indebtedness The measures that need to be applied to restrict households’ opportunities to borrow and to strengthen the banks’ resilience may have short-term effects on demand and inflation, which monetary policy needs to consider. But the measures may also impact different groups in society in different ways. In practice, this could be one reason for why it has been difficult to apply appropriate measures. There are so many groups to consider: mortgage borrowers and other households, high income earners and low income earners, households in rural areas and households in metropolitan areas, and so on. But in several cases, the variations are also large between different households within these different groups, which makes it difficult to determine who will win and who will lose from different measures. It may therefore be difficult to conduct a policy that clearly mitigates the consequences for those households hit hardest by the measures. Another difficulty concerns distribution effects in the short and long terms. These can often differ. In the short term, it is likely that many indebted households – mortgage borrowers – may be forced to cut back on their consumption while they reduce their debts.
Sources: Na tional Institute of Economic Research, Statistics Sweden and the Riksbank  The real return on capital and the real interest rate should be strongly associated with each other, i.e. the exact opposite to what we observed in both the United States and Sweden. A falling real interest rate tends to reduce the cost of investment, which should increase the rate of investment and thereby decrease the return on capital. The various premiums that measure the difference in return on capital and government bond yield should therefore not show a trend, even though that appears to be the case. An important factor that can often explain some of the difference between return on capital and government bond yield is the so-called credit risk premium, which compensates the investor for the risk of the company going bankrupt. There is  9 [23]  reason to believe, however, that the credit risk premium has been stable as the number of bankruptcies has been constant or falling. Another premium is the so-called liquidity premium. Risk-free assets such as government bonds can often be used as collateral for various loan contracts. Government bonds and other risk-free assets that can relatively easily converted into liquid funds therefore have an added value given by the liquidity premium. The higher the liquidity premium is on an asset, the higher the price and the lower the yield will be. The falling trend in the real interest rate should, at least in part, be due to the premium on government bonds having risen.