Europe > Norway

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International Monetary Fund. European Dept.
The 2024 Article IV Consultation discusses that boosting labor supply, containing public expenditure pressures, and raising productivity will be required for Norway to be able to continue its strong economic performance and preserve its welfare model. A recent White Paper by the Ministry of Finance rightly raises these key issues facing Norway’s economy in the longer term. Real gross domestic product growth slowed in 2023 and is expected to gradually rebound in the near term as private domestic demand strengthens supported by higher real incomes. Tight macroprudential policies should remain in place to mitigate systemic vulnerabilities. The financial system appears resilient and banking system buffers are strong. Long-term fiscal challenges should be more forcefully addressed. Norway has the largest proportion of the population on disability-related benefits among the organisation for economic co-operation and development countries, and reforming costly and distortionary social benefit systems is possibly the most important and politically difficult reform pending. Although Norway boasts one of the highest levels of labor productivity among its peers, it has slowed faster than in other countries. To reverse this trend, conditions should be improved to facilitate sectoral reallocation as well as innovation and technology adoption.
Christopher J. Erceg
,
Marcin Kolasa
,
Jesper Lindé
,
Haroon Mumtaz
, and
Pawel Zabczyk
We study alternative approaches to the withdrawal of prolonged unconventional monetary stimulus (“exit strategies”) by central banks in large, advanced economies. We first show empirically that large-scale asset purchases affect the exchange rate and domestic and foreign term premiums more strongly than conventional short-term policy rate changes when normalizing by the effects on domestic GDP. We then build a two-country New Keynesian model that features segmented bond markets, cognitive discounting and strategic complementarities in price setting that is consistent with these findings. The model implies that quantitative easing (QE) is the only effective way to provide monetary stimulus when policy rates are persistently constrained by the effective lower bound, and that QE is likely to have larger domestic output effects than quantitative tightening (QT). We demonstrate that “exit strategies” by large advanced economies that rely heavily on QT can trigger sizeable inflation-output tradeoffs in foreign recipient economies through the exchange rate and term premium channels. We also show that these tradeoffs are likely to be stronger in emerging market economies, especially those with fixed exchange rates.
International Monetary Fund. European Dept.
This Selected Issues paper analyzes inflation developments, drivers, and risks in Sweden. Inflation in Sweden started rising sharply from June 2022. Using dynamic simulations of an estimated Sweden-specific Phillips curve (PC), the team assess the role of external factors in driving recent inflation. Several factors that are poorly captured in the PC analysis, may account for the rise in unexplained inflation. Illustrative risk scenarios confirm a wide range of possible inflation paths on either direction. Renewed commodity price shocks and smaller-than-estimated slack could delay the return of inflation to target. Increasing inflation expectations, including because of renewed exchange rate pressures, would also feed into higher inflation. Core inflation could be sticker if the price setting becomes de-anchored or more backward looking. Growth in the gross domestic product deflator (as one measure of inflation) can be decomposed into three components—profits, labor costs, and taxes—to assess inflationary pressures in the economy.
Robert C. M. Beyer
,
Ruo Chen
,
Florian Misch
,
Claire Li
,
Ezgi O. Ozturk
, and
Lev Ratnovski
The extent to which changes in monetary policy rates lead to changes in loan and deposit rates for households and firms, referred to as ‘pass-through’, is an important ingredient of monetary policy transmission to output and prices. Using data on seven different bank interest rates in 30 European countries, different approaches, and the full sample as well as a subsample of euro area countries, we show that a) the pass-through in the post-pandemic hiking cycle has been heterogenous across countries and types of interest rates; b) the pass-through has generally been weaker and slower, except for rates of non-financial corporation loans and time deposits in euro area countries; c) differences in pass-through over time and across countries for most deposit rates are correlated with financial sector concentration, liquidity, and loan opportunities, and d) the effects of pass-through to outstanding mortgage rates on monetary transmission on prices and output are heterogenous across countries.
Mantas Dirma
and
Jaunius Karmelavičius
Despite having introduced borrower-based measures (BBM), Lithuania's housing and mortgage markets were booming during the low-interest-rate period, casting doubt on the macroprudential toolkit's ability to contain excessive mortgage growth. This paper assesses the adequacy of BBMs’ parametrization in Lithuania. We do so by building a novel lifetime expected credit loss framework that is founded on actual loan-level default and household income data. We show that the BBM package effectively contains mortgage credit risk and that housing loans are more resilient to stress than in the preregulatory era. Our BBM limit calibration exercise reveals that (1) in the low-rate environment, income-based measures could have been tighter; and (2) borrowers taking out secondary mortgages rightly are and should be required to pledge a higher down payment.
International Monetary Fund. Finance Dept.
and
International Monetary Fund. Legal Dept.
This paper presents the second set of PRGT borrowing agreements that have been finalized through April 2023 as part of the loan mobilization round launched in July 2021 to cover the cost of pandemic-related lending and support the self-sustainability of the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT). Seven of the eight agreements presented use SDRs in the context of SDR channeling. Together these agreements provide a total of SDR 5.1 billion in new PRGT loan resources for low-income countries (LICs).
International Monetary Fund. Legal Dept.
This paper presents a regional report on Nordic-Baltic technical assistance project: financial flows analysis, Anti-Money Laundering and combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) Supervision, and Financial Stability. The purpose of the project is to conduct an analysis of cross-border ML threats and vulnerabilities in the Nordic-Baltic region—encompassing Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden (the Nordic-Baltic Constituency or NBC)—and issue a final report containing recommendations for mitigating the potential risks. The financial flows analysis presented in this report is based on the IMF staff’s analysis of cross-border payments data. Six out of the eight Nordic-Baltic countries have seen an increase in aggregate flows since 2013. Monitoring cross-border financial flows provides countries with a deeper understanding of their external ML threat environment and evolving cross-border related risks they are facing. Leveraging broader analysis of ML/TF cross-border risk, the Nordic-Baltic countries should develop their own understanding of higher-risk countries reflecting country-specific ML/TF threats.
International Monetary Fund. European Dept.
The 2023 Article IV Consultation discusses that Norway grew strongly in 2022 but the pace of output growth receded somewhat this year. Record-high energy and food prices together with much higher interest rates put pressure on households’ purchasing power. Nonetheless, mainland gross domestic product growth is still expected to be positive, supported by strong business investment and exports. Norway experienced one of the highest growth rates among advanced economies last year, and risks remain balanced. Growth is continuing but at a more modest pace. The country has experienced windfall gains from high petroleum and natural gas prices that have so far countered global headwinds. The banking system is strong but tightening global conditions pose risks. Risks to financial stability appear to be broadly manageable, but continued vigilance is needed given the heightened uncertainty. Progress on structural reforms has been piecemeal. Some steps have been taken in further upskilling the workforce, including increased vocational training and the planned introduction of a youth guarantee scheme.
International Monetary Fund. Monetary and Capital Markets Department
This technical note focuses on Crisis Management and Resolution for the Finland Financial Sector Assessment Program. These recent developments reinforce the need for full operational readiness in the Finnish authorities’ crisis management arrangements. The authorities have made progress in developing crisis management capabilities and procedures, as well as gathering practical experience from recent events. Enhancing crisis management capacity within and between authorities is essential to ensure effective implementation in a coordinated manner of agreed crisis management plans, including for bank resolution. The authorities should increase the centralization of the coordination of the authorities’ respective preparation for, as well as management of, future crises in the Crisis Management Cooperation Group. On deposit guarantee arrangements, the Finnish Financial Stability Authority Deposit Guarantee Fund should ensure that it has sufficient funds under its direct control to ensure its financial autonomy, including through strengthened backstop funding arrangements.
International Monetary Fund. European Dept.
The economy bounced back strongly from the first wave of Covid-19 pandemic, and the recovery is well entrenched in 2022. However, risks to the outlook are considerable, given the uncertainty over spillovers from the war in Ukraine, the intensity of the pandemic globally, and in Europe, in particular, and supply bottlenecks. Given the strong fundamentals, Norway is relatively shielded and there are both upside (higher energy prices and export volumes) and downside risks (lower demand from Europe for non-energy exports). The forecast is especially sensitive to where energy prices settle, whether energy supply to Europe will be disrupted, and Norway’s capacity to increase gas supplies to Europe.