19 It is difficult to assess whether the level of investment in Sweden can be regarded as having being unjustifiably low during the period in which the current account surplus has grown. Above all it is difficult to find any kind of reform that would generally have been able to increase the return on Swedish investments in particular and thus have led to a higher investment ratio. 18  The National Institute of Economic Research (2011) puts this forward as a possible explanation of the high level of household saving in Sweden. 19  The so-called Danell system implied a quick winding down of interest subsidies compared to the previous rules. BIS central bankers’ speeches  9  Figure 6 Investment in the EU and Sweden Percentage of GDP 24  24  22  22  20  20  18  18  16  16  14  14 Sweden - total Sweden -excluding housing  12  12  EU -total EU -excluding housing  10  10 80  82  84  86  88  90  92  94  96  98  00  02  04  06  08  Source: Statistics Sweden  After the fixed exchange rate regime was abandoned in 1992, the krona depreciated by almost 30 per cent in trade-weighted terms. The krona has in principle not recovered from this weakening, although it has strengthened significantly recently.
The current account on the other hand, which constitutes a flow that adds to or subtracts from these stocks, is less important. 22 Changes in the valuation of the assets and liabilities are affected to a great extent by changes in the exchange rate. 23 There are, however, considerable shortcomings in the statistics in this area. The values of some types of asset are definitely underestimated, as there is a lack of statistics on the Swedish households’ direct investments abroad. The net position can also be measured in different ways depending on whether direct investments are accounted at market value or at book or nominal value. However, both methods give a net position that is much lower than that given by the accumulated current account surplus (see Figure 8). 21  The nominal external position was –22 per cent of GDP in 2010, while the market-value net position was +4 per cent of GDP according to statistics from Statistics Sweden. 22  This is also found by Lane (2006) in an analysis of the Swedish exchange rate. 23  For a more detailed analysis of the external position see Blomberg and Falk, 2006.