is a major issue in several countries, and we have seen extensive ( and as yet largely unresolved ) debates about what amount of household debt is'sustainable '. perhaps the trend towards larger and more leveraged household balance sheets has largely run its course. certainly for australia, our analysis of its main underlying causes has tended to suggest that it should be a one - time portfolio adjustment, not a permanently different trend rate of growth in debt. but it is also possible that we are some time from seeing any end to that adjustment process since, in principle, there is no obvious reason why a much higher proportion of the housing stock might not yet be collateralised. if it were, there would be a lot more borrowing ahead. either way, with the stock of household wealth now twice as large, relative to the flow of current income, as it was in the early 1980s, and the equity contained therein much more accessible via products such as re - draw facilities and home equity loans, and more recently reverse mortgages, these changes have the potential to exert bigger influences on economic performance than in the past. yet the statistical information about some important elements of these phenomena is poor. take dwelling prices, a key ingredient in estimating aggregate household wealth. in australia, there are five series that are routinely used. because dwellings are far from homogeneous, and change hands only infrequently, getting a good representation of the true change in price of existing dwellings from one quarter or year to the next is much more difficult than, for example, getting a reasonable index of changes in share prices. a major problem is that compositional effects on the observed mean or median price of dwellings can be very large if transactions shift between high and low - value parts of the property market between one observation and the next. another problem is that most series tend to be dated from the time a property settlement is advised to official records, which may be some months after the sale and price were agreed. some series try very hard to overcome these sorts of problems, but at the cost of being either untimely or highly prone to revision ( or both ). other series are more timely but are unable to overcome technical flaws and so contain a high degree of short - term variability. memo to statisticians, in central banks or elsewhere : policy - makers need better data on housing prices. in australia, the abs is responding to this challenge with efforts to improve their house price series. the rba very much welcome

for these company buffers, their creation is directly connected with wage restraint during economic booms. the creation of buffers is just as important for the public sector as for the corporate sector, particularly in the central government. it is necessary to generate budget surpluses during economic booms, in order to have room for manoeuvre in bad times and to endure deficits in times of recession within the framework of the stability and growth pact, and its 3 per cent of gdp limit. responsibility for curbing the booms and softening the recessions will shift in the emu world to a much greater extent than before to fiscal policy. here political decision - making will face strong pressures and challenges, both in finland and in many other countries. on the whole, it is good to keep in mind that a monetary union country with good central government finances will certainly have far more room for independent economic policy manoeuvring than will a non - monetary union country with a large central government deficit and debt. [UNK]