samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
(2019) “Hvordan skapes penger?” [How is money created?]. Blog post on bankplassen.norges-bank.no, 4 January 2019 (Norwegian only). 8 Norges Bank (2018) “Central bank digital currencies”. Norges Bank Papers 1/2018. 14  NORGES BANK  Chart 11 First policy rate hike in seven years. Percent. 2008 Q1 – 2018 Q4 6  6 Norges Bank’s policy rate  5  5  4  4  3  3  2  2  1  1  0 2008  ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES 14 FEBRUARY 2019  0 2010  2012  2014  2016  2018  Source: Norges Bank  The risk outlook is dominated in particular by the global developments mentioned, that is Brexit and the danger of a broader trade conflict. If growth abroad proves to be lower than anticipated, there will be spillovers to the Norwegian economy. Uncertainty surrounding the effects of a higher policy rate also suggests proceeding with caution in interest rate setting. Monetary policy is the first line of defence in managing the economy. As long as inflation remains under control, monetary policy can react quickly to changes in the outlook for output and employment. If the effects are pronounced, other policy areas, including fiscal policy, will also have to contribute. In this respect, Norway is in a favourable position: the government has financial leeway in the form of savings in the oil fund. In other countries, particularly in the euro area, the picture is quite different. Public finances are weak.

ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES Address by Governor Øystein Olsen to the Supervisory Council of Norges Bank and invited guests on Thursday 14 February 2019  Analyses and charts are based on information up to and including 12 February 2019. THURSDAY 14 FEBRUARY 2019  Economic perspectives 2019  NORGES BANK ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES 14 FEBRUARY 2019  Good morning, Kristoffer! It is now 6:00 am on Friday, 15 February 2030. The temperature is 7 degrees and it’s raining. You have been through four sleep cycles and can get up without violating the terms and conditions of your health insurance. The health module recommends cereal with oat milk for breakfast. I have bought oat milk, which was delivered at 4:00 am. News of relevance to you: The new government quarter opens today – your space is finally ready. Your investments in Green Equities have risen by 20 percent, on news of the major trade and environmental technology agreement concluded between the United States and China. The trading platform Nett sustained a hacker attack last night. Customer data were stolen, and customers are leaving the platform. I managed to withdraw 8 000 of the 67 000 kroner you had uploaded to the platform before all accounts were frozen. The rest of your money may be lost. In yesterday’s Annual Address, the Governor of Norges Bank announced that the next generation of central bank digital currency will be managed by artificial intelligence for a trial period. Have a nice day.
Again, this was by far a higher percentage than anywhere else in the EU, where on average only around 6% cited high costs as a reason for turning down a loan. In the same vein, the proportion of Maltese businesses replying that interest rates charged on loans had decreased was among the lowest. These results support the information obtained from an analysis of bank interest rates. In general, while domestic banks have reduced interest rates charged on loans to households by more than the average in the euro area following the cumulative cut of 325 basis points in official rates by the ECB since 2008, the opposite is true for loans to NFCs. This suggests that domestic NFCs, most of which are small enterprises, are finding it more expensive to obtain or service a loan than their counterparts in the euro area. This apparent relative rigidity of domestic interest rates charged to NFCs merits further analysis as it could harm the recovery process, particularly if businesses continue to postpone their investment plans. Other constraints faced by small enterprises in Malta The same survey also provides an insight into the broader range of concerns faced by domestic micro and small enterprises. These include the limited purchasing power of customers, obstacles faced in trying to expand market share and competitive pressures. In addition, a disproportionately high percentage of these businesses reported higher costs in 2009.

In addition, only 12% thought that the willingness of banks to provide a loan had deteriorated, while the number of those replying that banks were actually more willing to extend credit was among the highest in the EU. At the same time, however, the demand for bank loans by domestic small enterprises last year was weak. Only 10% of respondents applied for bank loans compared to 22% in the EU. The indication of a subdued demand for loans is confirmed by information derived from the Bank Lending Survey and from other intelligence collected by the Central Bank of Malta. One possible explanation could be the fact that small businesses in Malta rely on a mix of internal and external finance to a greater extent than their European counterparts. Another is  5  Flash Euro Barometer No. 271. BIS Review 50/2010  3  the reported postponement of investment plans in the light of the slowdown in both domestic and external demand. Albeit to a lesser extent, supply side factors also seem to have been present. For example, according to the joint EC/ECB survey more than half of the small businesses in Malta considered the interest rate as the most limiting factor for obtaining a bank loan, a higher proportion than in any other country surveyed. And about one fifth reported that they had actually refused the loan offered because they considered the interest rate as too high.
Monetary policy  2  For example, John suggested in February 2008 to lower the standard Taylor Rule prescription by 50 basis points to take into account the increase in the LIBOR-OIS spread at that time. See Monetary Policy and the State of the Economy, Testimony before the Committee on Financial Services, U.S. House of Representatives, February 26, 2008. 3  See James D. Hamilton, Ethan S. Harris, Jan Hatzius, and Kenneth D. West (2015), The Equilibrium Real Funds Rate: Past, Present and Future, working paper for U.S. Monetary Policy Forum, August. 4  See Thomas Laubach and John C. Williams “Measuring the Natural Rate of Interest”, Review of Economics and Statistics, November 2003, Vol 85, No. 4, pp 1063–1070. Updated estimates available from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  affects economic activity through its impact on financial conditions – including the level of equity prices, bond yields, the foreign exchange value of the dollar and credit conditions. If the relationship between the federal funds rate and other indicators of financial conditions were stable, then one could just focus on the level of short-term rates. 5 But, because financial conditions vary considerably relative to short-term rates, as we have seen in the financial crisis and its aftermath, one needs to consider developments in financial conditions more broadly in setting monetary policy.

Our cooperative journey to the SDDS Plus began in 2013, when, after the achieved national consensus on the usefulness of the accession to this standard, we officially informed the IMF of the efforts that we will make in the medium-term period to meet the membership criteria. Then, in the next years, we worked on the production, promotion and publication of the required data.
Then, since these imperfections shape the responsibilities and interventions of the regulatory and oversight authorities including central banks I shall deal with the nature of oversight. Finally I shall turn to a number of contemporary challenges that regulatory and oversight authorities face in the field of securities clearing and settlement systems. 1. The provision of clearing and settlement services by the financial system and its contribution to welfare  What is the basic role of a financial system? In my context a financial system can be understood as a set of instruments, of markets and of institutions. Following Merton and Bodie (1995) the primary role of the financial system is “to facilitate the allocation and deployment of economic resources, both across borders and time, in an uncertain environment”. In other words a financial system can be understood as the dynamic response of institutions and processes to changing imperfections such as information and transaction costs. From a practical point of view a financial system is meant to provide for the allocation of economic resources to productive investment opportunities, the trading of risks, the collecting and processing of information. Prominently this also includes the provision of clearing and settlement services. Let me concentrate on the latter, i.e. on the provision of clearing and settlement services. There is no doubt that Central Securities Depositories (CSDs), International Central Securities Depositories (ICSDs) and Central Counterparties (CCPs) are among the crucial building blocks of any wellorganised financial system.

Furthermore, if oversight activities require it, the SNB will be able to co-operate with foreign authorities. 5. Conclusion  I would like to conclude my address with a repeated call for co-operation. In the field of financial system stability there is no alternative to close co-operation between private market players like you and the regulatory and oversight authorities. On the one hand it makes sense in this field to rely on market forces to stimulate, as energetically as possible, an eagerness for progress and innovation. Institutions like CSDs, ICSDs and CCPs are made to make markets work. On the other hand we have to take into consideration that there are economic forces working in this area that may nevertheless lead to sub-optimal outcomes. Therefore, regulators and overseers must take on a more active, complementary role. First, the financial system can be affected by problems of asymmetric information, in particular in the form of moral hazard. It may also entail negative externalities, which by definition are not internalised by individually optimising market players. Specifically in the field of clearing, payment and settlement systems, where such externalities are present, regulatory and oversight authorities aim at taking into account these systems as a whole, thereby focusing on the links between all components. In other words, some of these systems are "too interlinked to fail" and must therefore be regulated and overseen with special care. Second, the financial system may be subject to limited competition.
In the wholesale and retail trade sectors, hourly labour productivity significantly accelerated in the US from 0.7% to 2.6% over the periods 1980-1995 and 1996-2004, while at the same time it decelerated in the euro area from 2.3% to 1.3%. In the financial sectors, over the same periods, hourly labour productivity growth has also accelerated in the US and has been roughly 4 times higher than the growth rate observed in the euro area over the period 1996-2004. Several causes have been mentioned to explain this downward trend in the euro area. Specific policies aiming at increasing employment particularly in the unskilled segment of the labour market may have contributed to the observed slowdown in labour productivity growth. However, this apparent trade-off between labour utilisation and productivity is likely to be a temporary phenomenon that should progressively fade, when the economy reaches a higher “equilibrium” labour/output ratio. There is another major reason that explains the big difference in the rate of labour productivity growth in Europe compared with the US, which in my view is a major policy issue, namely the fact that the European economy, being more inflexible, does not fully take  2  OECD Employment Outlook. Data for 2006 are partly estimates. 3  There is in particular considerable scope to raise the employment rate of young people and further reform needs to be undertaken to achieve the more ambitious long-term objective of a 75% overall employment rate.

I would particularly like to thank Saba Alam and Will Dowson for their help in preparing this speech. I have received helpful comments from Andrew Bailey, Fabrizio Cadamagnani, Alan Castle, Swati Dhingra, Jonathan Haskel, Neil Kisserli, Catherine Mann, Martin Seneca and Fergal Shortall, for which I am most grateful. 8/8  BIS - Central bankers' speeches
It may be useful to distinguish between three channels through which monetary policy operates: •  The demand channel  •  The exchange rate channel  •  The expectations channel  The effect on inflation of changes in interest rates occurs with a lag and may vary in intensity. In the time it takes for a change in interest rates to feed through, other factors will also have an impact resulting in changes in inflation and output. We cannot assume that the various relationships are entirely stable. As interest rates fall, household and municipal consumption and investment will tend to accelerate. This is because they have more money left over after servicing their debt and because borrowing is less expensive. Corporate finances are strengthened and investment may become more attractive. Higher demand leads to higher output and employment. Wage growth may pick up. Higher wage growth combined with higher profit margins will result in higher inflation. The effect of interest rate changes may be amplified because the interest rate also affects the krone exchange rate. When interest rates are lower, more people will borrow money and fewer will invest in NOK. Lower interest rates will thus normally lead to a depreciation of the krone. Imported goods will then become more expensive and inflation will accelerate. A weaker krone also boosts exports and improves profitability in Norwegian business and industry. The effect on the exchange rate of a change in interest rates will vary as themes and sentiments shift in the foreign exchange market.

We know this is what the people in Europe, and in Germany, aspire to. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches
The large cost of the recent crisis in terms of social welfare has made it clear that more effort needs to be invested in preventing such events altogether. The framework’s second deficiency was that it missed out an important dimension of risk. Because it focused on preventing distress at individual financial institutions (microprudential regulation), the framework failed to capture the build-up of financial-system-wide risk. This “systemic risk” can arise from two sources. One is financial institutions that are either so large (think UBS or AIG) or so interconnected (think Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns) that their failure would threaten the stability of the entire financial system. In this regard, the failure of Lehman Brothers has demonstrated just how real the problem is. The other source from which systemic risk can arise is small financial firms who, by acting together and procyclically, amplify booms and busts in financial markets. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Addressing systemic risk directly requires a specific set of instruments, so-called macroprudential tools, which were first discussed more than a decade ago. 9 In terms of systemic risk, these tools fall into two broad categories. The first category is tools which aim to strengthen institutions that are systemically important because of either their size or their interconnectedness. An example is the Swiss ‘too big to fail’ legislation. The second category of tools aims to enhance the resilience of the financial system and to limit the procyclicality of financial institutions’ collective behaviour.

Jean-Pierre Danthine: Are central banks doing too much? Translation of a speech given in French by Mr Jean-Pierre Danthine, Vice Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the Foire du Valais, Martigny, 9 October 2014. *  *  *  The speaker thanks Fabian Gunzinger for his valuable support in drafting this speech. He is also indebted to Irma Cruz, Till Ebner, Peter Kuster, Claudia Strub and the SNB Language Services for their assistance. Introduction In recent years, central banks have been active in their attempts to mitigate the financial crisis and its aftermath, and they have also assumed a more prominent role in the regulatory efforts to prevent similar crises in the future. This has led many commentators to ask the question I raised in the title of this speech: are central banks doing too much? The short answer to the question – you may not be surprised – is “no”. The measures which central banks have taken since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2007 are a direct consequence of the severity of the crisis itself. First, conventional central bank measures – cutting interest rates, providing liquidity and acting as lender of last resort – were required to prevent the collapse of the financial system. Second, the use of various unconventional measures was a responsible step to support weak recoveries, given the shortage of available alternatives.
They all use an index of uncertainty developed by Bank economists, based on a range of variables, including 5  media references, options prices and the dispersion of economic forecasts . 5  The composition of this index is standard in the literature. But it’s always good to know more. To that end, and in collaboration with H M Treasury and a group of academic economists, the Bank is setting up new Decision Maker Panel of senior executives from a wide range of British companies. Each month the panel members will provide information on how business conditions are changing and, in particular, about the weight they attach to different possible outcomes for investment, sales, employment, costs, prices and margins. In this way we hope to monitor in a timely manner changes in the uncertainty business is facing and how they are reacting to it.

If you collapse the range of alternatives to the worst possible outcome – now you know for sure that a project isn’t worth pursuing – that would obviously hit investment, 7  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/default.aspx  7  despite the drop in uncertainty. If it keeps open the possibility of better outcomes a lack of clarity may sometimes be worth putting up with. Monetary policy and DB pension schemes  Let me turn now to my second topic, the interaction between low bond yields, QE and the financial position of defined benefit (DB) pension schemes. These funds do exactly what they say on the tin: they promise their beneficiaries a fixed future payout, not unlike the coupon on a government bond. That’s why they’re obliged to discount these liabilities by the longer-term bond yield. That, in turn, means the present-value cost of those liabilities goes up when the bond yield falls. And because easier monetary policy tends in the first instance to do precisely that – to depress yields – central banks have been criticised in recent years for worsening the financial position of such funds. Since its decision to ease monetary policy in August, both by lowering Bank Rate and expanding its asset purchases, the MPC has again encountered this concern. Just as this point isn’t new, nor is what I’ll say in response.
So it is important to ensure the presence of suitable mechanisms that facilitate the necessary co-ordination. In the arrangements recently proposed by the new government in the United Kingdom that is to be achieved by putting both the decision makers – the Monetary Policy Committee and the Financial Policy Committee – in the same institution and ensuring that they have a number of members in common. 6. Concluding remarks  To conclude, we return to the elements of the pre-crisis policy consensus outlined in the introduction and ask what remains or how it needs to be modified. 1. The role of fiscal policy. Fiscal policy is the topic of the next session. But we should at least note that the collapse of private demand after the demise of Lehman Brothers prompted not only the operation of the automatic stabilisers but also additional discretionary fiscal policy measures in the most affected economies, with the total fiscal impulse coming in at around 4 per cent of GDP. But the effectiveness of those expansionary fiscal policies in stimulating demand remains a matter of debate, both in policy making circles and academia. On the one hand, there are those who believe the fiscal multipliers are negligible, either because of Ricardian Equivalence or because of crowding out through the impact of high public debt and deficits on long-term interest rates.

The HKMA looks forward to being a long-term partner with you on this journey, and I hope you can offer us your unwavering support too. 2/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  Future-proofing Hong Kong for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) 20. As we look beyond banks to the wider financial system, we turn our attention to initiatives that will have an impact on the financial system as a whole, one of which is CBDCs, the focus of our second strategy. 21. As the world becomes more interconnected than ever, cross-border and cross-boundary transactions have never been more frequent. Many of us have witnessed how payment instruments have evolved over time, from banknotes to credit cards to cross-border payment networks. While CBDCs may not see mainstream adoption any time soon, this is something that has the potential to profoundly alter the global payment landscape. We must work with the industry and international community to ensure that we address both the technical and non-technical issues involved. 22. For this reason, we have been researching wholesale CBDCs as they have great potential in addressing the long-standing pain points in cross-border payments. Lately, the HKMA’s joint research with the Bank of Thailand has been ranked by the market as one of the most mature of its kind in the world; a testimony that we stand at the forefront in the realm of wholesale CBDCs. We recently expanded the scale of the project to include more participating jurisdictions. 23.