Öberg, GDP growth and resource utilisation
On Thursday, First Deputy Governor Svante Öberg held a speech at Statistics Sweden’s annual conference on productivity at Saltsjöbaden. Mr Öberg discussed resource utilisation and its significance for monetary policy. He described the Riksbank’s methods for assessing potential GDP and resource utilisation, and also presented his own assessment of how potential GDP and resource utilisation have been affected by the financial crisis.
Mr Öberg noted that there are several different ways of measuring potential GDP and resource utilisation, and that these methods give different results. Mr Öberg went on to say that it is likely that the financial crisis has lowered the growth rate of potential GDP, and that resource utilisation is thus largely normal, even though GDP is only slightly higher than it was before the crisis. In conclusion, Mr Öberg observed that total factor productivity (TFP) seems to have been an important factor in the development of potential GDP during the crisis. There is a great need to better understand how TFP develops, both during normal cyclical fluctuations and during crises.
