28 See, for instance, Blanchard, Dell’Ariccia, and Mauro (2013). Examples of others who have advocated this are Ball (2014), Krugman (2014) and Rosengren (2015). Even Janet Yellen said during her time as chairman of the Federal Reserve that the question of whether the inflation target should be raised was “one of the most important questions facing monetary policy around the world in the future” (Federal Open Market Committee, 2017, p. 14). 13 [24]  pears to be the case when looking at historical data. This could lead to greater uncertainty, which makes it more difficult for households and companies to make economic decisions. 29 Surely, at a sufficiently high level of inflation it will be difficult to claim that inflation is still low and stable. But if there is confidence in a target of 3 or 4 per cent in the same way as for a target of 2 per cent, there is no obvious reason why inflation should vary more. The historically negative covariation between the level and stability of inflation most likely reflects the fact that periods of high inflation have also been periods in which there has been no clear anchor for inflation in the form of an inflation target. Whether an inflation rate of 3 or 4 per cent can still be regarded as low is a question of judgement. Personally, I think one can say it is. I will return to the proposal to raise the inflation target shortly.
http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/treasury-committee/effectiveness-and-impact-ofpost2008-uk-monetary-policy/written/48288.html Yellen, Janet L. (2015), “Inflation dynamics and monetary policy”, speech at The Philip Gamble Memorial Lecture University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 24 September. Yellen, Janet L. (2018), “Comments on monetary policy at the effective lower bound”, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 13-14 September. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/ES_20180910_YellenELB.pdf  20 [24]  Figure 1. Downward trend in global interest rates 10  United Kingdom United States Germany Sweden  8  10  8  6  6  4  4  2  2  0  0  -2 1985  1990  1995  2000  2005  2010  -2  2015  Note. Per cent, annual data. Government bond yields with 10 year maturity, deflated by CPI. Sources: Macrobond, OECD, Statistics Sweden and the Riksbank  Figure 2. GDP forecasts by different analysts 3  2018  2019  3  2020  2.5  2.5  2  2  1.5  1.5  1  1  0.5  0.5  0  RB  FiD  KI  LO  Nordea  SEB  SHB  SN  Swed  24/10  15/11  10/10  27/11  5/9  13/11  7/11  13/11  8/11  0  Note. Annual percentage change, annual data. RB refers to the Riksbank, MF to the Ministry of Finance, NIER to the National Institute of Economic Research, LO to the Swedish trade union confederation SHB to Handelsbanken, CSE to the Confederation of Swedish enterprise and Swed to Swedbank.