The calculated growth in working hours is based on Statistics Sweden's forecast of the Swedish population up to 2050 and fixes other determining parameters at the 2002 level. The average increase in working hours amounted to approximately 0.4 per cent during the period 1981-2001. The calculated series' average increase 2002-2050 stops at a modest 0.01 per cent; in practice almost no increase at all. Conclusion I shall conclude with a summary. A high long-term growth rate is one of the most important objectives of economic policy. It becomes easier to achieve almost all other political objectives if economic growth is good. There is greater scope for private consumption and wage formation is made easier. It becomes easier to finance public sector services such as health and welfare. Higher growth also gives greater scope in other political areas, such as environmental policy. In addition, the potential, long-term growth rate is a variable of essential significance for monetary policy. The Riksbank cannot itself influence the development of the economy's long-term growth rate;  BIS Review 16/2003  5  this is governed by other factors, primarily by how much we work and how efficient the economy is. But the potential growth rate to a great degree sets the framework for monetary policy. Simplified, one can say that our task is to keep actual production as close to potential production as possible. Then inflation will also come close to the target level.
We need to develop a clearer presumptive framework of this kind – no doubt with provision for exceptions where they could be properly justified – before the next crisis hits us, because what debtor countries and their private sector creditors believe they can expect will influence their behaviour in the meantime. BIS Review 36/2001  5  What we all have to recognise is that the exceptional amounts of official funding committed during the Asian crisis are far less likely to be forthcoming in future. And to the extent that official funding is forthcoming, conditions may well be attached to ensure that it is not used simply to re-finance payments of short-term debt to private sector creditors or to fund a resident capital outlflow. Several of the tools which the G7 communiqué identified are designed to have precisely this effect. The last thing that the official international community wants is to get dragged into the micromanagement of relations between debtor countries and their creditors. We would all agree on the desirability of voluntary solutions, which might be easier to achieve if borrowing countries and their major creditors – above all the short-term lenders – were to establish, during the good times but on an on-going basis, arrangements for regular dialogue. Nor would anyone want to insist upon the imposition of constraints on capital outflows.