se / pxweb / sv / ssd / start _ _ le _ _ le0108 _ _ le0108d / le0108t14 /? rxid = 8f4a0041 - 1be9 - 4ed3 - b6fb182251a2b5cd 2 https : / / www. zmescience. com / research / technology / smartphone - power - compared - to - apollo - 432 / 1 my speech today will not provide all the answers. instead, i intend to discuss my thoughts on how digitalisation can affect various parts of the economy and what role it plays for monetary policy. can the riksbank attain its target of 2 per cent even in a world of digitalisation? is it still desirable to aim for this target? my reply to both of these questions is yes, but i will return to that later. focus on digitalisation – where are we now? what is digitalisation and how does it differ from the concepts of automation and technological advances? jesper roine, professor at the stockholm school of economics has divided them up in a useful manner. 3 automation – a machine doing the work of a person. digitalisation – converting information to a digital form. technological advances – broader concept that covers the other two but also other things. the concepts are of course related. digitalisation can enable automation and is an example of technological advances. in this speech i focus on digitalisation, but will also touch on the automation that follows on from digitalisation. i wish to include in the concept of digitalisation here machine learning, artificial intelligence, 3d printers and the use of cloud services and big data. a common collective name often used for several of these technologies is industry 4. 0 or the fourth industrial revolution. will productivity increase? how far have we come with regard to the digitalisation of the business sector? one hears an awful lot about technological developments in the media and in business journals. from what is written one might easily gain the impression that we can do more and faster. but official data on productivity does not confirm this. the fact that statistics and reality sometimes appear to be disconnected from one another is nothing new. in 1987 economist robert solow wrote “ you can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics ”, when describing the emergence of information and communication technology ( ict ) and the relatively low productivity growth in the united states in the 1980s. if we look at

central banks have guaranteed price stability for many decades, even during the pandemic crisis, despite consumer price changes having flirted with deflation in recent years as well as the fact that, in the euro area, we are still struggling to bring inflation back to our medium - term target. our monopoly power over the supply of base money and our credibility have been key in this respect. but what would happen to inflation in an economy in which there is wide circulation of private money beyond the control of central banks, for example due to a significant presence of digital currencies denominated in a foreign currency or in a 2 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches basket of different currencies? we are now quite close to where, two decades ago, the oecd expected us to be, as money appears inevitably to be becoming digital. and central banks and other public authorities alike are asking themselves the aforementioned questions, attempting to govern the opportunities and risks arising from digital money by adopting new regulations and new approaches. in europe, the european commission is drafting a new directive to regulate issuers and service providers of crypto - assets, while the european central bank is currently considering the possibility of starting a formal investigation phase on a digital euro. similar initiatives are ongoing in most other jurisdictions : most of the monetary authorities around the world are working today on the possible development of a central bank digital currency, ranging from mere conceptual research to preliminary experiments, proofs - ofconcept or pilot projects. * * * let me conclude. in 1999, in a speech on hayek and currency competition, otmar issing asserted that money is like a language : a convention that facilitates the interaction among individuals when they produce, trade and consume. as money becomes digital, a new monetary language will gradually emerge and international coordination will be essential so that, as we do today, we can all continue to speak a common language. but money is not just language, it is also substance. its key ingredient is trust. preserving it – in a world that, as mark carney clearly described, is becoming more “ decentralized ” and polarized – must therefore be our polestar when we regulate private forms of money or design a new digital outside money. this is why this year, under the italian presidency, the g20 will continue to consider the technological, economic, legal, regulatory and oversight issues related to global stable - coins as well as potential benefits and risks from central bank digital currencies, also