SNS/SHoF Finance Panel with Stefan Ingves

Stefan Ingves visited the finance panel to discuss Sweden’s Central Bank - Riksbanken’s - response and injunction during the coronavirus pandemic. Given a repo rate at zero procent, Riksbanken has coupled nontraditional monetary policy measures with conventional methods such as interest rate cuts. Similar to many other central banks, Riksbanken deployed an expansionary monetary policy by significantly increasing their balance sheet through methods of quantitative easing. Among other measures, Riksbanken reached the decision to buy corporate securities from non-financial firms, opened up for borrowing in American dollars and abolished specific restrictions on mortgage bonds (covered bonds).

What lessons and long term risks surround Riksbanken’s approach? What is the role of newly implemented Riksbankslagen in ensuring effective and reliable monetary policy in the future? Internationally, other central banks have detected a need to revise monetary policy strategies going forward, what does the need look in in Sweden?

 

The Finance Panel is a meeting forum for the financial sector, hosted by SNS and the Swedish House of Finance. Swedish House of Finance (SHOF) at the Stockholm School of Economics is Sweden’s national research center in financial economics.

 

Participants

Stefan Ingves, governor of Riksbanken
Pär Österholm, professor of financial economics at Örebro University

 

Moderator

The meeting was held in Swedish and moderated by Mikael Witterblad, Head of Research Programme at SNS