If we compare with the high-inflation period – the 20 years from the mid-1970s, we can, however, see that we have had a faster increase in productivity in the past five years. We should not therefore rule out the possibility that we are on threshold of a faster growth in productivity when IT investments spread on a broad basis to the “old economy” in the same way as has happened in the United States. The strong increase in productivity in recent years has taken place without inflation accelerating. This has surprised many people – for even though the previously high unemployment, indicated that there were a lot of unused resources in the economy, there were many who doubted whether it would be possible for so many to return to the labour market so quickly. Month after month, we have seen increases in employment of 80-90 000 persons on an annual basis, 70 per cent of which have taken place by an increased supply of labour. Flexibility in the labour market has thus exceeded expectations. Open unemployment is now down to around 4 per cent, which, while it is higher than that considered normal in the 1980s, is lower than what many people in the early 1990s feared would be normal. Stable inflation expectations The stabilisation of inflation expectations at a low level shows that the Riksbank’s inflation target has attained high credibility. A number of factors have contributed to confirming confidence in the price stability objective.
From this point of view, as you know Banque de France has paid particular attention to the continuation of the BACH database, since we were chosen to run it, two years ago, for the common interest of the ECCBSO members and beyond. We are committed to keeping it functioning properly, and encourage all initiatives to exploit all those interesting series of aggregated ratios. Among the numerous researches that have been made with these data, I would like to refer to the paper published by two economists from the ECB, Andra Buca and Philip Vermeulen, last February, concerning “corporate investment and bankdependant borrowers during the recent financial crisis”. Here also at the Banque de France, we publish several articles in our Bulletin extracting valuable piece of information in the BACH data base. Concerning your so-called WG 3, which focuses on IASB methodology and more generally monitoring of listed groups, Banque de France is interested in the new cooperation started last year with Eurostat. It will help to identify more precisely European groups’ structure and especially cross-border groups. But I understand that this TF is involved in many other topics, of which works on a dedicated data base (ERICA) which can deliver interesting results. There is a lot of work behind this and we can only hope to see those valuable contributions to be well promoted.