So, although some trade is always better than none, there are settings in which – given the existence of trade – changes in relative productivity can worsen a country’s welfare. 8  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  8  But you do see something in employment and participation. Relative to others, regions with larger-thanaverage clothing sectors in 1981 experienced slightly lower growth in employment, and slightly greater rises in economic inactivity, over the following ten years (Charts 8a and 8b). Even in the 2011 census (Charts 9a and 9b) there still seems to be something of an echo of the pattern of employment thirty years earlier. Chart 9a: Even after 30 years the negative  Chart 9b: Same goes for inactivity  correlation with employment still exists  Source: UK Census, Nomis  Source: UK Census, Nomis  From such bare-bones relationships any conclusion can only be tentative. They don’t control for any other differences that might have existed in 1981 and it’s possible the correlations are picking up something other than the size of the local clothing and textile industry. However, the results do happen to accord with other, 6  much more careful studies. In the United States, David Autor and co-authors have found that individuals working in industries and regions more exposed to trade with China have subsequently seen longer than average periods of non-employment. This is particularly true for those at the lower end of the distribution.
Øystein Olsen: The role of monetary policy revisited – welcome address Welcome address by Mr Øystein Olsen, Governor of Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway), at the Norges Bank conference “The role of monetary policy revisited”, Oslo, 26 September 2013. *  *  *  It is a great honour and pleasure for me to welcome you all to this Norges Bank conference: The role of monetary policy revisited. In his famous 1967 presidential address before the American Economic Association, Milton Friedman set out to answer three interrelated questions. What should be the role of monetary policy? What can it contribute to achieving the major goals of economic policy? And how should it be conducted to contribute the most? Five years after the onset of the global financial crisis, these questions are yet again at the forefront of our minds. The crisis and subsequent recession have presented substantial challenges to monetary policy. Central banks have responded with great activism and have resorted to unconventional policies such as quantitative easing and an increasing use of forward guidance. And the crisis has led to a review of monetary policy frameworks. Successful as monetary policy has been in safeguarding low and stable inflation, many argue that it should take risks to financial stability into account. Moreover, a new set of macroprudential policy tools has been proposed to address systemic risks in financial markets directly. In Norway, inflation targeting was introduced in 2001.