spreads. nevertheless, the effects of asset price adjustments on pension funds, life insurance companies and non - financial enterprises are still been felt through various parts of the economy. should the economy follow a debt cycle in the future, there is also a risk that the currently low interest rates will lead to the implementation of projects that would be unprofitable at normal rate levels. how has housing finance in sweden been affected in recent years by internationalisation, regulatory changes and balance sheet adjustments? developments in the swedish asset and debt markets have largely been the same as those abroad. shares and commercial property have declined in value since 2000. investment in residential property and prices of permanent single - family dwellings have risen by 8 and 15 per cent respectively for the past two years. prices of tenant - owner apartments have also increased. the rise in prices of owner - occupied housing, and to a certain extent the increase in the rate of construction of tenantowner apartments, has caused mortgage institutions to continue to increase their lending over the past three years by an average of 8 per cent per year. the annual rate of increase surpassed 10 per cent toward the end of 2002. over the past 20 years, lending by banks and mortgage institutions has grown by approximately 8 per cent per year, while lending by mortgage institutions alone has grown around 10 per cent per year. this implies that mortgage institutions'share of lending has risen over the years. if one studies the borrowing of non - financial enterprises, the picture becomes somewhat different. here mortgage institutions have become less important. during the middle of the 1990s they accounted for just over 40 per cent of corporate borrowing, but now their share has fallen back to just below 25 per cent. this is mainly an effect of increased international competition and increased bond financing. the structure of the housing market and housing finance. has internationalisation resulted in increased competition? at the same time as we have seen large adjustments in the balance sheets of households and companies, other longer - term trends have continued to have an effect on the structure and competition in the housing finance market. the market for mortgage institutions in sweden is characterised by a small number of participants that dominate the entire market. there are presently a total of 10 mortgage institutions in the swedish market, which is slightly fewer than 15 years ago. the five largest have approximately 95 per cent of the market, which is an increase of just under 10 percentage points compared with 15 years ago. mortgage institutions operate in two different markets. the first is a national and regional market for

, the second the significance of inflation expectations and the third the expansionary monetary policy. inflation below target – several reasons for this let ’ s start with inflation : why is it so low now and therefore also far below the target? what are the reasons for this? the figure shows the period 2010 – 2012 as a whole, although there were several wage bargaining rounds during this period. for natural reasons, there are no wage data available for 2015 yet. bis central bankers ’ speeches on an overall level, one can say that the low inflation is explained by the weak international demand in recent years and the weak domestic activity. this development reflects the fact that the recovery following the financial crisis has been unexpectedly sluggish – perhaps less so in sweden than in many other countries. the low inflation is not just a swedish phenomenon. it has also fallen or developed surprisingly weakly in many other countries in recent years, and other central banks have also found it difficult to attain their inflation targets. in sweden, companies appear to have found it unusually difficult to pass on their cost increases to prices. there are also signs that inflation may have been held back by increased competition and uncertainty over the development of the economy. furthermore, electricity prices have been unexpectedly weak over the past year. in addition, the oil price fell heavily during the second half of 2014. the swedish krona also strengthened during the period 2010 – 2013. this meant that import prices measured in swedish krona fell, and thus also swedish consumer prices. however, during 2014 the krona weakened, which instead led to higher prices. finally, there is a technical factor that is important for inflation as measured in terms of the consumer price index, cpi. when the riksbank cuts the repo rate to bring up inflation, the immediate effect is the opposite. households ’ mortgage interest expenditure, and thus the cpi, then fall. there is an alternative measure of inflation, the cpif, which is based on a constant interest rate and therefore not affected by the riksbank ’ s repo rate cuts. many often follow the cpif instead of the cpi, particularly during periods when the repo rate changes a lot. inflation expectations indicate confidence in the inflation target it is important that the inflation target is credible. and it becomes credible when the economic agents expect inflation to return to the target following deviations. it is primarily the long - term inflation expectations that indicate confidence in the inflation target. central economic agents are regularly asked how high they expect inflation to be in