samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
In the public sector, there are no absolute requirements as to profitability and efficiency. Public enterprises do not go bankrupt, and in many cases the authorities cannot allow a public enterprise to discontinue operations. This is a demanding starting point for a shift to more locally determined wages. The possibility of granting local pay increases might, however, increase efficiency if there are binding nominal budget limits for these entities and clear production requirements. When a higher share of wages is determined at the local level and coordination is reduced, it will be even more important to promote flexibility in the labour market and the labour supply. Otherwise, an increasing number of workers may be excluded from working life and unemployment may rise on a permanent basis, while the foundation for production is weakened. Effective labour market programmes, supported by a sound system for education and infrastructure, can facilitate these adjustments. It is also important to assess working environment and labour market legislation with a view to fostering greater flexibility. Hiring costs may be reduced and flexibility enhanced through greater scope for temporary employment and labour contracting. The throughput in universities and colleges can be improved. The financial incentives and entitlement thresholds in our social security system are also of substantial importance to employment. Pensions  In Norway, the employment rate is among the highest in the OECD area. This reflects both high labour force participation and low unemployment.

Raddatz, C. (2003), “Liquidity Needs and Vulnerability to Financial Underdevelopment”, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 3161, November. Rajan, R. (2004), “Why Are Structural Reforms So Difficult?” Finance and Development, June 2004, pp. 56-57. Reinhart, C. (2002), “Credit Ratings, Default and Financial Crises: Evidence from Emerging Markets”, World Bank Economic Review (forthcoming). Uribe, M. and V. Yue (2006), “Country spreads and emerging countries: Who drives whom?” Journal of International Economics, Vol. 69 pp. 6-36. World Bank (2005), Financial Sector Assessment: A Handbook, Washington D.C.  BIS Review 98/2008  11
This will be decided by the government and parliament, following a referendum on this question. The timetable for a decision will be determined by a political process. Statements by, for instance, Prime Minister Göran Persson indicate that a referendum will be held as early as next year. If the result were a “yes”, parliament would decide to send in an application to the European Commission and the ECB to examine whether we meet the convergence criteria. In connection with making a decision on application, Sweden would probably also have to take a position on participation in ERM2. The government has said earlier that if Sweden is to take part in stage three of EMU, it would be logical to first tie the krona to this exchange rate mechanism. The economic criteria are the inflation rate, long-term interest rates, exchange rate stability and the budget balance and debt in the public sector. Following this scrutiny, the European Parliament and Council of Europe would give their opinion on the Commission’s proposal and after this the ECOFIN Council would take a decision on whether Sweden could participate. If Sweden were accepted as a member of the Eurosystem, there would be negotiations on when membership could occur and at what exchange rate the krona would be fixed against the euro. Parliament decided as early as 1997 that Sweden should keep the door open for future membership by creating the highest possible level of readiness for action, by means of technical and practical preparations.

In addition, the number of persons being notified of redundancy could rise in the near future as a result of Ericsson’s cutbacks. A problem for the Swedish economy is that there will be a large increase in the percentage of very young and very old members of the population during 2003 and 2004, which limits the supply of labour. The labour supply is also affected by how the regulations on unemployment benefit, sickness insurance, etc. are formulated. The large number of employed persons who are absent from work as a result of sickness or other reasons also comprises a significant uncertainty factor. It is difficult to estimate to what extent these people could come back to work and boost production capacity. (Diagram 4 - number of employed persons, excl. sick and other absentees). The public sector is expected to provide a positive contribution to growth in employment during the entire forecast period. While employment in industry is not expected to increase until the latter part of the forecast period. During 2001 wages increased by 4.3 per cent, according to preliminary data. It is partly due to this high rate of wage increase that inflation has been above the Riksbank’s target level during 2001-2002. The wages statistics that have been received so far this year indicate a continued high rate of wage increase, or approximately 4 per cent. The design of the central wage agreements and a slightly weaker labour market situation are some important factors in subduing the rate of wage increase.
The crucial part of the monetary base influencing this rise and fall is the aggregate balance that banks maintain in  3  BIS Review 35/1999  their clearing accounts held with the currency board: it is extremely small, and, at the time, made the monetary system susceptible to speculative attack. 12. In their attempts to destabilise the Hong Kong dollar in late 1997 and early 1998, speculators found that, although breaking the link was impossible, driving up interest rates by putting pressure on the Hong Kong dollar was not so difficult a matter. Late in the summer of 1998 they developed their strategy into a pre-concerted, heavily leveraged cross-market assault, which sought to play off the currency board system against the stock and futures markets: according to this strategy, extreme conditions created by a large-scale dumping of Hong Kong dollars would cause the stock market to plummet to a level that would allow them to make large profits from the futures contracts they had taken out. 13. We prevented them from reaping these profits – and in fact caused many of them to incur a loss – by investing a small part of Hong Kong’s official reserves in Hang Seng Index constituent stocks and futures contracts in sufficient quantities to ensure that the strategy failed. We followed this up with technical changes to the currency board system to make it less susceptible to manipulation.

In Adam Smith’s conception, it is the ‘invisible hand’ of the free market that organises the seemingly chaotic and self-interested activities of human beings into a beneficent and productive social order. For Milton Friedman, ‘the organisation of the bulk of economic activity through private enterprise operating in a free market’ is ‘a necessary condition for political freedom.’ 15. In its daily operation, a free market serves three main purposes. It manages resource allocation by supplying answers for buyers and sellers to the basic economic questions of what, how, and for whom goods and services are to be produced. It provides price discovery by channelling competition and adjusting prices to reflect changes in supply and demand for different commodities. And specifically in terms of money, it arranges financial intermediation by matching the needs of ultimate lenders – or those in possession of surplus loanable funds – with those of ultimate borrowers – or those in need of liquid funds: interest rates, which are determined by the supply and demand of liquidity in the loanable fund market, play a crucial role in this process. BIS Review 35/1999  4  16. The philosophers are agreed that, in general, the less a government has to do with these various functions, the more efficiently the market can do its job: centralised, directive authorities, or ‘big government’, are anathema to true economic freedom; governments should, at most, play a minimal, instrumental role in fostering the conditions in which each individual has the freedom to make his or her own economic choices.
All documents are digitised and the process is digitalised end-to-end. NTP enables SMEs to share information quickly and securely with multiple parties connected within the platform. It also enables SMEs toapply for trade financing with multiple banks through a single application portal. Enhanced Access to Global Opportunities – Business sans Borders It’s not just cross-border trade that SMEs have to contend with. They have to look abroad for business opportunities, for suppliers and customers. 4 / 10  BIS central bankers' speeches  They have to manage procurement, logistics, and supply chains, also across borders. To address these pain points, MAS and the Infocomm Media Development Authority have together developed Business Sans Borders, or BSB for short. BSB is designed to connect different platforms globally to help SMEs seamlessly access a much larger ecosystem of buyers and sellers. It uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to introduce to SMEs essential financing and business solutions from service providers across the BSB network. For example, a Singaporean SME seller of kueh lapis, a type of traditional cake, was able to use the pilot BSB platform to connect and trade seamlessly with SME buyers on platforms in India and the Philippines. BSB also intuitively matched the seller with a local FinTech firm which provided preshipment financing support for the trade. I am happy to announce that BSB has been operationalised by a private entity Proxtera and is starting its live beta during this Singapore FinTech Festival.

The Covid-19 pandemic and economic crisis has, in a way, helped to focus our minds on these two issues. There is a growing consciousness across the world that if we do not act now and act decisively, we will put our future at grave risk. This crisis presents us an opportunity to create a more inclusive society and a more sustainable planet. Finance, Technology, and FinTech can be powerful enablers in this endeavour. Everything we do in Finance, Technology, and FinTech must have a larger purpose. What greater purpose can there be than making our societies more inclusive and our planet more sustainable? 10 / 10  BIS central bankers' speeches
In other words, are women being promoted because of their gender or because they are the best candidate irrespective of their gender? After being promoted, women’s wage progression is, on average, faster than men’s. This suggests that the women selected for promotion perform better.6  Allow me to focus on my organisation now. As I said earlier, the Banco de España currently has a gender-equal workforce, with the share of women having gradually risen from 30% at the end of the 1980s. Significant momentum was gained in the mid-2000s, coinciding with greater awareness about the advantages of gender diversity. However, at that point no specific policy geared towards increasing women’s presence was implemented. Instead it came about ‘naturally’. Despite the workforce parity achieved, there are still sizeable differences across professional groups: in 2019, women accounted for 40% of managerial staff, 46% of senior experts, 52% of experts and specialists, 66% of administrative staff and 11% of other support services staff. 6  The criticism that this could be to compensate for prior wage gaps after the diversity policy was ushered in also appears to be baseless since women’s relatively quicker salary increases after promotion were faster still pre-2011. 6  This recent momentum was above all due to women making up a relatively larger share of new entrants joining the Bank (see centre panel). Logically, among the most experienced staff, the relative share of women has increased at a much slower pace (see right-hand panel).

But it would be disappointing if that debate degenerates into recrimination and antagonism. That would be to obscure the remarkable consensus that now exists - throughout the European Union and indeed more widely, and across a broad spectrum of political opinion within the countries of Europe, including this country, on the broad approach to macro-economic management. This unforced consensus extends to monetary policy directed to price stability, and it extends to budgetary policy directed to medium and longer-term fiscal sustainability. There is growing recognition, too, across the continent, of the importance of structural policy directed to supply-side flexibility. This strengthening consensus is fundamentally important - more fundamentally important, in terms of the economics of it at least, than whether these common objectives are pursued inside or outside the framework of monetary union. Pulling these thoughts together, it would be a mistake in my view for monetary union to go ahead without reasonable confidence of genuine, sustainable, convergence between its members; and it would be a mistake for any individual country to seek to join, or to be permitted to join, unless it had achieved genuine, sustainable, convergence. If there are serious doubts - generally or in any particular case - it would be in no-one’s interest to proceed. But it would be just as big a mistake, if monetary union does not go ahead, or for countries on the outside, if individual governments saw that as an opportunity to seek to take short-term advantage of the apparent macro-economic freedom that that gave.
On the fiscal front, there has been an intensive drive to correct the budget deficit, as indicated by the significant reduction in the structural general government deficit since 2009. The increased transparency and the strengthening of the fiscal framework further to the approval of the Law on Budgetary Stability and Financial Sustainability in 2012 assist the different tiers of government –central, regional and local – in meeting the budget targets. In turn, the reform of the pensions system is a necessary step for ensuring the sustainability of public finances in the medium term. Despite these achievements, the rising course of the public debt/GDP ratio has not yet been halted and is a reminder of the scale of the fiscal effort still required. There has also been progress in private-sector deleveraging. The sluggishness of household and corporate income is slowing the process, as a result of which the weight of the adjustment is falling on the contraction in lending extended to these sectors. That said, this contraction in credit may be and indeed is proving compatible with its appropriate restructuring. The analysis of the Banco de España suggests that, even in years  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  as difficult as the past two, the proportion of firms that have not seen a fall-off in their bank loans has been significant, around 30%. And more significantly, those that have not seen their credit decline are, precisely, those firms which, in general, were departing from a sounder position of debt and profitability.

High tax rates promote tax planning and hamper the growth capacity of an economy. Low, broad-based tax rates are preferable to high tax rates with a narrow base. Norway made headway with the tax reform of 1992. There is still room for considerable improvement in the Norwegian system. Many public services are of considerable economic importance. Infrastructure, education, sound legislation and a solid judicial system are necessary for the economy to function and grow. Public services may be important in order to secure equality and security. At the same time, the public sector is so large that it affects the economy at large. This means that requirements concerning efficiency and adaptability must also apply to the public sector. Chart 18  Over a twenty year period, the number of employed in the health, care and education sectors increased by 240,000, which account for about 60% of the increase in overall employment in Norway. The number of employed in the health and care sector has more than doubled in 20 years. More people are now working in this sector than in the whole of manufacturing. Nevertheless, every day we receive reports of personnel shortages at hospitals, in elderly care or at schools. The authorities constantly signal increases in appropriations in order to remedy these problems. Norway imports labour from other countries to cover its resource shortages. What are the reasons behind this situation? BIS Review 14/2000  16  Chart 19  Demand for health and care services rises sharply when incomes increase.
In the main scenario the recovery in the United States and the euro area is expected to begin during the second half of this year and next year growth will largely be back at the trend level. Growth in Sweden is expected to be approximately the same this year as last year, but in reality this is a weakening if one takes into account the larger number of working days this year. Inflation in Sweden rose rapidly in the autumn and, measured by both the CPI and the CPIX, is expected to exceed the inflation target during a large part of the forecast period. The uncertainty over future economic developments is still considerable, however, and to highlight this a number of alternative scenarios are described in the Monetary Policy Report. One of these involves greater financial turmoil and that growth abroad will slow down more sharply. In this scenario growth in the US economy will fall more than in the main scenario, at the same time as the borrowing costs for households and companies in the whole world will  BIS Review 30/2008  1  be higher. This leads to a general dampening of demand and to lower GDP growth and inflation both abroad and in Sweden. But, as we have written in previous reports, there is also a risk that inflation will be higher than in the main scenario if wage developments are stronger and productivity weaker than expected.

The Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) estimated that assets of the global Islamic financial services industry grew by 20.4% year-on-year to reach an estimated USD1.6 trillion as at end 2012.1 Last year also saw a record volume of sukuk issuances globally, with sukuk issuance from more countries, and of larger size and longer tenor. Key financial centres have continued to facilitate the development of Islamic finance within their jurisdictions. Singapore has made adjustments to our regulatory and tax regime to allow for the growth of Islamic finance since 2004. Hong Kong has recently amended its tax regulations to allow for issuance of sukuk, while the UK recently established an industry task force to facilitate further development of Islamic finance. Going forward, the broadening and deepening of economic and financial ties between Asia and the Middle East, the two major centres for Islamic finance, will also provide further impetus for future growth of Islamic finance globally. Connectivity between Asia and the Middle East There are three important observations to be made on the growing connectivity between Asia and the Middle East. First, the economic relationship between the two regions has expanded beyond the energyrelated sector. Asia’s demand for energy exports from the Middle East will continue to remain robust as the region expands. However, non-energy trade between the two regions is also growing fast. About 40% of GCC’s non-oil exports are to Asia. Saudi Arabia is the leading  1  Islamic Financial Services Industry Stability Report 2013, Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB).
While the IRB approaches promise greater capital savings in the longer term, the adoption of the standardized approach in the transition is considered a more pragmatic option even for some internationally active banking groups. Under the IRB approaches, banks would need to reach an agreement with the regulator in the countries they operate on the robustness of group internal estimates and validation. The standardized approach is therefore seen to provide the breathing space for a smooth transition to IRB approaches while at the same time allowing banking institutions to avail themselves of the benefits of capital savings. BIS Review 21/2004  3  Different approaches are adopted by regulators Ladies and Gentlemen, While there has been global acceptance of the broad principles of the new accord, differing implementation approaches are being adopted by different countries. In some countries, regulators have opted for the accord to be applied to all institutions while in others selected banks are being mandated specific approaches. Some other regulators have given greater flexibility for banks or have extended the timeline for the implementation of the new accord. These reflect the different considerations and priorities accorded by the various regulators in their policy agenda. In essence, the decision by national regulators are based on a number of common factors, namely, the stage of industry development and market infrastructure, the size and types of institutions involved, the regulatory philosophy and priorities, as well as the economic environment.

2 All three of these reasons – evidence that U.S. monetary policy is currently only moderately accommodative, the fact that U.S. financial conditions have been influenced by economic and financial market developments abroad, and risk management considerations – argue, at the moment, for caution in raising U.S. short-term interest rates. So, directionally, the movement in investor expectations towards a flatter path for U.S. short-term interest rates seems broadly appropriate. That said, to my eye, market expectations derived from futures prices – which price in about one 25 basis point rate hike through the end of 2017 – appear to be too complacent. If the incoming information validates my view of the outlook, then I believe that U.S. monetary policy will likely need to move at a faster pace than implied by futures prices towards a more neutral posture as the labor market tightens further and U.S. inflation rises. Moreover, market expectations may be putting insufficient weight on the possibility that the economy could outperform our expectations, that financial conditions could ease, or that the risks to growth from Brexit and other international developments could fade away. If such events were to occur, this might necessitate a faster pace of adjustment. For these reasons, I think it is premature to rule out further monetary policy tightening this year. As I said before, it depends on the data, broadly defined, and, as we all know, that is not something one can predict with any accuracy.