samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
First, at present gender pay gap reporting in the UK only covers companies with more than 250 employees. In practice, this means it covers only around 40% of the UK working population in the private sector.15 To tackle the pay gap comprehensively, this suggests there is a strong case for extending the pay reporting regime to smaller companies – say, those with 30 or more staff. Second, there is currently no compulsory system of company reporting on the ethnicity pay gap in the UK, though the government has consulted on doing so. The ethnicity pay gap is at least as large as for females, and if anything has been more persistent, as shown by the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition results. In my opinion, there are therefore strong grounds for extending compulsory reporting to ethnicity as well as gender. This analysis also emphasises the importance of looking at labour market outcomes for different ethnic minority groups, rather than necessarily treating ethnic minorities as a single group. Third, at present only a handful of countries internationally require companies to publish gender and ethnicity pay gaps. There is a strong case for reporting diversity pay gaps, on an internationally-harmonised basis, to allow cross-country as well as cross-company comparison. Given their expertise on labour market issues, this might be something on which the OECD could lead. The international central banking community could also help lead by example. The benefits of internationally-harmonised disclosures, as an incentive device for action, have recently been demonstrated in the case of climate change disclosures.

Ivan Iskrov: Bulgaria and the Francophonian movement Speech by Mr Ivan Iskrov, Governor of the Bulgarian National Bank, at the opening of the 13th Annual Meeting of the Governors of the Central Banks from the Francophonian countries, Sofia, 12 May 2006. *  *  *  Dear Governors, Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, Welcome to Bulgaria, one of the oldest countries in Europe! It is a pleasure and honour for me to open the 13th Meeting of the Governors of the Central Banks from the Francophonian countries. I am also very much flattered by the fact that this meeting is for the first time held in a country from Central and Eastern Europe and it is precisely the Bulgarian National Bank's privilege to host such an event. This is also the year of the centennial anniversary of the birth of Leopold Cedar Senghor - the founder of the Intergovernmental Francophone Agency and the conceptual father of the Francophone Movement (La Francophonie). Tomorrow, the conceptual father of our gatherings and ECB honourable President, Jean-Claude Trichet, will join us. The fact that the BNB hosts this meeting is not only the result of the formal acceptance of Bulgaria to the Francophonian community in the early 90-ies of the past century. The French language and culture made their way into the country already in the first half of the XIX century when we were still part of the Ottoman empire.
Such challenges have all been the preoccupation of your majesty, and you have been constantly urging the authorities concerned to overcome them. The most prominent of those challenges are the following: First: employment of the Saudi youth, which constitutes one of the major challenges facing the national economy. In spite of the good achievements made in the preceding period, estimates indicate that unemployment among Saudis amounted to about 9.6 percent in 2009. Given the rate of population growth and structure, it is important to continue intensifying current efforts to increase investment to develop the human capital with the active participation of the private and public sectors. Efforts should be intensified for Saudizing the jobs in the private sector, and obstacles hindering this process should be considered and eliminated. The percentage of Saudization fit for the nature of each activity and sector needs to be determined, and work should be made to activate the procedures and regulations that respect productivity and safeguard the rights of workers and employers alike. Second: good utilization of economic resources of our country, most notably oil and gas that represent the most important elements of the economic development of the Kingdom. Figures indicate that the rates of domestic consumption of the Kingdom’s oil and gas are growing at high rates, recording an average growth of 5.9 percent during the past five years. This is a high growth rate compared to the population growth and the size of GDP, which calls for investigating the reasons for such an increase and rationalizing it.

In the area of monetary and banking policies, SAMA followed monetary policy aimed at achieving stability in the financial sector and providing the necessary liquidity to meet domestic demand for credit, by taking a package of proactive measures to enhance the liquidity position and reduce the cost of lending in order to ensure that banks continue their financing role in the development process in the Kingdom. The most prominent measures were: reducing the Statutory Reserve requirements ratio, the Repo and the Reverse Repo Rates several times, enhancing the liquidity position in the banking system by placing long term deposits in local currency and US Dollar with local banks on behalf of government institutions and organizations, reducing the pricing of treasury bills, facilitating foreign exchange swaps in order to provide the necessary liquidity in US Dollar for the local banking system. As for fiscal policy, the government continued the expansion in public expenditure and increasing the pumping of funds to specialized lending institutions by an estimated amount of Rls 40 billion during 2009. Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, In spite of the adverse impacts of the successive financial crises, they clearly resulted in combining international efforts to review the global financial system and commence taking reforming measures to perform its role effectively and positively in the global economic activity and international external trade.
Brainard’s uncertainty principle can also be applied to this type of uncertainty. If there is uncertainty as to whether there has been a shift in a longterm trend, the central bank should rely more on historical correlations that are more certain. The more uncertain the most recent observations are considered to be, the greater the weight that should be given to historical correlations and the more cautious the central bank should be in its actions. 23 It would of course be practical if Brainard’s uncertainty principle was entirely general and could be applied to all types of uncertainty, but unfortunately this is not the case. 24 Two important exceptions – which have both been applicable to the Riksbank’s monetary policy in recent years – are worth mentioning. The first concerns the shift in long-term inflation expectations. We had a situation in 2014– 2015 when expectations began to fall below the inflation target of 2 per cent. In such a scenario the central bank should act more aggressively to anchor expectations to the target. An overly cautious monetary policy risks reducing confidence in the target. It was therefore necessary to conduct an aggressive and strong monetary policy that reduced this risk and quickly restored confidence in the inflation target. The second exception concerns when the policy rate is close to the effective lower bound. I am sure you remember that the Riksbank and other central banks around the world cut their policy rates very quickly when the financial crisis struck in 2008.

The latter approach is called “certainty equivalence” in academic research and is a good policy only under fairly restrictive assumptions of how the economy functions. It is therefore probably less useful as guidance in policy-making. Moreover, the central banks’ actual behaviour and communication indicate that uncertainty plays an important role in the monetary policy decisions. 21 See Greenspan (2003). 20 [24]  A more useful approach is probably William Brainard’s insight that monetary policy should be conducted more cautiously when there is considerable uncertainty over its impact. 22 Brainard’s uncertainty principle is based on the insight that central banks’ actions can affect the uncertainty in the economy. If, for instance, a central bank were to act more forcefully to try to attain its inflation target more promptly – in a scenario where there is great uncertainty over the impact of monetary policy – there is a risk that it would instead miss the target by a wide margin. By acting forcefully, the central bank contributes to greater variations in inflation and also to greater uncertainty in general. To avoid this, the central bank should act more cautiously. This uncertainty principal is often referred to by central banks and can be one reason why central banks, who want to avoid making major mistakes in all circumstances, are sometimes perceived as “sluggish” in their behaviour. One of my themes today has been long-term trends. When such trends change, it often takes a long time before one notes the change and this can moreover be difficult to assess.
Their take is that independent central banks are merely a troublesome relict and that monetary policy should largely be determined by the government’s financing needs. But experience from throughout history shows that this would, sooner or later, end in an economic policy fiasco. As you can see, the positions are far apart, with diametrically opposed interpretations of facts. The aim of my speech is to provide some clarity from the perspective of Switzerland’s central bank. To this end, I will set out some fundamental thoughts on the properties of sound money and the various types of money. I will then address the question as to whether, against the backdrop of our current monetary policy, the Swiss franc can still be described as sound money. Page 2/8  Sound money is stable money But let us first take a step back and look at money as a concept. Money is a generally accepted medium of exchange, and performs two other important functions, namely as a unit of account and as a store of value. As a unit of account, money serves to make economic transactions comparable. In this function, it is also used for representing the nominal value of all kinds of claims and liabilities. As a unit of account for determining value, money plays a prominent role in virtually all walks of life – from the workplace to healthcare and pension provision.

However, one important condition for a successful reduction in money supply is that the SNB must have unrestricted control over its balance sheet. And in particular, it must, if necessary, be able to sell foreign currency for Swiss francs, in the same way as it has been able to make foreign currency purchases in recent years. We therefore must also firmly reject any ideas aimed at channelling our assets into a sovereign wealth fund, even though we may be highly sympathetic to the matters in question, such as securing pension provision. 10  Summary and outlook In conclusion, allow me to stress once again how valuable it is to have a dialogue on the core issue of sound money. In my remarks, I referred to the crucial importance of the three mainstays of a robust paper money system: a central bank mandate focused on price stability, the independence of the central bank in setting monetary policy, and solid state finances. As we have seen, sound money is always subject to latent threats. It is essential that we remain on our guard if we are to identify these threats in good time and ward them off. What are the biggest threats to sound money at present? In my view, there are two developments in particular that we need to be watchful of. On the one hand, any move to make central banks an instrument of state financing would undermine the second mainstay, namely central bank independence.
That is all about maintaining the resilience of firms as and when the environment proves more threatening than catered for in the standard, static regulatory requirements. There is also the possibility, argued by Governor Carney of the Bank of Canada, that maintaining appropriate minimum margining requirements across the cycle would help to prevent liquidity spirals in key funding markets.9 The Basel Committee of the Global Financial System, when under the chair of my new colleague Don Kohn, has published a review of this important area.10 The interim FPC will have to advise HMG over the next year or so on which instruments in particular we think we should be granted by Parliament. In their different ways, as well as making the system more resilient, they would have the effect of intervening in the (real) credit cycle. And so, in some degree, this endeavour recovers something of the spirit of the Real-Bills Doctrine disciples of a century ago. In consequence, this part of the macroprudential scene has, naturally, posed questions about how it will interact with the setting of monetary policy. Not that the nominal business cycle and the credit cycle are the same thing or always perfectly aligned. In the years during which the latest crisis was brewed, credit conditions were plainly too loose, but the UK did not obviously experience burgeoning nominal demand growth or upward pressures on underlying inflation. Nevertheless, influences will obviously flow in both directions.

The FPC might well find itself wanting the Bank executive to take an issue with EU-wide ramifications to the ESRB or to the European Banking Authority, Markets Authority or Insurance Authority. And sometimes the FPC may find itself wanting to follow up an EU-wide recommendation from the ESRB. BIS central bankers’ speeches  11  Co-operation will be especially important in the deployment of “cyclical” instruments. If one country tightens capital or liquidity requirements on exposures to its domestic economy, the effect will be diluted if lenders elsewhere are completely free to step into the gap. Basel and the EU are addressing how to handle that where the instrument is the Basel 3 Countercyclical Buffer. But we need to explore whether other potential instruments should be subject to similar rules of the game. This is not like monetary policy with a floating exchange rate. The big challenges The reform of the financial system is a global endeavour. Much of it is about strengthening existing regimes. But two parts of it are essentially new. One, on which I spend a good deal of my time, I have not discussed this evening: building effective resolution regimes for the world’s largest and most complex firms.12 The other new challenge is building macroprudential regimes. This is about plugging a gap between microprudential regulation and macroeconomic policy.
In the last few days there was wide adhesion from the private sector to the Greek debt swap, which warded off the possibility of a disorderly default, at least for now. Nonetheless, the situation remains complex. The ECB’s recent actions open a window of time to allow implementation of fiscal adjustments in Europe, strengthening of banks and 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  adoption of structural measures to boost growth. Implementing these programs, however, involves facing serious difficulties. Political, social and economic costs are paid in the short-run and may generate tensions, whereas benefits are to be seen only in the medium term. Therefore, we cannot rule out a rebound of financial tensions. All in all it seems as if, at least in the short run, the imminent threat of contagion to economies systemically most relevant has diminished. This is reflected in risk, volatility and liquidity indicators that have dropped from the maximum levels of late 2011, while stock market and other asset prices have recovered so far in 2012. Outstanding among the latter are commodities. News in the United States is more encouraging, although recovery is still envisaged to be slow, and the labor market continues to show significant imbalances. However, the US evolution compensates the decline in the Eurozone. Data of emerging economies show that activity has decelerated. In several cases, it is difficult to distinguish how much is driven by international forces, how much by natural domestic slowdown or by specific events.

Related to this is the question of whether Asian governments have the political will to devolve monetary policy to a single central monetary authority. Asia is more disparate than Europe in its political systems, and it has often been noted that there is less of a tradition of cross-border institutionbuilding here than there is in other regions. It is quite striking, for example, that the approach to free trade agreements so far has been rather piecemeal, where in Europe they have grown and developed from a strong and centralised common market. Indeed, one serious political obstacle that has often been pointed out is the lack of embryonic supranational bodies within Asia from which to launch Asian monetary union efforts. These disadvantages must, of course, be recognised. But, on the other hand, it should be remembered that European monetary union has been a unifying force - a common interest that has brought countries together. All of these "special considerations" point to the conclusion that Asia is not yet ready to implement monetary union. In the process of discussing them, it may well turn out that Asian monetary union is a non-starter. But that does not mean that we are not yet ready to talk about monetary union. After all, it took Europe about half a century to move from the idea of monetary union to the reality.
The firm, concerted response by the monetary authorities in the main economic areas softened the initial impact on financial markets and meant that the effects on the world economy were relatively short-lived, though sharp, and confined to specific sectors. Broadly, the design of the euro area members' fiscal policies in 2001 prevented expansionary discretionary measures being adopted. Such measures would have jeopardised the sustainability of recent fiscal consolidation achievements and, given the lag with which such measures operate, they could have had a counter-productive effect on the cyclical stability of the economies in the area. However, the available estimates of the structural budget balance show that, at the aggregate level, there was a slight deterioration last year as a result of the tax cuts applied in certain countries before the cyclical weakening had become apparent. Further, fiscal results have shown that, in certain countries, not enough room for manoeuvre was available to absorb the budgetary effects of the slowdown without drawing too close to the limits set in the Stability and Growth Pact. Clearly, in such cases the consolidation drive made has not been sufficient to attain a balanced budgetary position. In this respect, it is of paramount importance that EMU members maintain the commitments entered into under the Pact and do so symmetrically, as reflected in the conclusions of the Barcelona Summit. The appropriate response by economic policies to the slowdown in 2001 has therefore contributed to the recovery of the European economy apparently under way since the beginning of the current year.

Jaime Caruana: Presentation of the Bank of Spain’s annual report Speech by Mr Jaime Caruana, Governor of the Bank of Spain, to the Governing Council of the Bank of Spain on the presentation of the annual report, Madrid, 14 June 2002. *  *  *  A year ago I addressed you in my first presentation of an Annual Report, that for the year 2000. At the time I highlighted the importance of an impending event: the introduction of euro notes and coins. This event clearly symbolised the culmination of monetary union in Europe, a process set in train ten years earlier and coming to fruition against a background of enormous expectation not free from uncertainty. It is only fair today to start by stressing the success of the cash changeover, which was notably smooth despite the complexity inherent in such a singular, large-scale and radically novel operation. Underpinning this success was the collaboration of all the sectors concerned: households and firms and, in particular, the banking system and the distribution sector, without whose contribution the changeover of notes and coins would have simply been unviable. The fact that such a far-reaching change should have found such widespread support in society ultimately reflects European citizens' acceptance of their new currency and their confidence as to the benefits they may reap from it. With the culmination of this process, the euro area is consolidated as an extensive and stable monetary zone.
This is remarkable considering the fact that the new jobs have principally been created in the service sector, where productivity generally increases at a lesser rate than in manufacturing. Three principal groups of reasons for the positive trend in America can be distinguished. One important reason behind the upswing appears to be good economic policies. Since the beginning of the 1990s, fiscal policy has been directed towards achieving a balanced budget, and for a year or so now the budget has been balanced. In order to achieve this, taxes have been raised, expenditure 3  BIS Review 132/1999  diminished and budgetary procedures made more stringent. Monetary policy has been directed towards keeping inflation low and stable and has succeeded in warding off both destabilising inflationary and deflationary pressures at an early stage. The policy mix of monetary and fiscal policy therefore appears to have been favourable. A number of structural factors seem to have been important. Deregulations in many sectors and increased globalisation have intensified already tough competition and increased the pressure on the partners on the labour market, leading to greater flexibility in the labour market and enhancing labour mobility. The increased and more effective use of new technology (IT) has raised productivity, and the use of JIT (Just-In-Time Inventory Management) has meant that the match between supply and demand in the economy has improved.

The typical constraint that I had in mind was that monetary policy would have to be temporarily modified in a more expansionary direction, for instance, in order to improve the situation for a fragile financial sector, perhaps winning some time for a financial sector clean-  1  2  The idea that inflation targeting implies that the inflation forecast can be seen as an intermediate target was introduced in King (1994). The term “inflation-forecast targeting” was introduced in Svensson (1997), and the term “forecast targeting” in Svensson (2005). See Woodford (2007a, b) for more discussion and analysis of forecast targeting. 3  Several central banks who do not call themselves inflation targeters effectively do conduct flexible inflation targeting, although they may not be quite as transparent about their inflation target, the role of stability of the real economy, etc. 4  See Goodfriend (2007) for a presentation of the conventional wisdom about pre-crisis monetary policy. See Bean (2003) for a more detailed pre-crisis discussion of inflation targeting, financial imbalances and asset prices. 2  BIS Review 112/2009  up and reform. Interestingly and paradoxically, the constraints financial stability has imposed on monetary policy recently have rather been in the opposite direction to the one I anticipated and have prevented the central banks from lowering the policy rate all the way to zero, or even below, because of concerns about the financial sector. The financial crisis and the deep recession that has followed it have motivated large cuts in the policy rate.