Med nittiotalskrisen som kompass - en läroprocessanalys av svensk stabiliseringspolitik 1985 - 2015

In 2015, The Swedish central bank; the Riksbank, decided to lower the repo rate to -0,1 percent. The idea was to stimulate inflation in order to reach the target inflation of 2% according to CPI. The decision was and is controversial. Even if the inflation based on CPI is very low, the inflation on asset prices especially in the housing market is very high. Meanwhile, the household debt is increasing, making both households as well as the economy as a whole unstable. The Riksbank has a conflict of interest; lowering the interest rate makes the financial economy unstable, tightening the monetary politics in relation to the high debt risks undermining the status of the inflation target. The inflation target is one of the central lessons to emerge out of the 1990:s crisis. The purpose of the thesis is to examine how the lessons of the Swedish crisis in the 90:s, like the inflation target, shaped the institutional framework that Swedish economic-political decision makers have to take into account. The starting point of the theoretical policy learning process is dependent on the historical context as well as the economic paradigm it acts within. The theoretical framework, as well as the methods of in this thesis, is based largely on Lars Jonungs ESO-report "Looking ahead through the Rear-View Mirror. Swedish Stabilization Policy as a Learning Process, 1975-1995." from 1999. The analysis of the learning process shows that the lessons from the 90:s crisis are still highly influential in the Riksbank. The inflation target and the institutional framework that came with it was a result of the 90:s and has been successful in maintaining confidence for the Swedish stabilization policy. During the last ten years new stability problems have occurred while the models, which the Riksbank uses for estimating the inflation target, have evolved to be almost static. This rigidity makes it hard for the Riksbank to choose to think new and adapt the decisions of the stability policy to th