Norges Bank Watch 2004

The main task of the committee has been to evaluate how well Norges Bank has fulfilled its monetary policy mandate given by the Norwegian Government on 29 March 2001. In particular, the committee has reviewed Norges Bank’s interpretation of the mandate and finds that its interpretation is insufficiently flexible. In addition, the committee has assessed Norges Bank’s monetary policy strategy and decision making process and considers them suboptimal and inefficient. Furthermore, the committee has evaluated Norges Bank’s forecasts and interest rate decisions in 2003 and has detected persistent forecast errors as well as policy mistakes that kept monetary policy too tight at the end of 2002 and early in 2003 and perhaps too loose at the end of 2003. The committee has also assessed Norges Bank’s use of indicators for underlying inflation and the output gap, and concludes that its measures are poor and need improvement. Finally, the committee has evaluated Norges Bank’s public communication and transparency and finds that despite increased public communication, there is still a notable lack of transparency

Norges Bank Watch 2003

The Centre for Monetary Economics (CME) at the BI Norwegian School of Management has for the fourth time invited a committee of economists to participate on Norges Bank Watch, with the objective of evaluating the monetary policy regime in Norway and Norges Bank’s conduct of monetary policy. This time the committee has focused on the conduct of policy rather than addressing institutional issues. The committee refers to Norges Bank Watch 2002 for a detailed assessment of the monetary policy regime itself. The new committee for Norges Bank Watch 2003 consists of Chief Economist Thomas Ekeli, Pareto Securities, Senior Economist Anne Kari Haug, ECON, Nordic Head of Economics Kjetil Houg, Alfred Berg ABN AMRO and Professor Erling Steigum, BI Norwegian School of Management. Steigum joined the group in late August. Houg has acted as coordinator of the group and has organized its work