samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Further, in our initial investigations we had established evidence that many respondents would prefer to give a range rather than a point estimate and that most households were able to answer questions about their uncertainty over future inflation. We had also found our measure of individual forecast uncertainty to be positively correlated with the width of any range of responses given to the standard point forecast questions. Thus, we added questions eliciting from our panel their subjective uncertainty about future inflation. I will show you an example of such a question in a minute. As emphasized above, anchoring forward inflation expectations is crucial for monetary policy. In the Michigan survey, information on forward inflation expectations is generated by a question asking about “the change in prices in general over the next 5 to 10 years.” Our initial exploratory work confirmed that many households were confused by this wording but that there was overwhelming evidence that long-term average expectations were being reported. Considering the rather elaborate structure of the Michigan questions shown in Chart 5, it also appears that small changes in the various challenges could lower the median response by a significant margin. Further, asking about the rate of inflation directly produced answers more consistent with the concept of forward inflation expectations of interest to central banks. Rather than replicating the Michigan long-term inflation expectation question replacing “prices in general” with the “rate of inflation” we decided to work with a medium-term explicit horizon and use only a probabilistic version of the question.

In formulating a question on wage expectations we needed to pose a hypothetical situation to gain information of direct relevance to inflation. It is easiest to illustrate this by giving you the format and exact wording of the question: We first asked individuals who reported to be working for pay how many jobs they had. We then informed them that in some subsequent questions we would ask about their MAIN job, which we defined to be the job at which they usually work the most hours. We then ask: “Suppose that, 12 months from now, you actually are working in the exact same [MAIN] job at the same place you currently work, and working the exact same number of hours. Twelve months from now, do you expect your earnings on this job, before taxes and deductions, to have gone up, or gone down, or stayed where they are now?” For those who said gone up or gone down we then asked: “By about what percent do you expect that your hourly earnings on this job, before taxes and other deductions, will have gone [UP/DOWN], 12 months from now, if you actually are working in the exact same job at the same place you currently work, and working the exact same number of hours?” As in the rest of our work we also elicited uncertainty around this wage expectation. Chart 8 shows a time series of the median response and inter-quartile range to the point prediction question along with the average uncertainty as defined above.
Ravi Menon: Crypto tokens - the good, the bad, and the ugly Speech by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at Money20/20, Singapore, 15 March 2018. * * * Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. And to all our foreign guests, welcome to Singapore. This is a conference named after Money. Money has been with us for at least 5000 years. And over the last 300 years or so, we have come to accept Money as being issued by central banks whose mission in life is to safeguard its value. Now, along comes a new phenomenon – crypto money or currency or asset. The past year has seen explosive growth in the trading and use of these crypto assets. We have also seen a rollercoaster ride in their prices. Bitcoin – the most well-known of the crypto currencies or assets – hit a high of nearly $ 000 in December last year. And then lost two-thirds of its value in just over a month. MAS has been watching the crypto space with great interest. Our views are still evolving but let me share with you the current state of our thinking and our evolving regulatory approach. I will use the more generic term “crypto tokens” rather than “crypto currencies” or “crypto assets”. Crypto tokens began life as the medium of exchange within the blockchain ecosystem. But the token has now assumed a life of its own, outside the blockchain. Are crypto tokens money?

In my remarks today, I want to focus on one particular post-crisis change, the introduction of supervisory stress testing, as embodied in CCAR and the stress tests required by the DoddFrank Act (DFAST). In my personal view, supervisory stress testing and the CCAR are the most significant and impactful of the many regulatory and supervisory changes implemented following the global financial crisis. The CCAR and stress testing introduced a forward-looking perspective to capital adequacy and capital planning, something that static book-value-based regulatory capital measures lacked. We felt this acutely during the financial crisis, when market values of bank equity plunged while book values evolved only very slowly, based on accounting measures of losses. Aside from the stress-test-based quantitative requirements, the CCAR also requires large complex banks to do systematic capital planning, including developing criteria for when dividends and share repurchases will be made, increased or curtailed. This is an important innovation, as banks were slow to reduce dividends during the financial crisis, even as losses mounted and share prices fell.1 I want to examine supervisory stress testing through the lens of a paper I wrote in 2009 with former colleague Til Schuermann and current colleague Kevin Stiroh, now head of the New York Fed’s Supervision Group.2 That paper looked at the very first set of stress tests conducted by the Federal Reserve and other federal banking supervisors. The Supervisory Capital Assessment Program, or SCAP, was a watershed moment in the financial crisis.
By 1994, per capita income had doubled to $ well in the league of developed countries. Within a generation, the lives of Singaporeans have been transformed beyond recognition. Towards a knowledge-based economy We always knew that as our economy matured, and we approached income levels of the developed world, our growth would slow down. But we did not expect the transition to be so sudden and difficult. The Asian Crisis was a major setback for the whole region. Before the region could fully recover, the US economy went into recession. In Asia, China continues to prosper, which is both a major opportunity and a huge competitive challenge. On top of that, September 11th and the discovery of terrorist groups in Southeast Asia linked to Al-Qaeda, signalled a new and troubling long-term problem. In these troubled circumstances, we entered the third phase of our economic development. We needed to rethink all our economic policies and strategies. The Economic Review Committee (ERC) report sets out what policies we need to change, and what new strategies to pursue. The ERC made many specific recommendations to prepare Singapore for the transition to a knowledge-based economy. But underlying them all are three fundamental, related ideas: Firstly, we must promote innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship. Secondly, we must deregulate and liberalise the economy, to allow enterprise to flourish. And thirdly, we must encourage self-reliance complemented by community support, and minimise dependence on the state.

The latest retail sales figures provide some comfort with volume growth below that in the middle of last year when consumption was stimulated by windfall gains, predominantly from the conversion of building societies. (Rarely have so many, been so grateful, to so few building societies.) Highs and lows in house prices In the past, domestic demand has been sensitive to developments in the housing market. In the late 1980s house prices increased by 40% in two years, while consumption rose by over 9%. Borrowing using housing as collateral - so called equity withdrawal - amounted to almost 50% of the increase in consumption over that period. The impact of rises in house prices on consumption - which is cause and which is effect - remains hotly contested by economists. A rise in house prices leads not only to an increase in wealth but also to an increase in the cost of housing services. Or, to put it another way, if the price of your home goes up, you will not be able to spend more on other things if you wish to carry on living in your home. So it is not at all clear that changes in house prices will in fact have a significant impact on household spending. Perhaps of greater importance is the role which house prices play in signalling consumer confidence about the future. In common with other assets, such as equities, house prices can respond quickly to news about future economic prospects.
These factors explain why French banks' CDS premiums remain lower on average than those of banks in the United States, the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe. At the European level, the banking authority – the EBA with the SSM – will carry out new stress tests in 2023 on the resilience of EU financial institutions. The underlying scenarios will need to be sufficiently severe and credible in the current environment of uncertainty and volatility. But we see nothing at present that justifies an industry-wide restriction on dividend payouts, such as that imposed temporarily in 2020. There is,  2/4  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  however, a need for everyone to show prudence in terms of the future trajectory of capital, and in particular regarding share buybacks, which furthermore have to be explicitly authorised by the supervisor. 3. Are there any non-bank risks that could potentially trigger a crisis? The first area we need to pay close attention to is the less regulated players: while we have largely reinforced banks and insurers, we still have a long way to go on non-bank financial intermediaries (NBFIs). All episodes of financial instability in the last three years have been caused by the non-bank, non-insurance sector: from the money market fund "dash for cash" in March 2020 to UK pension funds in September. The vulnerabilities stem from excessive use of leverage, insufficiently controlled exposure to margin calls, or liquidity mismatch in open-ended funds which leaves them vulnerable to large and sudden capital outflows.

The first step is to build the skills required at the tertiary level to ensure that the curriculum at our universities and colleges equip graduates with the relevant knowledge and skills that meet the needs of the industry. In this respect, closer cooperation between the industry's training institute and the academia will help to develop a new breed of graduates who will be much better prepared to enter the workplace. At the post-employment stage, we need incentives for continuous learning and upgrading of skills and an infrastructure that delivers the appropriate training. For the development of banking sector workforce, the International Centre for Leadership in Finance (ICLIF) was established to pave the way for the development of future leaders in the industry, while Institut Bank-Bank Malaysia (IBBM) provides the avenue for competency building among the various levels of staff. With the onset of financial liberalisation, the traditional lines of business are likely to expand into new areas and new business models. As a consequence, the skills requirements have also evolved with the growing diversity and complexity of businesses in which banks are engaged, the increasingly sophisticated customer needs, technological innovation, and the expectations for sound risk management. In this context, there is a need to analyse the essential competencies for current job functions and to anticipate future skills requirements, with a view to building a competency framework for banking and finance that is relevant to the changing financial landscape.
30 March 2017  Speech Már Guðmundsson, Governor of the Central Bank, delivered at the 56th Annual Meeting of the Central Bank of Iceland, 30 March 2017. Prime Minister, Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs, Speaker of Parliament, bank directors, foreign ambassadors, ladies and gentlemen! We have come together today for the 56th Annual Meeting of the Central Bank of Iceland. At the time of last year’s meeting, the domestic economy was considered relatively strong. GDP had risen above the pre-crisis peak. National income had risen even more in recent years because of improved terms of trade. Unlike many previous periods of full employment, the economy was well balanced internally and externally, as could be seen in a two-year period of inflation at or below target and a sizeable current account surplus. This was a good position, but we also realised that it could be fragile, as demand pressures were mounting and there was a real risk of overheating. Developments internationally had been favourable for us in many ways, but the tide could turn. We therefore needed to be on the watch, and economic policy had to take this risk into consideration. Then what do we say now, when growth has accelerated even further and demand pressures are even greater, yet inflation has remained below target, inflation expectations have subsided to target, the 2016 current account surplus was at a historical high, and we own more than we owe abroad?

Mr. George comments briefly on the global economy and on recent economic performance in the United Kingdom Speech by the Governor of the Bank of England, Mr. E.A.J. George, at the Dinner with the Lord Mayor for Bankers and Merchants of the City of London on 11/6/98. The past year, since we last enjoyed the generous hospitality of the Mansion House, on this great City of London occasion, has been a testing time. It has been characterised by major imbalances in both the global economy and here in the United Kingdom - which have complicated the task of policy-makers everywhere, including the task of the Bank of England’s now legitimised Monetary Policy Committee. Internationally there has been good news in the enviable performance of the United States - Goldilocks - economy, with continuing robust domestic demand growth and further falls in unemployment, with so far remarkably little inflationary pressure. To the extent that this performance can be sustained, it provides substantial underpinning for the global economy as a whole. And there has been encouraging news, too, in the re-emergence of domestic demand growth in the Continental European countries as they prepare to take the final step to monetary union. That is a promising context for the launch of a strong, credible, currency and I wish the European Central Bank every success in its historic task. Domestic expansion with monetary stability within Europe is in the interest of us all. Elsewhere though the international situation has been decidedly less benign.
Nor does it seem feasible that further substantial contributions of private capital will be forthcoming if the tensions on international financial markets do not subside. From an overall perspective the Spanish system is in a position to overcome all these challenges, though as I have reiterated, talk of immunity is completely out of place. Indeed, not all banks are in the same position when it comes to coping with the tensions. This is because they have pursued different lending policies over recent years in terms of the rate of expansion of loans and of the degree of risk concentration. Even among banks that have followed similar strategies, notable differences can be identified regarding the selection of specific risks, their ability to manage them and the buffers, in terms of profitability and solvency, available to them to alleviate the effects of any risks that may materialise. For all these reasons banks should make the changes necessary to adapt to the new circumstances. These changes unavoidably involve stepping up efforts to rationalise operating costs and to correct the overcapacity in the sector which arises from a worldwide tendency towards lower levels of leverage. 8  BIS Review 79/2009  This overcapacity in the banking industry should be tackled through restructuring processes that allow a sound and efficient financial intermediation system to take root.

As to liquidity risk, the fact that depositors prefer shorter terms, while investors, driven by expectations of high inflation and uncertainty, prefer longer terms, has caused a mismatching of the maturity structures of the assets and liabilities of the banking sector. As a result, banks become more vulnerable to liquidity risk. Financial distress and global financial crisis were the main ingredients of the conjuncture of 1998. Following scattered failures in the emerging financial environment, almost all emerging economies began to be treated as risky, due to growing uncertainty about the near-term outlook for the financial markets. In this situation, international investors became more cautious about investing in the emerging markets and became reluctant to provide them with credit. Turkish banks slowed their disbursements of credit, preferring to be liquid in the marketplace. We also checked using different ratios for the liquidity in the system. Interest rate risk is another important form of systemic risk. Since the maturity structure of interest-sensitive liabilities in the Turkish banking system tends to favor the relatively shorter maturity segments, external funds are repriced at shorter intervals than assets. This mismatch in the pricing structure at various periods increases the sensitivity of assets and liabilities to changes in interest rates. Banks manage the degree of interest rate risk to which they are exposed during times of rising interest rates by converting their low interest bearing securities into high interest bearing securities by means of repurchase transactions. Interest rate swaps and some other derivative instruments are also used to hedge interest rate risk.
I also announced last year that we have established a cross-border collateral arrangement with De Nederlandsche Bank. This year, we have established such arrangements with the Banque de France, Bundesbank and Bank of England. These arrangements will allow banks in Singapore to pledge Euro and Sterling cash and eligible government securities, custodised with these central banks, as collateral when they access the MAS Standing Facility. 22. These measures will help to broaden the availability and diversity of regulatory and liquid assets for banks and allow international banks greater flexibility to tap on their global  BIS Review 103/2010  3  sources of liquidity, while maintaining the high quality of eligible collateral of the Standing Facility. Maintaining the growth of Singapore’s financial services sector 23. Let me now turn to the performance of our financial sector. The sector has staged a strong rebound as global financial conditions improved. In the first quarter of this year, the financial sector grew by 3.5%, its fourth straight quarter of expansion. More recent data such as bank lending suggests that the financial sector continued to expand in Q2. Meanwhile, hiring in the financial sector has picked up from 4,000 in Q4 2009 to 5,500 in Q1 this year. The 5,500 financial sector jobs created accounted for 15% of total job creation in Q1 2010. 24. The recovery in the financial sector is broad based – banking intermediation, trading and asset management activities have all rebounded.

MAS will continue to be vigilant and take appropriate steps to maintain medium-term price stability and enhance the resilience of our financial system. In strengthening our regulatory and supervisory regimes, we will do this in a manner which is consistent with international standards and best practices, but at the same time, sensitive to our environment and needs. Riding on Asia’s growth, we will also continue to build on our strong fundamentals to provide for sustainable growth in the financial sector. 31. Thank you. BIS Review 103/2010  5
Structural and balance sheet weaknesses, inappropriate exchange rate regimes as well as inconsistent macroeconomic policies must be addressed openly, and without hesitation or delay, to avoid market reaction. In some cases, a loss of confidence may fuel a snowballing effect that can easily lead to fullblown capital account crises with high economic and social costs and serious risks of a contagion. By changing the rules, globalization forced the international community to change the framework of surveillance itself. This came under the general heading of reforming the architecture of the financial system. It is an ongoing, very ambitious project with many ramifications. Switzerland strongly supports it as well as all the related initiatives. I think we can safely say that a lot has already been achieved. The structure of the international financial system is today more robust and in a better position to withstand future challenges. Part of this project was to provide more information about countries and their policies to help investors make the right judgments. A number of standards and codes were  2  BIS Review 69/2004  defined to include data dissemination, fiscal transparency, and monetary and financial policy transparency. Another aspect of the reform was strengthening Fund surveillance through its renewed focus on financial markets. Much more attention is today paid to the structure of national financial systems and the institutional preconditions that have to be in place for countries to fully benefit from capital account liberalization.

With large and, to some extent, varying budget revenues, the basis for determining central government expenditure and taxes from one year to the next may easily be impaired. If budget spending is allowed to vary in step with oil prices, the Norwegian economy may experience abrupt shifts and instability. Changes in oil prices may then quickly influence wage and price expectations, the exchange rate and long-term rates. In addition, short-term rates would have to be changed frequently and sharply. BIS Review 19/2001  9  In recent years, central government real underlying spending growth has accelerated somewhat. In 2000 and 2001, spending growth has been higher than 2 per cent, which is higher than normal growth in the mainland economy. At the same time, direct and indirect taxes have increased. Fiscal policy has thus had a virtually neutral effect on domestic demand for two years while wage growth has been substantially higher than in other countries. A possible interpretation of this development is that it is more demanding to use the government budget to dampen cyclical fluctuations during an upturn than during a downturn. The willingness and ability to pursue a counter-cyclical policy may in itself be cyclical. Another interpretation is that a neutral fiscal stance this year, with a strong increase in government financial wealth, is a balanced approach to using the budget to stabilise the economy while phasing in an increase in financial income in the economy. Conclusion The Norwegian economy is fragile and vulnerable.