housing investment as a percentage of gdp. however, even here prices and wages comprise a problem for the industry. the preliminary results show that construction workers received wage increases in excess of 5 per cent last year, while productivity only amounted to 1. 4 per cent and unemployment among construction workers was almost 10 per cent. unemployment in the construction industry varies geographically, however, with a rate of under 3 per cent in stockholm and over 19 per cent in, for instance, the gavleborg and norrbotten regions. relative productivity in the construction sector appears to be declining. the gap between the percentage employed and the percentage of gdp is increasing. this means that every person employed in the construction industry is providing a declining contribution to gdp, in relative terms. during most of the 1990s this difference increased, but it has recovered somewhat in recent years. this can perhaps be partly explained by the fact that there is still a large manual element that it is neither desirable nor possible to eliminate. at the same time, it is probable that the entire industry has a lower degree of rationalisation than other industries. this is also visible in the development of prices for both construction services and building materials, which is far above other industrial products, despite a relatively weak demand ( oh 3 development of prices for building materials ). there is something unhealthy in an industry where wages and prices rise despite a relatively weak demand and lingering unemployment in the industry as a whole. let me conclude by saying that a recover in the swedish economy is under way and that the swedish economy has a good foundation on which to build, with a surplus in both our public finances and in sweden ’ s international trade. inflation is hopefully on the way down. at the same time, wage formation and pricing behaviour in general comprise an element of uncertainty as economic activity begins to pick up. personally, i consider that this indicates a possibility that further interest rate hikes will be necessary in future. however, the next monetary policy step depends, as always, on what happens and the analyses we make. there is always uncertainty and we have now tightened up monetary policy by 0. 5 percentage points. outcome and forecasts of und1x made at different points in time 4. 0 3. 5 4. 0 ir 02 : 1 ir 01 : 4 ir 01 : 3 ir 01 : 2 ir 01 : 1 ir 00 : 4 ir 00 : 3 ir 00 : 2 ir 00 : 1 utfall 3. 5 3. 0 3. 0 2

produce a large number of payments than a small number of payments due to the benefits provided by economies of scale. however, it takes some time before a new system can reap these benefits. the costs for building, manning and maintaining such a technical system are rather high and it is only when the system is in place that costs begin to fall. then the cost of processing an additional payment is almost zero. the average cost of making a payment thus falls as the number of payments increases. the price per transaction that the producer can charge without running at a loss is therefore low. already established payment services that handle large volumes of payments therefore have a cost advantage. the larger the volume the established service has, the greater is its advantage. the situation for a new service is exactly the opposite. at least initially, a new service will have a small number of payments to distribute the fixed costs between. in order not to price itself out of the market, the new service will have to run at a loss until it has achieved a sufficiently high volume. a new service thus has a significant cost disadvantage compared with an established service. second, a new system has to compete against the so - called network effects. the classic example of a network effect is telephony. being the first person to have a telephone offers no advantages. if two people have telephones they can at least call each other, which has a value. for every new telephone owner that is linked to the telephone network the benefit of having a telephone to those who are already connected increases as the number of people that can be reached has now increased. this reasoning about telephony can easily be applied to payment services where everyone wants to be able to send payments to and receive payment from everyone else, for example a service for payments between private individuals ( p2p ). the reasoning becomes more complicated when we talk about payments from consumers to companies ( p2b ). payment service markets with two distinct sets of customers for payment services and payment flows in only one direction are usually called two - sided markets. the market for point - of - sale payments ( pos ) is one such two - sided market. the payments on this market go from the private customer to the company and not the other way. the card market is only attractive to merchants if there are a sufficiently large number of consumers with cards. similarly, it is only attractive for consumers to have cards if it is possible to use bis central bankers ’ speeches them in a sufficiently large number